[music playing] [auctioneer chant] NARRATOR: Got
$10,000 for one fish? From the open seas to the
cannery to the school lunch box, it's the fish that
means so much to so many. Powerfully built, they're
sleek and they're fast. MICHAEL SUTTON: If there ever
was a sexy fish, this is it. NARRATOR: But due to
overfishing, the most prized of their species is in trouble. BARBARA BLOCK: Wherever they
swim, they're the most sought after fish in the world. NARRATOR: Today,
people across the globe are working to save
these ocean giants. But can they be
bred in captivity? Now, it's tuna on
"Modern Marvels." [music playing] [waves crashing] [music playing] NARRATOR: Every morning in
sea ports and fishing villages throughout the world, fishermen
are gearing up, collecting bait, and heading out, all
with the same goal in mind-- reeling in that most powerful
and delectable of fish-- tuna. [music playing] NARRATOR: Among the anglers
are pole and troll fishers in the North Pacific,
long liners off Hawaii, and purse seiners in
the Mediterranean. In an average year, nearly
4 million tons of tuna are hauled aboard ship. That's almost 1 and 1/2 pounds
for every man, woman, and child on Earth, making it the most
popular food fish in the world. MICHAEL SUTTON: What
most people think of tuna is is a tuna sandwich. Well, actually these are
magnificent creatures. But people don't
know about them. RICHARD ELLIS: The tuna is
probably the best designed fish in the world. If you had to design something
that was perfect at moving through the water, you would
end up designing a tuna. NARRATOR: The named tuna is
derived from the Greek verb thuno, meaning rush,
which is appropriate given the tuna's remarkable
swimming ability. Bullet-shaped and built
for speed and distance, some species have been clocked
at more than 50 miles per hour. When tuna swim rapidly, their
fins retract into grooves. And even their eyes
form a smooth surface with the rest of the head. Tuna are found in all
major bodies of water, except the polar seas. These nomads roam
incredibly long distances, often making
transoceanic migrations in a matter of weeks. Like sharks, tuna never rest. Their demand for oxygen requires
swimming one body length per second. Some species, such
as the bluefin, are warm blooded, enabling them
to maintain a body temperature slightly higher than
the surrounding water. This added heat gives an extra
boost to their already powerful muscles. BARBARA BLOCK: Tunas are the
most remarkable, bony fish in all of the sea. There's over 20,000
species of fish. And tunas at the pinnacle
of bony fish evolution. NARRATOR: There are at least
a dozen species of tuna. They range in size from the
canning tunas, such as albacore and skipjack, to the
largest and fastest of them all, the bluefin. MICHAEL SUTTON: We call it
the Porsche of the oceans. This is an animal that
is as big as a Porsche. They get up to 1,500 pounds. It's as fast as a Porsche. These are incredibly
hydrodynamic, very amazing animals in the wild. And it's as expensive
as a Porsche, with one animal going
for more than $100,000. NARRATOR: All species of tuna
are predators, often feeding on smaller schooling fishes. They're near the top of the food
chain with few natural enemies. MANNY EZCURRA: Tunas
do have predators. They'll be fed on
by large sharks. And probably one of their
most racist predators are us, we humans. NARRATOR: The tuna may be
blessed with a dynamic nature, but it's surprisingly
easy to catch. The Portuguese and Italian
fishers who came to America in the early 1900s
brought with them one of the earliest methods,
known as jack poling. A century later, an
independent collection of families out of San Diego
still practice this technique. They catch, can, and
distribute their own brand-- American Tuna. JACK WEBSTER: This type
of fishing right here is sport fishing on steroids. It's the pinnacle of it. This technique is a
100-year-old technique. This is how the tuna
industry started. NARRATOR: Every year from
June to November, Jack Webster and his fellow fishers comb
the waters of the Pacific where the albacore are biting. Their equipment is minimal. So I have a 10-foot pole
here with about a 6-foot piece of line on it. The stainless steel wire and
the jig, that's all you have. NARRATOR: Tracking the tuna is
part fish sense, recognizing telltale signs, such as
the presence of seabirds, and part electronic. The boat is equipped
with a depth sounder that uses sound waves to detect
fish beneath the craft, sonar, which can track
them in front of the boat or on either side,
and satellite imaging. JACK WEBSTER: Albacore,
or white meat tuna, is a temperate
water fish, meaning it's going to be in latitudes
in the world's oceans that are in cooler water. Call it surface temperatures
from 58 degrees to 66 degrees. Skipjack and yellowfin
tuna are going to be in warmer water,
tropical or subtropical waters. So you'd say the
temperature of the water would be from 68
to 85 degree water. NARRATOR: Once the fishers
have located a school, a designated chummer begins
tossing live bait, usually anchovies or sardines,
to attract the tuna. Jackpolers descend
in steel racks to get as close to
the water as possible. There's a foothold right
here, where you're going to put your right foot over it. You want this rail on
the rack right here where your knee's going to
hit it, 1 foot back to keep your balance. You put the squid in the water. This has an
artificial tail on it. And this is what you'd be doing
to give it a little action. When the fish bites,
you make a v-shape here. This arm goes right
down to the pad to get the butt of
the pole on the pad. This arm goes forward. The is on the hook. You got both hands on it, throw
it up, and it's on the deck, then back in the water. NARRATOR: Jackpolers bring
in their fish one at a time, always throwing the catch
over their right shoulder. The hook is specially
designed for a quick release. This hook is like an L shape. It's not a full hook. And what happens is when you've
got to keep steady pressure on it, when the fish is
coming up over your head and you give it a little slack,
it'll fall out of the fish's mouth and the fish
will fall on the deck, and then you can go
back in the water. NARRATOR: The jackpoler's boat
can hold up to 55 tons of tuna. Outstanding, man. Good job, boys. NARRATOR: A brine
solution freezes the fish before their hauled on shore. JACK WEBSTER: At times,
we feel like a dinosaur. One of the biggest questions
I get from the public at large is they can't believe
that we still do this. Myself, I'm absolutely
happy with what I do, and I'm at peace with it. NATALIE WEBSTER: Tuna fisheries
around the world harvest hundreds of thousands
of tons of albacore. Our fishery in the north
Pacific averages 10,000. So we're a fraction of the
total picture of tuna harvested. NARRATOR: In fact, jackpoling
accounts for less than 5% of the world tuna catch. Today, factory-sized
commercial vessels catch the vast majority of
tuna, using one of two methods. The first is long line fishing. This method uses thousands
of baited hooks attached to extremely long fishing
lines, some of them extending 40 to 50 miles. Long lining accounts for about
14% of the world's total tuna catch. Although it's very
effective at catching tuna, long lining pulls in many
non-targeted species as well. ED CASSANO: Long lines
particularly have a high level of concern for us, because of
the bycatch of sharks, turtles, and seabirds. NARRATOR: The second
method is purse seining. It involves laying out a
purse-shaped net, or seine, in a wide circle around
a school of fish. By pulling a cable
through weighted rings at the bottom of
the net, the fishers draw the seine into a purse,
closing off the bottom, and capturing the catch inside. The massive net can
trap and hold up to 3,000 tuna in a single toss. Purse seining accounts for
roughly 60% of all the tuna landed. It also produces a significant
bycatch, most notably dolphins, since they often swim above
schools of yellowfin tuna. From the late 1950s, when
commercial fishermen first began purse seining,
until the early 1970s, an estimated 350,000 dolphins
died each year in purse seines. But with technological
advances, such as escape hatches for the Dolphins, and passage
of the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, that number has
been dramatically reduced. Still, thousands of
dolphins are killed annually in this practice. MICHAEL SUTTON: We
can't afford to rape and pillage the oceans
just for a tuna sandwich. We need to get away from
long lining, purse seining, these destructive methods
of fishing, in favor of more selective methods of
fishing like hook and line and so forth. NARRATOR: California's
Monterey Bay Aquarium has taken an active role
in educating the public about fishing practices. It's seafood watch program
is designed in part to help consumers identify which
fish are caught by sustainable methods and which are not. The aquarium also
houses the only exhibit in North America that includes
bluefin and yellowfin tuna. 11 different species share
the million-gallon tank. But the bluefin, each weighing
several hundred pounds, are clearly the stars. MICHAEL SUTTON: They inspire
awe among our visitors. They love seeing these tunas in
a tank that simulates what they look like in the wild. MANNY EZCURRA: It's not an
animal you'll see in captivity too often. It does require a little
extra care in handling. They're warm-bodied, so
they have these really high metabolic rates, and so they
have these big appetites. NARRATOR: In the wild, bluefins
attain their enormous size by gorging themselves on fish,
crustaceans, squid, and eel. In the aquarium, four
times a week, they feast on 25 pounds of
sardines, 40 pounds of squid, and 15 pounds of a
vitamin rich gel. TRISTA BAXTER: Tunas
are a little picky. They usually don't
take the gel as well. So we'll tend to feed the
gel and the squid first. And they really
like the sardines. So we'll feed the sardines last,
after we make sure they get all the nutrients and environments
they need in the gel food. NARRATOR: The tuna at
the Monterey Bay Aquarium will never end up on
anyone's dinner plate. But these will. They're part of America's love
affair with canned tuna, where canneries like this turn
out numbers that stagger the imagination. [music playing] NARRATOR: Tuna is the
most widely consumed fish in the American diet. Whether it's cooked on a
grilled, made into a sandwich, or sliced for sashimi,
the average American eats nearly 3 pounds
of it every year. Most of it is canned. We eat a billion pounds
of canned and poached tuna every year. That's more than a 1/3 of
the total seafood consumed in the US. Surprisingly, America's
tuna industry began quite by accident in 1903 . RICHARD ELLIS: In the
early 20th century, tuna weren't caught very often
and weren't canned very often. And the story is told
that a sardine fisherman, unable to catch enough sardines
to support his own cannery, caught some albacore,
caught some smaller tuna and canned them. And they became very
popular throughout America. Suddenly, they found something
else that Americans would eat. NARRATOR: Within a
decade, nine plants were in operation along
the Pacific coast, producing 115,000
cases annually. [cannon fire] During the First
World War, American doughboys in Europe needed a
convenient, protein-rich food, and canned tuna proved
a perfect solution. By the 1950s, the US had
become the largest producer and consumer of
canned tuna products. One of the earliest canneries
and the only major tuna cannery still operating in
America is Bumble Bee. DAVE MELBOURNE: The
company originally started as a canner of salmon products. By probably 1940,
1945, the company move to canner of tuna as
a predominant line offering to consumers. NARRATOR: Here, in
this Santa Fe Springs, California cannery, tuna is
the only fish on the menu, lots of it. SHERI GLAZEBROOK: This Santa
Fe Springs tuna processing facility is the most
efficient in the world. We run 200 tons of
fish every single day. We put 40,000
cases out the door. So fish comes in one door, and
40,000 cases goes out the next every single day. NARRATOR: Bumble Bee
tuna comes from waters throughout the world,
including Southeast Asia. The catch consists of
albacore, skipjack, big eye, and yellowfin. All of our albacore
is long line caught, which means every fish is
individually caught on a hook. Our skipjack, big eye,
yellowfin is all purse seined. NARRATOR: By the time
it reaches the US, it's in frozen slabs,
wrapped in plastic. That's after being headed,
tailed, cooked, and deboned in overseas processing plants. SHERI GLAZEBROOK: So here
in the United States, we're not dealing
with a whole fish. We're dealing with the loin bag. That loin bag contains
the fillets of the fish. That's what we
put into the cans. NARRATOR: Before being canned,
the tuna must be thawed. That takes place inside of
Bumble Bee's uniquely designed thaw tunnel. What goes in frozen solid
comes out at 50 to 55 degrees. Then it's off to the fillers,
seven separate lines, operating 24/7. Some are designed to run
albacore or white tuna, while others process light
tuna, made mostly from skipjack. The fillers are programmed
to pack 5-ounce steel cans with either chunk tuna,
made up of smaller pieces, or the larger pieced
solid variety. Each filler can handle as
many as 600 cans per minute. SHERI GLAZEBROOK: 2
million cans, 2 million of those little 5-ounce cans
that you see in the grocery store every day. NARRATOR: Then it's
time to add liquid, whether it's oil, a vegetable
broth, or just plain water. SHERI GLAZEBROOK: What we find
is here in the United States folks would much rather
have their product in water. In Europe it's a
different story. They would prefer
their product in oil. NARRATOR: The filled cans then
pass along the assembly line to a seamer, where
they're vacuum sealed. The seamer dispenses
lids, or ends, at a rate of anywhere from
100 to 800 cans a minute. Powerful magnetic elevators
then transport the sealed cans into large metal baskets. These baskets are
loaded 12 at a time into giant pressure
cookers, known as retorts, where the fish is
cooked and sterilized. Each retort can cook up
to 12,000 cans at a time. SHERI GLAZEBROOK:
We have nine retorts that we load our product into. We run it at up to between
230 and 240 degrees for about 2 hours. Then it is cooked
and ready to go. NARRATOR: After
cooling, the cans pass through an
X-ray machine that checks for bones or metals. Only then will they be
fed into the labeling, which slaps the familiar
Bumble Bee logo on the cans. All Bumble Bee cans also
bear the Dolphin Safe label. These labels can be traced to
1990, when the world's three largest tuna companies-- StarKist, Bumble Bee,
and Chicken of the Sea-- agreed to stop purchasing,
processing, and selling tuna caught by intentional chasing
and netting of dolphins. We have the national
marine fishery release. And that is a sign-off
from the captain that says that there has been no
dolphin caught with that. NARRATOR: Bumble
Bee ranks number two nationwide in total
sales next to StarKist, accounting for roughly
31% of the market. And while sales of canned tuna
have been on a general decline over the past decade,
there has been a spike during a recent economic crisis,
as more and more people began bringing their lunch to work. Canned tuna is the only
regularly consumed seafood at lunch. In fact, of those Americans
who eat canned tuna, the vast majority, 83%, eat
it as their mid-day meal. DAVE MELBOURNE:
Tuna for generations has been one of those
wholesome family experiences. It's versatile. It's delicious. It's loaded with
incredible health benefits. NARRATOR: Those benefits
include high protein, low fat, and a rich source of
omega-3 fatty acids that have been shown to reduce
the risk of heart disease. DAVE MELBOURNE: What
we're learning today is consumers just aren't getting
enough fish in their diet. NARRATOR: While eating tuna does
have enormous health benefits, consumers should be
aware of some guidelines. MANNY EZCURRA:
Tuna are predators. And so we see that they do feed
on a variety of other animals, smaller fishes, squids. And a lot of toxins that
might be present in animals that they're feeding
on, like mercury, can be passed up the food
chain to these tunas. NARRATOR: For most people, the
risk for mercury by eating fish is not a concern. However, the Food and
Drug Administration and the Environmental
Protection Agency do recommend that women
who may become pregnant or are pregnant, nursing
mothers and young children should limit their consumption
to 12 ounces a week of a variety of
fish, including those that are lower in mercury,
like canned light tuna. Still, there's one place in
the world where the public's appetite for tuna is practically
insatiable, where the devotion to tuna has turned
its consumption into a multi-billion
dollar global business. [auctioneer chant] [music playing] NARRATOR: Tuna has no trouble
crossing demographic lines. You can enjoy an
inexpensive tuna sandwich or plunk down $75 for
a single slice of tuna at a high-end sushi bar. And at this Japanese
fish market, you'll find some of the
priciest tuna in the world. No place sells more fish than
the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. $4 billion annually
flows through the market. RICHARD ELLIS: It is 52 acres of
every conceivable creature that could possibly live in the sea. They sell clams, crabs,
oysters, scallops, mussels, every conceivable kind of fish,
seaweed, fish eggs, everything. But the major
attraction, if you will, at the Tsukiji Fish Market
are the tuna auctions. [auctioneer chant] NARRATOR: Six days a
week, in several rooms the size of high school
gymnasiums, an estimated 1,000 giant bluefin are auctioned off. The fish arrive in Japan
oceans around the world, often within 24 hours
of being caught. Some come packed in nice. Others have been flash
frozen aboard ship. [non-english speech] INTERPRETER: More and
more fish come here. So their prices are
determined here. And now, it is especially
so with the more than 100 countries exporting to Tsukiji. RICHARD ELLIS: The Japanese
believe that the most wonderful food item you can
possibly consume is the belly meat of a bluefin
tuna, the red, fatty meat of bluefin tuna. It commands extraordinary
prices in Japan. It commands extraordinary
prices elsewhere. NARRATOR: That belly
meat, known as toro, is the most expensive
part of the tuna. Used for sushi and sashimi,
it has made bluefin the most sought after of all tunas. Buyers for the top
sushi chefs in the world begin arriving at 4:00 AM
to inspect the bluefin that are on display. They roll the tuna on their
side, looking in the belly. The color of the meat
indicates the fat content. The fattier, the better. The buyers use flashlights
to examine the meat. They also rub small pieces
between their thumb and four fingers to get a sense
of the oil content. [non-english speech] INTERPRETER: We take a look
at the part of the fish and imagine what the
rest would be like. If the flesh is smooth, if it
has lots of fat on the flesh, if it keeps the fresh
color for a long time, these are the things we look at. NARRATOR: Tsunenori Iida
has been buying bluefin tuna for nearly half a century. His family has been in the
business for seven generations. [auctioneer chant] NARRATOR: The auctioneer and
buyers have a sign language all their own. [non-english speech] INTERPRETER: Well, this is
1,000 yen, or 10,000 yen, or 100,000 yen per kilo. When you have your palm
outwards, that means selling. And your palm inwards is to buy. [auctioneer chant] NARRATOR: A single
bluefin generally sells from anywhere
between $2,000 and $20,000. [auctioneer chant] NARRATOR: In 2001, a bluefin
was auctioned at Tsukiji for the all time record-- $173,600. Tsunenori Iida buys tuna for
more than 450 establishments in Japan. [non-english speech] INTERPRETER: Tuna is the main
dish for sushi restaurants, which means they cannot go
without it no matter what happens. You cannot say, sorry,
we don't have tuna today. That would be taboo. NARRATOR: While the fatty
belly meat is used for toro, the rest of the fish is sliced
and sold as cheaper cuts. In Japan, even the
least expensive sushi, available in strip malls
and grocery stores, is made from bluefin. RICHARD ELLIS: But in America,
we don't eat that much bluefin tuna. The tuna you get in sushi
and sashimi and tuna steaks and tuna carpaccio in America
is usually yellowfin or big eye tune. NARRATOR: The Japanese
aren't the first to discover the virtues of bluefin tuna. In ancient Rome, soldiers
marched into battle with their kit bags and stomachs
filled with dried bluefin tuna. 2,000 years later, big game
fishermen, such as author Zane Gray and Ernest Hemingway,
discovered the thrill of the hunt. RICHARD ELLIS: This is the
beginning of sport fishing. The tuna was probably the first
fish caught as a sport fish, because prior to that,
people had caught fish that they were going to eat. NARRATOR: At the turn
of the 20th century, the bluefin's fatty red
meat was deemed inedible. Many sport fishermen
would actually pay to have the bluefin's
worthless carcass carted away after posing for photographs. Oop, there we go. It doesn't feel big. RICHARD ELLIS: Sport fishing
obviously didn't do the tuna population that much harm. But what happened over
time is, first of all, people started
eating bluefin tuna. And then commercial fishermen
figured out a way to catch them in very large numbers. NARRATOR: It's only
within the past 30 years that the demand for bluefin tuna
has reached staggering heights. There are countries throughout
the Mediterranean-- in fact, every country in the
Mediterranean has a tuna fishery. And the tuna are
caught at a young age. They're purse seined. They're put in pens. They're fed until
they are adult size. And then they're killed,
and virtually all of them shipped to Japan. NARRATOR: This all out
assault upon the bluefin has led to dire consequences. RICHARD ELLIS: This
method of fishing has one serious problem. And that is if you
catch half grown tuna, you're catching the tuna before
they're old enough to breed. And if you catch the breeding
population and remove it, you're not going to get much
in the way of reproduction if there's no fish
left to breed. NARRATOR: Tuna requires specific
conditions in order to breed and won't do it here. RICHARD ELLIS: So what has
happened to the Mediterranean tuna population? It has crashed. MICHAEL SUTTON:
Fundamentally, bluefin tuna are just too valuable
for their own good. Whenever a fish is
worth $100,000 or more, a single animal,
I think it's fair to say we're going to see
enormous pressure to fish that species right down
to commercial extinction. And that is what's
happened with bluefin tuna. NARRATOR: International
fishing quotas have been largely ignored,
as have laws outlawing the use of spotter planes. The situation has become so
dire that even this veteran fish buyer acknowledges the problem. [non-english speech] INTERPRETER: In my opinion, we
should limit our catch to about 50% all over the world. If we care about our
children and their children, that's something we have to do. MICHAEL SUTTON: Bluefin tuna
are one of the poster children for overfishing. The population of bluefin tuna
has declined by more than 90% in the last several decades. The animal really has its
back against the wall. NARRATOR: Some experts warn
that at the rate we're fishing bluefin tuna, the species may
be extinct within a decade. But the bluefin has friends too. People are working to help
the largest and fastest of all tunas. It's a race with the bluefin
survival as the prize. With the all too real threat
that the bluefin tuna may one day become extinct,
people are fighting back. Dr. Barbara Block
and a dedicated team of scientists in
Monterrey, California, have been at the forefront. BARBARA BLOCK: Here at the
Tuna Research and Conservation Center, we have
tunas in captivity. And this allows us to study how
the tuna works as a machine. It allows us to understand
better the biology of the bluefin tuna. And we're literally
just opening the door to some of the basic questions
of what makes this animal tick. NARRATOR: Understanding what
makes bluefin tick can mean anything from studying the
amount of energy the tuna utilizes per tail beat to
finding ways of determining its sex and place of origin. The Center includes an
8,000 square foot facility that houses several tanks
filled with bluefins. Dr. Block and her
team have pioneered the electronic tagging of
marine fish species in the wild. BARBARA BLOCK: One of the
great mysteries of the open sea is where do giant tunas go? We've had a difficult
time following them because they breathe with gills. And that keeps them submerged. So to follow big fish in
the sea, what we've done is we've taken small computers
that are powered with batteries that we actually
insert inside the tuna. A sensor stock comes
out from the tuna. And we're able to actually
map the journeys of tunas for up to 5 years. NARRATOR: Every year for the
past decade and a half, Dr. Block and a team of
scientists and fishers have taken to the Atlantic and
Pacific in the name of science. Through their Tag
A Giant Foundation, the team has caught and tagged
more than 1,000 bluefin tuna. They use two different
types of tags. The first, known
as archival tags, are implanted in the
abdomens of the tuna and programmed to record
data at set intervals. Sensors on the body
of the tag record the depth and internal body
temperature of the tuna, while sensors on the stalk
record water temperature and light levels. BARBARA BLOCK: We're able to
actually measure the sunrise and sunset every day while
the tuna is swimming around. And just like sailors
traveling across the seas, we're actually using
astronomical math in combination with a accurate
sea surface temperature to position the animal
on the planet Earth. NARRATOR: The main limitation
of the archival tags is that in order to retrieve the
data, the fish must be caught and the fisher must return
the tag to the Center. A $1,000 reward is offered
to anyone returning attack from the Atlantic. A $500 reward is offered
for each tag retrieved from the Pacific. To date, archival tags have
been returned from more than 20 different countries. The second type of tag,
the popup satellite tag, records data similar
to the archival tag. But its findings are accessible
even if the fish isn't called. Researchers secure
the satellite tag to the back of the
fish with a dart. At a pre-programmed time,
anywhere from 30 days up to a year, an
electrical impulse corrodes the wire that
attaches the dart to the tag. And the tag releases
from the fish. It then floats to the surface
and uploads the log data to a satellite. With this tag, we're
almost taking back the mystery from the sea. We're finding out where
the major corridors are, where the major deserts are,
and how the animals pass through them, where they
come and congregate, where are the hotspots, and
where are the places that are the equivalent of watering
holes on the African savanna. NARRATOR: Dr. Block's
research has already yielded some startling results. She's discovered two distinct
populations of Atlantic bluefin tuna, both of which swim
incredible distances. During much of the
year, the populations will intermingle, feeding
together across a broad swath of the Atlantic. But at certain times during
the spring and summer months, mature fish will return to
their native spawning grounds, either in the Mediterranean
or the Gulf of Mexico. So if we have high
quotas, for example, over in the European side of
the fishery and very low quotas on the North American
side of the fishery, because the
populations mix, we're finding that we have to
work as common nations across the North Atlantic to
actually protect the remaining resource. MICHAEL SUTTON: Thanks to the
good work of our scientists here at the Tuna Research
and Conservation Center, we know a lot more about
where these animals go. We have the knowledge we
need to manage them better. Now, we just need to have the
courage to put that knowledge to work. NARRATOR: It may take
more than courage. In 2008, the World
Wildlife Foundation called for a complete
halt to bluefin fishing in the Mediterranean. Instead, the International
Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas, or ICCAT,
voted to approve quotas far in excess of
those recommended by their own scientists. MICHAEL SUTTON: And so
it's overfishing as usual. That's just got to stop or
we're going to lose this species on our watch. NARRATOR: But if some Australian
entrepreneurs have their way, there will be a bright
future for the bluefin tuna and other tuna species as well. [music playing] NARRATOR: What happens if
we fish the mighty bluefin to extinction? MICHAEL SUTTON: We
learned a long time ago that taking out the big
predators, the top predators, in an ecosystem isn't
particularly wise. We are fundamentally
altering ocean ecosystems by removing the top predators. It's called fishing
down the food chain. If we continue along that
line, pretty soon the catch of the day is going to be
jellyfish, not bluefin tuna. NARRATOR: Some see hope for the
bluefin and other tuna species in a modified version of the
very process that is helping decimate their numbers-- a large-scale
domestication of the ocean. MICHAEL SUTTON: If you think
about the land for a moment, we stopped hunting
wild animals on land for the market 100 years ago. Everything on land that
we eat today is farmed. Very little, if anything,
come from the wild. We still market hunt wild
animals for food in the oceans. But we at least ought to do
it on a sustainable basis. And that's been problematic,
particularly for species like bluefin tuna. So the future of seafood,
it seems certain, is fish farming or aquaculture. NARRATOR: Aquaculture now
accounts for 40% of the world's fish consumption. And tuna farms have sprung
up in such diverse places as the Mediterranean,
Mexico, and South Australia. A tuna farm is essentially a
feedlot in the ocean, where tuna are taken from the
wild, fattened in pens, slaughtered and sold. Due to the tuna's
enormous appetites, it takes approximately
16 pounds of food to add 1 pound to each tuna. But if there's no tuna
to take from the ocean, the enterprise and
the species fails. So the holy grail
of tuna farming becomes raising them from eggs. No one has perfected a method
of raising bluefin that way. But progress is being made,
especially here in South Australia. At Clean Seas Tuna Limited,
chairman Hagen Stehr has spent several years
trying to breed bluefin tuna in captivity. I heard about the
propagation of fish. I've seen propagation
of other fish and scientists were
talking about it. And that's when we thought,
we said, maybe, just maybe, by a real chance, we can cross
the lifecycle of bluefin tuna. NARRATOR: Hagen has more than
20 years experience farming bluefin in Australia
and the Mediterranean. His desire to ensure
the tuna's future is rooted in mistakes
made in the past. HAGEN STEHR: We became greedy. We went the Mediterranean and
be so arrogant unfortunately everyone went tuna farming. And there just isn't
any tuna around. Now, if I look 5
or 10 years ahead, that might not be possible
anymore in Australia either that we catch fish at sea. So the next thing
is propagation. NARRATOR: Clean Seas has already
achieved success in breeding two other species of fish-- kingfish and mulloway. The numbers are staggering. Clean Seas produces
more than 4,000 tons of aquaculture-bred kingfish
and mulloway annually. Now, they've turned
their attention to tuna. In 2005, they constructed
this tightly guarded hatchery in a remote Australian town
at a cost of $18 million. The facility's main feature
is a 790,000-gallon tank, painstakingly designed
to replicate the optimum conditions for spawning. Controls are so stringent,
even our cameras had to shoot at a distance. MORTON DEICHMANN: What we're
trying to do for the tuna is you could we're trying to
bring the ocean onto land and bring the fish with
it, so the tuna on land. So we can produce tuna
in an on-land facility. NARRATOR: Using
computers, scientists can make the tank brighter
or darker, approximating the movement of the sun. They can also conform
the water temperature to the temperatures of the
oceans where the tuna breed. MORTON DEICHMANN: It's what you
call manipulation of the fish. So you are trying to tell the
fish what time of year it is and should it be spawning
or should it be cruising or should it just be eating. NARRATOR: In 2008, 16 sexually
mature male and female bluefin were airlifted into the
hatchery via helicopter. Four underwater cameras began
capturing their every move. This is the laboratory for
the CST breeding facility for the tuna,
southern bluefin tuna. This is where we monitor the
fish, a camera system that allows us to look at the
behavior of the fish, how they are reacting throughout
the day, after feeding, during courtship, as the
sun comes up in the morning, as the lights go down in
the afternoon for them. NARRATOR: Within
weeks of arrival, several pairs began
exhibiting courtship behavior. MILES WISE: You can see it's
quite active, the behavior here. The male will align himself
just behind the female's vent. And he's waiting for
her to release eggs. So he's loaded with sperm. And as soon as any
eggs are released, he's ready to release the
sperm over the top of it. NARRATOR: The behavior
continued for months with no tangible results. We've been monitoring for
the past kind of three months looking for eggs,
looking for eggs, and nothing, yet we had all
this courtship behavior. NARRATOR: Then a
breakthrough-- you can see sperm released as a
white puff in this rare Clean Seas video. MILES WISE: And
then sure enough, we came up in the morning, had
a look, and there they were. We had eggs in the tank. And it was just amazing for us. It was a huge accomplishment
for the whole team that was involved. MORTON DEICHMANN: We have
been able to recuperate those eggs, which was a
technical feat, because it's a big tank. And we have been able to
collect and clean the eggs, incubate them and hatch
the eggs and actually have bluefin larvae on site. NARRATOR: Clean Seas managed to
keep the larvae alive for five days. They've now joined forces with
a team of scientists from Japan and are convinced they can take
the process to the next level. MORTON DEICHMANN: The
best is yet to come. We haven't even started yet. We will give the world
southern bluefin tuna. It's a foregone conclusion. NARRATOR: If Clean Seas
succeeds in raising bluefin to market size, the sky-- or the sea-- is the limit,
not only for the bluefin, but for the other
tuna species as well. In the meantime, experts urge
consumers to take a more active role in choosing the
tuna they purchase. MICHAEL SUTTON:
Tunas are ubiquitous. They're all over the world,
many, many species of tunas. Some, like the bluefin
tuna, are in real trouble. But bluefin tuna is not what
we eat in a tuna sandwich. Typical tuna sandwich
are other species like skipjack and yellowfin,
which are in much better shape. ED CASSANO: We would recommend
a pole caught or troll caught US west coast or British
Columbia albacore. Very well managed,
they catch methodology, doesn't have a lot of bycatch. And so if I was going to make
an immediate recommendation, that's what I would do. MICHAEL SUTTON: People should
ask their restaurateurs, they should ask their
retailers, what kind of fish am I dealing with here? What kind of fish am I buying? NARRATOR: Tuna has been part of
our diet since ancient times. How this magnificently designed
fish bears in the future is clearly in our hands. It's hoped that through
science, consumer awareness, and international cooperation
all tuna species will remain healthy and vibrant
for millennia. [music playing]
