‘They won’t buy it’: fish traders anxious after Fukushima wastewater release

Fishing boats in Shinchi-machi, Fukushima prefecture, where locals are concerned about people’s willingness to eat their catch. Photograph: Justin McCurry/The Guardian

Awa-jinja is a place of pilgrimage for the more superstitious fishers of Shinchi-machi, a coastal town in Fukushima, who come here to lower their heads and ask the Shinto gods to look kindly on them as they prepare to steer their boats into the vast Pacific Ocean.

Today, though, the “safe waves” implicit in the shrine’s name are of little concern to the men and women coming to the end of the working day at the town’s fishing port.