An aerial view shows the flooded Inbanuma area in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, after a levee collapsed due to heavy rain brought by Typhoon Bebinca on Thursday. [AFP]
An aerial view shows the flooded Inbanuma area in Narita, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, after a levee collapsed due to heavy rain brought by Typhoon Bebinca on Thursday. [AFP]

A levee breach at Inbanuma in Japan's Chiba Prefecture, caused by Typhoon Bebinca, the 25th named storm of the season, flooded a nearby eel farm and swept away about 50,000 eels.

The farm, operated by the Inbanuma Fisheries Cooperative, was inundated Tuesday when the Inbanuma levee collapsed, according to Japan's Mainichi Shimbun on Monday.

Floodwaters rose to about 2 meters at their peak, submerging not only the eel tanks but also the water pumps and the temperature-control equipment that kept the water at 28 degrees Celsius.

The cooperative, made up of about 180 fishery workers, had raised eels from juvenile fish caught along the Kujukuri coast and other areas of Chiba Prefecture, using well water at the farm. Even as imported eels dominated the retail market, the cooperative insisted on locally raised eels and sold them at relatively low prices at its own nearby restaurant.

Most of the eels that escaped the farm are unlikely to have survived. "Because they were raised in clean water, they die quickly in muddy water," a cooperative official said. "It's essentially a total loss." Eel carcasses were found in a flooded nearby parking lot on Thursday.

Cooperative head Yoshio Kogawa said he had cherished customers who told him Inbanuma eels were unlike any others. "It's a natural disaster, so there's nothing to be done," he said, "but I hope the eels that were swept away have somehow survived in a waterway somewhere."

Meanwhile, Typhoon Bebinca had been drenching the Kanto region, including Tokyo, since Sept. 21. In Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures, a series of landslides brought down houses and flooded roads and vehicles, leaving nine people dead.


bbo@heraldcorp.com