Every other year, Kobe hosts Techno Ocean, a conference bringing together technologies from all aspects of marine use. This year, we participated by presenting during the technical sessions on the status of the “Kumejima Model.” This year’s conference took place October 6-8 at the Kobe Convention Center. As the ocean is large, so to are the themes covered in the conference. The technical sessions were split into the following categories:
- Ocean and Space Technology Collaboration
- Marine Mineral Resource Development
- Costal and Ocean Space Utilization
- Sensor and Observing Instruments
- Surface and Deep Seawater Utilization
- Fisheries Engineering and Resource Utilization
- Ocean Energy Development
- Ocean Observing Platforms
- Marine Environmental Monitoring and Impact Assessment
- Oceanography and Education
- Numerical Modeling and Simulation
- Offshore Structure and Naval Architecture
In addition to this wide variety of talks, Techno Ocean also held an expo with companies and organization showing the latest programs and technologies to domestic and international markets. JAMSTEC an JOMEG had particularly large pavilions to demonstrate the variety of their ongoing activities.
午後には、「１MW OTECプロジェクト」「環境影響及びライフサイクルアセスメント」「海洋深層水の産業利用」「教育及び国際貢献」の4つのグループに分かれ、各グループにて白熱したディスカッションが行われました。
The second day of the workshop began with welcome remarks from Hawai’i Governor David Ige, and an overview of the past 7 years of workshops by Yasuyuki Ikegami of the Institute of Ocean Energy at Saga University. Participants were able to delve deeper into the current status of OTEC and renewable energy projects around the world, followed by the latest developments towards 1MW OTEC and deep seawater industries.
The afternoon of the second day was devoted to subgroup discussions including OTEC Technology, Environmental Impact and Life Cycle Assessments, Deep Seawater Industries, and Education and International Cooperation. These subgroups gave stakeholders from both the US and Japan the opportunity to come together and discuss a variety of issues and opportunities. The discussions were brought back to the wider theme of the workshop through a panel discussion moderated by Masayuki Takahashi of DOWAS.
Kumejima’s deep seawater pipelines bring water from a depth of 612 meters, so every year Kumejima celebrates with the Deep Seawater Festival on or about June 12. This year’s festival was rescheduled to June 18 after significant thunderstorms made the original day untenable.
The GO FARM (General Oyster Farm) company hosted a local calligraphy teacher with a competition for participants to write the Japanese word for “oyster” in kanji or hiragana symbols using ink made with deep seawater (provided by a local bottling company). Five participants in the morning and afternoon were selected by various officials for prizes.
On May 1, 2016 Minister of State for the National Strategic Special Zones Shigeru Ishiba and Minister of State for Okinawa and Northern Territories Affairs Aiko Shimajiri visited the Okinawa Deep Seawater Research Center and related deep seawater industries on Kumejima.
The Minister’s tour also marked an important day for us at OTEC Okinawa, being the 5000th visitor since our opening. These industries have taken advantage of existing deep seawater resources to create economically significant industries for Kumejima, however, they all are constrained by the limited capacity of the existing pipeline.
On April 4th, Kumejima celebrated the opening of it’s new Learning Center, dubbed the “Jinbun Hall.” The center is a renewal of an unused family clinic building, designed to house students attending Kumejima High School from outside the prefecture. With the island population declining by an average of 91 people per year over the last 23 years (2119 total), the island’s board of education was forced to look at expanding student enrollment, or face having to close the school. With limited resources, the school for the first time, invited students from outside the prefecture to attend. Students stayed with host families during the year.
The success of the program and growing number of students from outside of Kumejima required an expanded space to house them. The new Learning Center is a four-story building that can house up to 24 students on two floors in 4-person rooms. The first floor includes food-preparation facilities and the learning center, as space that will be available for educational related events and classes.
Kumejima has a new bus running around the island. The town is situated around the wetland preserve and mountains in the middle of the island. The Kumejima bus service provides routes around the island and to the airport. Starting in April, the new Kumejima Bus started operations. The sky blue bus is quite different than the previous yellow, and easily show’s off its most distinctive aspect, the new logo drawn by famous Japanese animator