Accurate monitoring is indispensable for understanding and addressing the impending threats to our marine and coastal areas. Environmental Monitoring Campaign of Tokyo Bay have been conducted since 2008 based on the Action Plan for Tokyo Bay Renaissance. This has evolved into a collaborative effort from public and private sectors to not only accurately assess the current state of Tokyo Bay, but to also search for the ideal form of the bay from a variety of perspectives and create the future Tokyo Bay.

The late Professor Tadayoshi Sasaki of Tokyo University of Fisheries, who invited the bathyscaphe FNRS-3, a French manned submersible, to Japan in 1958, and conducted research on the Japan Trench, played a central role in establishing the Société franco-japonaise d’Océanographie (French-Japanese Oceanographic Society) in 1960. When a disease plunged France’s oyster farms into crisis in the late 1960s, members from the Society sent Pacific oyster fry from Sanriku and helped revive oyster aquaculture in France. Collaboration between Japan and France in the fields of deep-sea research and fisheries science have continued to strengthen based on examples like these.

The author, who has been involved in developing science experiments, became alarmed at the progressively changing ocean when he was helping NHK produce a television program on ocean acidification. After thinking about ways to address this, he started developing experiments and planning science shows and symposiums. He hopes that this will provide insight that would lead to learning about the ocean at schools.