This story is derived from a true situation in Japan. Japanese loved fresh fish and thus, fish had a high demand in Japan. The Japanese fishers used to catch tonnes of fish daily from its coast.

Seeing this situation, the Japanese government feared of extinction of fish in the sea near Japan. They thought of a way to reduce this, as well as continue availability of fish for Japanese. After some discussions, they decided to ban fishing near the coast, and fishing was only permitted 50km away from the Japanese coast.

When the Japanese fishermen got to know about it, they were really depressed as the fish caught would now not remain fresh by the time it arrived in the market. They really worked hard to derive a way to keep the fish fresh, but neither by adding chemicals nor sprays could they retain the taste of the fresh fish. Finally, they decided to build a large tank in the ship and the fish alive by storing them in the inundated tanks.

However, this technique was not even successful as the people still objected to the taste of the fish. This was because when the fish that stayed for long in the closed tanks, eventually they became lazy as they had no fear of any attack and were fed by people. Hence, the quality of fish was not same as the seawater fish that swum around all the time.

Now, the fishermen had no other option and they left their jobs in despair. The fishing industry collapsed and fresh fish became short in the market. However, one of the fishermen did not lose hope and spent days thinking of an idea to produce the kind of fish the Japanese people would enjoy eating. Other fishermen taunted him while he concentrated to devise a way to keep the fish tasty and fresh.

Days passed and finally he became successful in introducing a technique to keep the fish fresh and delicious. The technique was that the large container filled with water would contain a predator of the fish caught. In this way, the fish caught and brought into that container would keep on swimming away from its predator to save its life. As a result, the fish would remain in same condition as an active fish in the sea till it is brought to land and sold. What a brilliant idea it was!

So the moral of this story is that we should never be hopeless in any situation because everything has a solution! We should just keep on trying till we succeed.

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 6th, 2020