Northern Honshū’s Tōhoku (North-East) region offers remarkable underwater environments, with mostly dry-suit, cool water diving in the northern parts, and seasonally warmer waters to the south.
This is especially true on the Sea of Japan side, where waters can rise up to 28°C in summer months thanks to the Tsushima current, which branches off from the main Kuroshio current.

In some Tōhoku areas, you’ll find patches of cultivated kelp and actual kelp forests in season (mostly between April and June), along with sandy seaweed environments, iconic endemic species such as squid (including the bigfin reef squid (Sepioteuthis lessoniana) and the Asian sheepshead wrasse (Semicossyphus reticulatus) and more seasonal species, along with a rich macro life (shrimps, crabs, nudibranchs, etc…).

Tōhoku’s Pacific coast is one of Japan’s major fishing grounds, as the warm waters of the Kuroshio collide with the cool waters of the Oyashio current just off its coastline, causing major seasonal plankton blooms.

Tōhoku’s marine ecosystem has always been one of the primary resources of the area, through fishing, of course, but also aquaculture, and the area was severely hit by the earthquake and tsunami that struck the Pacific coast on March 11, 2011.
Ever since disaster struck, dedicated volunteer divers have been in the water to recover and remove debris, and also to rehabilitate the local environment (recycling tsunamis debris into physical structures to provide shelter for marine life such as abalone and scallops and also restart edible kelp cultivation (konbu).

We would like to salute the outstanding efforts of a friend and former colleague of ours, Hiroshi Satō / Kuma-san, who has been actively involved in coordinating volunteer activities of underwater recovery, cleaning and environmental rehabilitation of his local Iwate waters, and has just celebrated 10^th anniversary of this work in progress.
You can read more about the activities of the Sanriku Volunteer Divers here.