Local residents and researchers in ocean science are coordinating their efforts in a research project to reduce the beach litter that drifts ashore. Using the quantifications of litter compiled by residents' surveys, researchers are able to carry out computer simulations to retrace the litter to its origins as well as make forecasts of its arrival time. They are also able to identify areas of the ocean where drifting debris accumulates and are establishing litter-monitoring technologies through aerial photography.

The Masutomi Matazaemon whaling group, which flourished from the mid to late Edo era, was a large corporate entity employing over 3000 people. Each whaling base within the group kept its profits, though they could also pool capital for needed investments. These kinds of management techniques, as rational methods of risk dispersion and profit sharing, anticipated the joint stock companies of the Meiji era and afterwards. The foundations of modern management were thus already in place in the Mid-Edo era and provided a firm base for the post-Meiji development of Japan after it opened up to the world.

The ocean that I saw along the Nichinan Coast during my first spring training camp for the Hiroshima Carp in 1965 was a dazzling bright blue, beautiful and stretching to the horizon. All the more reason the litter that now blights that beauty saddens me. Just as global warming has recently become a serious social problem that needs to be addressed, I believe that each of us, as inhabitants of this planet, should inform ourselves of the earth's current conditions and consider what we can do for the future of the ocean.