Photos: Hundreds pray for marine safety at sacred seaside festival in Japan
Hundreds of residents gathered at a beach in Yokosuka city's Kurihama area, south of Tokyo, over the weekend to pray for marine safety in a summer festival that fuses sacred ritual and seaside spectacle.
As a portable shrine called mikoshi, decorated with Shinto ornaments, was lifted onto bearers' shoulders, the audience cheered.
The mikoshi had started from Sumiyoshi Shrine and was paraded through neighbourhood alleyways. Shrine priests paused to bless offerings and pray for good fortune for people gathered outside their homes.
When the procession reached the beach, the priests danced and chanted. The festival reached its climax when the bearers entered the water up to their necks, their sweaty faces splashed with seawater.
The procession made a final stop at the nearby ferry terminal, where the mikoshi was carried onto a vessel for prayers for its safe travels.
'Everyone has been looking forward to this day all year,' said Shuji Shimizu, head of the Kurihama Neighbourhood Association. 'It's a celebration of our own strength and unity. Please stay safe out there … and enjoy every moment.'
As evening fell, the mikoshi was carried back to storage at the shrine, until next summer.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Jazeera
3 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Hundreds pray for marine safety at sacred seaside festival in Japan
Published On 29 Jul 2025 29 Jul 2025 Hundreds of residents gathered at a beach in Yokosuka city's Kurihama area, south of Tokyo, over the weekend to pray for marine safety in a summer festival that fuses sacred ritual and seaside spectacle. As a portable shrine called mikoshi, decorated with Shinto ornaments, was lifted onto bearers' shoulders, the audience cheered. The mikoshi had started from Sumiyoshi Shrine and was paraded through neighbourhood alleyways. Shrine priests paused to bless offerings and pray for good fortune for people gathered outside their homes. When the procession reached the beach, the priests danced and chanted. The festival reached its climax when the bearers entered the water up to their necks, their sweaty faces splashed with seawater. The procession made a final stop at the nearby ferry terminal, where the mikoshi was carried onto a vessel for prayers for its safe travels. 'Everyone has been looking forward to this day all year,' said Shuji Shimizu, head of the Kurihama Neighbourhood Association. 'It's a celebration of our own strength and unity. Please stay safe out there … and enjoy every moment.' As evening fell, the mikoshi was carried back to storage at the shrine, until next summer.
Al Jazeera
22-07-2025
- Al Jazeera
The night divers seeking sea cucumbers and profits off West Africa's coast
In search of delicacies and profits off West Africa's coast. Omolade Jones with a sea cucumber [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Omolade Jones with a sea cucumber [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Banana Islands, Sierra Leone - As the sun dips below the horizon, Emmanuel Pratt tugs a worn cord and the outboard engine sputters to life. His wooden canoe, painted in white and faded blue, cuts through the darkening waters. Fruit bats screech overhead. Pratt, 35, is a seasoned sea cucumber diver from the Banana Islands - an archipelago home to about 500 people in Sierra Leone. For 15 years, he has made a living scouring the ocean floor for these creatures that resemble warty, oversized sea slugs. They hide in the silt by day and emerge at night to inch across the ocean floor, gobbling up decomposing matter. Also on the canoe, 25-year-old Omolade Jones - sweating in a half-zipped-up wetsuit - perches on the edge of the boat and gazes out at the dark water. After 10 minutes, the younger diver gestures at Pratt to cut the engine and readies himself to dive. Jones blows on his mask, grabs an underwater torch and wraps a breathing hose around his waist. The seabed surrounding the small, jungle-coated archipelago used to teem with sea cucumbers. Nowadays, they are scarce and scattered. Freediving is no longer an option. Pratt and Jones have to dive deeper, for longer, to find their catch. They have turned to 'hookah diving' - a makeshift system where air is pumped from a diesel-powered generator on the boat down through a plastic hose. It is a risky and fragile lifeline. The engines are often old and the air is easily contaminated by diesel fumes. And experts say it is much more dangerous than scuba or free diving. As the diesel engine that powers his air supply rattles in the boat, Jones quietly slips over the edge into the black water. The yellow hose trails behind him as he swims away from the canoe. Minutes later, his torch lights up a column of water above the seabed. Pratt sits in the canoe, a cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes fixed on the spot where Jones's light is. 'The cucumbers are running out,' he says glumly. While they used to haul in dozens of buckets of sea cucumbers a night, now they struggle to find a handful. Pratt says the divers rarely make more than $40 on a dive - barely enough to cover the costs of fuel or to hire some of the diving equipment. Not long after Jones exits the boat, he flashes his torch to signal that he is ready to swim back in. When he reaches the canoe, he hoists himself up on the side with his forearms. In one hand, he holds the torch, in the other, a small, brown sea cucumber. Pratt takes his turn and disappears into the dark water. He surfaces a while later with a sea cucumber. But the divers are unimpressed. After a couple of hours at sea, they head back to the mooring with a meagre catch of just three specimens. Overhead, the almost-full moon casts a white sheen over the water and dimly illuminates the way home. Emmanuel Pratt walks down to the harbour before a dive [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Emmanuel Pratt walks down to the harbour before a dive [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] While they may not be much to look at, sea cucumbers are prized as a delicacy in China and other parts of Asia. They are served up at banquets or on festive occasions. A single kilogram (2.2lb) of the dried isostichopus maculatus maculatus variety found in Sierra Leone sells for up to $1,237 in marketplaces in Hong Kong, according to Steven Purcell, a professor in marine science at Southern Cross University in Australia. In recent years, demand for sea cucumbers has also been buoyed by Asia's wellness industry. Extracts of the animal are now a common ingredient in health supplements and face creams, which are sold across China, Japan and South Korea. Rich in zinc and collagen, sea cucumbers are purported to boost heart health, cure urinary tract infections and reduce the appearance of wrinkles. Chinese folklore also holds that they are an aphrodisiac, due to their phallic shape and the way they stiffen and expel their entrails when threatened. But Asia's appetite for the animals is pushing global stocks to the brink and quietly damaging the marine ecosystem. Sea cucumbers play a vital role in recycling decomposing matter, turning it into nutrient-rich sediment that helps aerate the seabed. This improves the health of coral reefs and seagrass beds. 'Since the 1980s, sea cucumbers have been plundered in seas across the world, sought after by Asian traders,' says Purcell. 'We are seeing clear signs of severe overfishing from underwater surveys of the animals.' The Banana Islands are no exception. Ever since two Chinese traders showed up in 2010 to source and export sea cucumbers, locals say overfishing has decimated local stocks. If only divers had been trained to fish them sustainably - diving seasonally and collecting just the mature ones - then stocks might still be healthy, says Stephen Akester, an adviser on West African fisheries for the World Bank. If this were the case, then divers like Pratt might have been able to rely on sea cucumbers to provide them with a steady income stream over several decades. As it stands, nowadays, he can barely find enough to make a living. Pratt holds two boiled sea cucumbers [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Pratt holds two boiled sea cucumbers [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Islanders began searching for sea cucumbers 15 years ago. This was when two traders - Chinese men known to islanders as Mr Cham and Mr Lee - turned up on Banana Islands. At that point, sea cucumber stocks across Asia were already badly depleted and businesspeople were searching further afield for the precious marine commodity. Cham and Lee introduced themselves to the then-island chief, Georgiana Campbell, showed her a photograph of a sea cucumber, and asked if she had ever seen one. Campbell, now retired, remembers the moment vividly. 'We used to see them under the rocks all the time,' she says, lounging on her porch with her grandson. 'But we didn't know they were worth anything.' She remembers calling over some fishermen to take a look at the picture. They confirmed that they often caught the animals in their nets and would just toss them back to sea. 'They were polite, because they wanted something,' Campbell says, referring to Cham and Lee. 'They came with all kinds of promises.' A few days later, the men apparently returned with a third associate, an American called "Mr Coleston", to help finalise the deal. In return for letting them harvest the sea cucumbers, the traders promised residents that they would bring solar energy to the island and dig two new water wells. They would also add an extension to the local school and build a community centre, they said. But none of the promises were kept. 'All they ever gave us were 10 bags of cement,' Campbell says - intended, she adds, for the community centre that never got built. A diver fixes his nets [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] A diver fixes his nets [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Today, Banana Islands has no running water nor a connection to the electricity grid. A few households have installed solar panels, but most people cannot afford them and rely on flickering, battery-powered torches after dark. Like 60 percent of those living in rural Sierra Leone, the majority of Banana Islands residents live on less than $2 a day. 'The Chinese men used us, all of us,' Pratt grumbles. Cham and Lee had also promised to train local fishermen like him to dive for sea cucumbers, he says. In return for gathering the animals and delivering them to the mainland, they promised fair wages and regular medical check-ups. But 15 years on, Pratt suffers from persistent chills and body aches he suspects are linked to the work he does. He says he only received one medical check-up. With no savings, he can barely afford to see a doctor on the mainland. The divers also say they were ripped off by the foreign businessmen, who paid them just $0.90 per kg (2.2lb) of raw sea cucumbers. But even with meagre wages, they could still earn a living at the start, as they hauled in such a vast quantity of sea cucumbers. They sometimes collected 60kg (130lb) a night while freediving. This method was also cheaper as it required less gear. Yet as the animals grew scarce, it became much harder to make ends meet. It was only several years later, once Cham and Lee had returned to China, that other traders turned up and offered better prices. Men from China, as well as Lebanon and Sierra Leone, came to buy sea cucumbers. One Chinese trader taught the divers to process their catch, increasing their profits. Jones and Pratt now sell 1kg (2.2lb) of dried, processed sea cucumbers for about $40. They usually take their catch to a handful of traders in Tombo, a nearby fishing village. They sometimes deliver the sea cucumbers to a Chinese casino in Freetown, where they are either exported or served up in the adjoining restaurant. While the traders got rich, the divers did not. 'Cham was the main man who extracted a huge quantity of sea cucumbers from Sierra Leone,' says Woody Koroma, public relations officer for the country's Artisanal Fisherman Union. 'He became very rich.' Houses in Dublin village, Banana Islands [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Houses in Dublin village, Banana Islands [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] The Banana Islands - which reportedly got their name because the Portuguese who landed there in 1462 thought they resembled a bunch of bananas - consist of two small inhabited islets connected by a stone causeway and one uninhabited island. They were once the site of a slave prison, held at different points throughout the 18th century by the British and Portuguese. Traces of their brutal past linger. A collection of moss-covered stones marks the site of a former slave fort, once capable of holding up to 2,000 people. Nearby, two rusted cannons bearing the British crown overlook one of the island's largest coves. Dublin is the largest of the islets. In the main village, a cluster of weathered clapboard houses sits in a clearing, surrounded by banana trees and scraggly bushes. The morning after the dive, an elderly man dozes in a green string hammock, hung between two trees, while chickens peck at the ground around him. A short distance away on the edge of the village is Jones's house - a tin-roofed bungalow - where the divers are at work, boiling and salting their catch from the night before. They move methodically through their routine: Pratt stands by an open stove, a tub of salt in one hand, while a saucepan of water boils beside him; Jones fans the flames with pieces of cardboard. In a plastic bucket, nearby, three sea cucumbers await processing. After boiling and salting them, the divers leave the sea cucumbers to dry in the sun. Processing the catch not only preserves it and makes it easier to export, but also drives up Pratt and Jones's profit margins - they can now deliver the final product to the traders. 'Ten years ago, we didn't know the real price of the sea cucumber,' Pratt says, 'We never knew their value.' Jones boils sea cucumbers [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Jones boils sea cucumbers [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Banana Islands divers are not the only ones feeling the effects of the sea cucumber decline - the nearby reef lies lifeless and grey. 'The sea cucumber is the dustman of the sea,' says Akester. 'They eat all the algae on the reef. When a coral reef runs out of sea cucumber, it dies. That's what's happened off Banana Islands.' Sadly, the damage is not limited to local reefs. Across Sierra Leone's waters, Akester says, the marine environment is under increasing pressure. Industrial trawlers from South Korea, China, and, more recently, Turkiye and Egypt, have fished along the continental shelf where fish spawn. Certain species like the yellow croaker, once plentiful, are starting to disappear. Turkish trawlers are targeting small pelagic fish, including mackerel and sardines, which the local fisheries depend on. 'There are fewer fish than before,' Suleiman Seaport, a 40-year-old fisherman, confirms. 'We don't eat other meat - fish is what our families survive on.' Up to 80 percent of Sierra Leoneans do not have enough food, according to the UNWFP. For the majority of the population, fish is the most affordable, and often the only, source of protein. Banana Islands [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Banana Islands [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] When Pratt isn't diving for sea cucumbers, he relies on spearfishing. But, these days, even that catch is small, partly as a result of overfishing trawlers. His house in Dublin village was built eight years ago, with cash from his early sea cucumber earnings. Back then, stocks were still abundant. Now, the brick bungalow is starting to crumble. The roof, which has been patched up with blue tarpaulins, is leaking badly, and the leather sofas have been ruined by rainwater. The walls, once covered in a bright lick of blue paint, are now faded and smudged. As the rainy season approaches, Pratt worries that the roof will not hold. 'I want to repair my place, but I don't have the money,' he says, exhaling cigarette smoke as he perches on the edge of a battered sofa. Later on, he adds: 'They promised us many things, but they are liars,' referring to the foreign businessmen who broke their word to the community. For generations, Sierra Leone has been a site foreigners came to for resources - from diamonds, purchased by big companies which helped fund rebel groups during the civil war, to precious rosewood felled by mainly Chinese traders, and iron ore mined by UK companies. Further back, the country was a huge hub for British and Portuguese slave traders. For locals, the short-lived sea cucumber boom on Banana Islands echoes a wider trend in Sierra Leone's history: As trawlers and opportunistic traders plunder the seas, the country's natural wealth once again goes to enrich outsiders. Meanwhile, locals are left with less to eat and fewer ways to earn a living. Meanwhile, divers are trying to build on new dreams. 'I am becoming a musician,' Jones says, before playing a sample of his latest recording on his phone. His voice is layered over a catchy, Afrobeats-style rhythm. 'I have talent, I want to do that instead.' Jones in the water diving for sea cucumbers [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera] Jones in the water diving for sea cucumbers [Olivia Acland/Al Jazeera]
Al Jazeera
17-07-2025
- Al Jazeera
What happened to the fuel-control switches on doomed Air India flight 171?
New details about last month's Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad, which killed 260 people, have emerged this week, shifting focus onto the actions of the senior pilot during the last moments before the plane crashed. According to a report published on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal quoting sources close to United States officials' early assessment of evidence, the black box audio recording of the last conversation between the two pilots indicates that the captain might have turned off the switches controlling the flow of fuel to the plane's engines. Last week, a preliminary report by India's Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) found that both engines had shut down within the space of one second, leading to immediate loss of altitude, before the plane crashed into a densely populated suburb of Ahmedabad. However, that report, which stated the fuel-control switches had moved to the 'cutoff' position, did not assign blame for the incident. Two groups of commercial pilots have rejected suggestions that human error may have caused the disaster. What happened to the Air India flight? At 1:38pm (08:08 GMT) on June 12, Air India Flight 171 took off from Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport in Ahmedabad for London Gatwick Airport, carrying 230 passengers, 10 cabin crew and two pilots. About 40 seconds after taking off, both engines of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner lost power during the initial climb. The plane then crashed into the BJ Medical College Hostel in a populated suburb 1.85km (1.15 miles) from the runway. The aircraft broke apart on impact, causing a fire that destroyed parts of five buildings. All the passengers on the plane died except one – Vishwaskumar Ramesh, a 40-year-old British national of Indian origin. Some 19 people on the ground were killed as well, and 67 were injured. What did the AAIB report say? The AAIB is investigating the crash, the deadliest aviation incident in a decade, along with Boeing and experts from the US and United Kingdom. A preliminary report from the investigators released on Saturday found the aircraft had been deemed airworthy, had up-to-date maintenance and carried no hazardous cargo. But the report noted that a 2018 US Federal Aviation Administration advisory warned of a potential flaw in the fuel-control switch system of some Boeing planes, including the Dreamliner. The report said Air India did not inspect the system and it was not mandatory for it to do so. During the crash, recovery systems activated, but only partial engine relight occurred, the report stated. Both engines shut down just after takeoff as fuel switches moved from the 'run' to 'cutoff' positions. The report cited a black box audio recording in which one pilot asked, 'Why did you cut off?' and the other denied doing so. The speakers were not identified. Despite taking emergency measures, only one engine partially restarted, and moments before impact, a 'Mayday' call was issued before communications were lost. Air traffic control received no response after the distress call but saw the aircraft crash outside the boundary of the airport. CCTV footage from the airport showed one of the flight recovery systems – known as the Ram Air Turbine (RAT) – deploying shortly after liftoff, followed by a rapid descent. Who were the pilots? Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, 56, served as the pilot-in-command on the flight. A soft-spoken veteran who had logged more than 15,600 flight hours, 8,500 of them on the Boeing 787, Sabharwal was known for his reserved nature, meticulous habits and mentorship of junior pilots. He trained at India's premier aviation school, the Indira Gandhi Rashtriya Uran Akademi, and friends who spoke to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) recalled him as deeply committed to his career as a pilot as well as caring for his ageing father, a former civil aviation official. First Officer Clive Kunder, 32, was the pilot flying the aircraft at the time of the crash while Sabharwal was the pilot monitoring. Kunder had accumulated more than 3,400 flying hours, including 1,128 hours on the Dreamliner. Flying was his childhood dream, inspired by his mother's 30-year career as an Air India flight attendant. At age 19, he trained in the US and earned a commercial pilot's licence before returning to India to join Air India in 2017. Described by family and friends in the WSJ as joyful, curious and tech-savvy, Kunder was said to be passionate about aviation and excited to be flying the 787. What has emerged this week? According to US officials who examined evidence from the crash and were quoted by the WSJ, the cockpit voice recording suggests it was Sabharwal who may have moved the fuel control switches to 'cutoff' after takeoff, an action that cut power to both engines. The switches were turned back on within seconds, but it was too late to regain full thrust. As the flying pilot, Kunder would have been occupied with the climb-out, making it unlikely he could have manipulated the switches, according to unnamed US pilots quoted by the WSJ. Sabharwal, as the monitoring pilot, would have had a freer hand, they said. What are the fuel-control switches? Located on a key cockpit panel just behind the throttle levers between the two pilot seats, these switches manage the flow of fuel to each of the aircraft's two engines. Pilots use these fuel cutoff switches to start or shut down the engines while on the ground. In flight, the pilots can manually shut down or restart an engine in the event of a failure. How do fuel-control switches work? The switches are designed for manual operation. They are spring-loaded to stay firmly in place and cannot be moved accidentally or with light pressure during flight operations. The switches have two settings: 'cutoff' and 'run'. The 'cutoff' mode stops fuel from reaching the engines while 'run' allows normal fuel flow. To change positions, a pilot must first pull the switch upwards before shifting it between 'run' and 'cutoff'. Could the crash have been caused by human error? Experts are cautious about this. US aviation analyst Mary Schiavo told the Financial Express in India that people should not draw premature conclusions, arguing that there is as yet no definitive evidence of pilot error. She highlighted a similar incident during which one of the engines suddenly shut down midflight on an All Nippon Airways Boeing 787 during its final approach to Osaka, Japan, in 2019. Investigators later found that the aircraft's software had mistakenly interpreted the plane as being on the ground, triggering the thrust control malfunction accommodation system, which automatically moved the fuel switch from 'run' to 'cutoff' without any action from the pilots. Schiavo warned that a similar malfunction cannot yet be ruled out in the Air India crash and stressed the importance of releasing the full cockpit voice recorder (CVR) transcript to avoid misleading interpretations. 'There is nothing here to suggest pilot suicide or murder,' she said. 'The voices, words and sounds on CVRs must be carefully analysed.' India's Federation of Indian Pilots criticised the framing of the preliminary findings in the media this week. In a public statement, the federation noted that the report relies heavily on paraphrased CVR excerpts and lacks comprehensive data. 'Assigning blame before a transparent, data-driven investigation is both premature and irresponsible,' the statement read before adding that it undermines the professionalism of the crew and causes undue distress to their families. Campbell Wilson, chief executive of Air India, this week urged staff not to make premature conclusions about the causes of the crash, telling them this week that the investigation was 'far from over'.
