This way, they can tell their friends in Japan about their exciting ecotour experience with a telling evidence of their own. The Vladivostok port remains open during the coldest winter month of February. The hub of sea transportation along the Primorsky coast lines is Vladivostok, but the future possibilities are being examined for a charter boat to connect northern Japan with the mouth of the Samarga river. Even though difficult at present, it was agreed that we should continue our effort to explore the ways and means of opening up the Sea of Japan for more mutually profitable surface transportation. For ecotourists who wish to spend up to a week out of Japan, this roundabout travelling takes 4 to 5 days away from them just for transportation to and from Agzu.
Some improvements are a dire necessity.
Although it was no surprise to hear the same story of lack of jobs and prolonged underemployment in the rural areas, it still struck us with sadness that there seems to be no reliable future outlook in sight clearly pointing to specific community-based sustainable growth goals. From after the Perestroika reforms, the successive waves of decentralization and privatization of economic activities in Russia eliminated much of the government subsidies long enjoyed by the indigenous peoples in the Russian Far East during the 1990s. In the meantime, the markets for pelts and furs also collapsed, leaving the local communities like Agzu of the Samarga valley high and dry with no or little market for their traditional products. Besides, given today's community life-style, it is obviously impossible for them to go back to the old way of life of as hunters and fishers. Although it is true that Samarga River is still rich in salmon resource, the Russian and Japanese open-sea gillnet commercial fisheries have progressively taken tolls of the wild salmon stocks all along the shores of Japan Sea including those of Primorsky Region.