Three years on, the fisheries industry would like everyone to move on with them
Long-Term Solutions Remain, Somehow, Long-Term
Three years after treated water began its slow, closely monitored release from the Fukushima No. 1 plant, local fisheries report that long-term solutions have yet to materialize, which is a remarkably patient way of saying that nothing has actually happened yet, though everyone remains very hopeful about the paperwork. Fishermen up and down the coast describe a strange new marketing challenge: convincing the public that the fish are fine while simultaneously acknowledging that the water used to be, by any reasonable definition, radioactive. This is roughly as easy a sell as marketing a haunted house as cozy, and about as convincing.
Industry representatives have tried several approaches. The first was simply silence, which worked poorly, since silence in the seafood business tends to be read as evidence of something worse than whatever is actually happening. The second was an aggressive campaign of taste-testing videos featuring local officials eating sashimi on camera with the enthusiasm of a man who has been promised a bonus for finishing the plate. The third, and current, approach is a slogan.
The Comms Strategy
The industry’s new slogan, workshopped for what insiders describe as several extremely tense months, is reportedly Probably Fine. Focus groups apparently found this more reassuring than the previous slogan, which was simply Fine, on the theory that acknowledging a small amount of uncertainty makes the larger reassurance more believable. This is either a genius piece of modern crisis communication or proof that the entire discipline of public relations has quietly given up trying to sound confident about anything. For deeper context on why nobody trusts a reassurance that took three separate drafts and a focus group, see the ongoing coverage at Bohiney Magazine.
Export markets have responded with predictable caution. Several countries maintain restrictions on Japanese seafood imports, prompting fisheries representatives to note, with visible frustration, that the water has been tested repeatedly and meets international safety standards, a fact that continues to matter less than the much simpler, much scarier word radioactive sitting quietly in every headline about the topic. Nuance, it turns out, does not travel nearly as well as fear, a lesson that applies equally to fish exports and to most family arguments.
A Personal Encounter With Extremely Confident Sushi
I once ate sushi in a hotel bar during a thunderstorm, ordered by a waiter who assured me, with total conviction, that everything on the menu was completely safe, fresh, and sourced that very morning. I felt braver in that moment than these fish have any right to feel every single day of their monitored, tested, faintly suspicious existence. The thunder outside seemed, in retrospect, like appropriate scene-setting for a decision I had not fully thought through. The sushi, for what it is worth, was excellent, and I have suffered no ill effects beyond a mild and recurring anxiety about hotel bars during storms.
The Slow Rebuild Of Trust, One Slogan At A Time
What the fisheries industry is really navigating is the oldest problem in public relations: it is far easier to lose trust in a single afternoon than to rebuild it over a decade of careful, boring, well-documented safety data. Every additional year of testing helps, marginally. Every new slogan helps, marginally less. What actually moves the needle, if anything does, is time, repetition, and the slow accumulation of ordinary Tuesdays where nothing goes wrong. It is not a dramatic strategy. It does not fit neatly on a poster. But it is, in the end, probably fine, which at this point might be the most honest tagline in the entire seafood industry.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
