- [speaking Japanese]
- MAMORU SUGIYAMA: [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- KAZUO NOZAKI: [speaking Japanese]
- YASUHARU LIDA: [speaking Japanese]
- [speaking Japanese]
- [bell ringing]
- [speaking Japanese]
- [bell ringing]
- ♪
- MAMORU SUGIYAMA: [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- [speaking Japanese]
- MAKOTO NOZUE: [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- [speaking Japanese]
- Okay.
Basically, the fish are lined up in order of species.
Ah, you have Northern bluefins at the front here,
Southern bluefins behind.
And then you'll have big-eyed tuna.
And in the very back,
you'll have, uh, yellowfin on occasion.
Fish are from all over, both Japan and the rest of the world.
Uh, we have some Italian product over on the other side there.
We have, some, uh,
domestically-caught Northern bluefin.
Uh, they're all numbered for auction,
so they'll run from one all the way through down
and auction every single fish off.
They generally arrange the better fish first,
so the better fish are higher up in numbers
than the lower-grade fish.
So they do some grading, and they do some sorting.
And these are all wholesalers.
They're intermediate wholesalers.
They have a license to buy on the auction here.
Uh, essentially they've come in.
They've got orders to fill.
And they're, uh--
they're looking at the fish for both its confirmation.
They're looking at the fat content,
and they're looking at the color.
And, then they'll think about what the customer requires,
what they're likely to pay, uh, and then bid accordingly.
You might want to film this.
He's just taking a piece out of the tail.
Well, he's gonna feel the oil content in his hands.
He'll warm up the meat sample,
and that'll bring on color change,
and use his light to examine it.
- ♪
- [grunts]
- TSUNENORI LIDA: [speaking Japanese]
- [speaking Japanese]
- TSUNENORI LIDA [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- [speaking Japanese]
- HIROYASU ITOH: [speaking Japanese]
- The thing is that the rest of the world
is starting to appreciate what the Japanese appreciate,
and they're getting a--they're developing a taste for it.
- [indistinct chatter]
- [no audible speech]
- ♪
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: What started my interest in these animals,
first of all, was their physiology.
It's all built for speed.
The natural form of the tuna
is the most hydrodynamic form known to man.
They're sprinters,
but they're also marathon runners.
They're a combination.
They migrate for thousands of miles.
They also can swim at very, very fast speeds.
- MIKE SUTTON: We used to call the bluefin tuna
the Porsche of the oceans, because it's as fast a Porsche.
They're as big as a Porsche.
They get up to 1,500 pounds.
And it's as expensive as a Porsche,
because one fish goes for more than $100,000 US.
There are at least three different kinds
of bluefin tuna globally.
There's the Pacific bluefin, the Southern bluefin,
and the Atlantic bluefin.
And they're quite distinct, quite distinct populations.
They breed in different places.
The fish are a different size.
- DR. BARBARA BLOCK: We've learned that tuna,
such as the Southern bluefin tuna,
go from the South Australia Bight
all the way over to South Africa and back as youngsters.
And then later in life, they go up
the coast of Western Australia to Java, where they spawn.
In the case of the Northern bluefin tuna,
they'll cross the entire Pacific from Japan to Mexico,
live off the California coast and Mexican coast
for three to four years,
and then they'll go back to their spawning grounds.
So their life is one of wandering the world's oceans,
growing by feeding every day, and taking many years
to get to be what we call a giant bluefin tuna.
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: They actually have slots,
where their fins will slot in,
as you can see in the grooves there.
And it's perfectly smooth.
The dorsal fin has a slot here, and it comes straight out,
so they can make themselves completely streamlined.
They have the dark skin on the top,
so when fish are looking down on them,
it's dark, like the dark of ocean,
so it masks them from, uh, predators and prey.
And then they have a light skin here,
so when fish are looking up,
the sun's coming down, it's not easy to see.
They're at the top of the evolutionary tree, really.
They're right up there with other supreme species of fish.
- [speaking Japanese]
- ♪ Silver fin in the sky
♪ Take me high
♪ Silver fin in the sky
♪ Take me high, take me high
♪ Silver fin in the sky
♪ Take me high, take me high ♪
- [speaking Japanese]
- MALE NARRATOR: In the beginning,
many experimental shipments were made
to discover and eliminate the inherent problems involved
in shipping fresh tuna, an item never before transported
halfway around the world by air.
- ♪
- AKIRA OKAZAKI: [speaking Japanese]
- NARRATOR: Three years of constant testing
were necessary to evolve a cooling panel system container
that was not only light enough,
but would keep tuna in a fresh condition at
a perfect 32 degrees Fahrenheit for a period of 40 hours.
- [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- AKIRA OKAZAKI: [speaking Japanese]
- SHINPEI ASAI: [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- In the early '90s, the global, uh, sushi economy,
as such, wasn't as large as it is now.
- With China coming on, and Russia coming on--
and even in India.
I've just come back from India, and they--you can get sushi
in sushi restaurants in India now in the top hotels.
And, well, who would've thought that a few years ago?
It's just like a few years ago, you could find
a Chinese restaurant in any country in the world,
and now you're starting to find
sushi restaurants in any country in the world.
- [singing in foreign language]
- [starting gunshot]
- ♪
- [speaking Polish]
- ♪
- TYSON COLE: I woke up one morning,
and I was living with my girlfriend.
And she said, "Look, if you don't get a job,
you can't live anymore and we're breaking up."
And so out of a panic, I took the bus, went downtown.
Walked around downtown, put in about 20 to 30 apps--
applications.
And the only place that called me back
was Kyoto Japanese Restaurant.
I had sushi once before.
I thought it was disgusting.
It was literally
just about getting that job as a dishwasher.
I'd never had any food like that before.
Grew up in middle of America, white people food.
And so I really started falling in love with the cuisine,
and then started hanging out with the staff, the chefs.
The sushi chefs, specifically.
Once I saw them making it,
I was passionate about wanting to do that.
To them, having someone from here who's not Japanese,
being in the forefront, representing them
and the restaurant, wasn't even an option,
'cause I was Anglo, 'cause I was white.
- ALTON BROWN: This was a guy who used to watch
Iron Chef Japan on VHS when he started out
as a dishwasher at a Japanese restaurant.
And now he is battling
his favorite chef from that show.
Dare to dream.
- TYSON COLE: A lot of it was self-taught.
They didn't teach me a lot at that point.
A few pointers here and there,
but I was trying to teach myself how to make rolls.
And whenever there'd be downtime,
I would go out to the front
and just kind of play around out there
and make sushi rolls in the front.
Kind of stars in my eyes,
wish I could be out there kind of thing.
Gonna toss this with a little bit of the watermelon
on the side.
I've kind of defined Uchi food as my food.
And my food stays true to the Japanese aesthetic,
but not traditional Japanese.
So applying new techniques, new ingredients, new styles,
and making sense of them and how they go together.
- ♪
- You see, the Texas roll is very requested.
- [cheering]
- Okay, thank you.
All right, thanks.
Bye bye.
- [in unison] Dragons, fight!
Victory tonight!
- MARY BRUNICK: The coaches have asked me,
"What do you think you're doing?
This is Texas football."
And I'm like, "I'm serving sushi."
And they're going, "What?"
Sushi is, I think, an up-and-coming food item
for your high school kids, your college kids.
This is a healthy choice.
- [in unison] Sushi!
- ♪
- EVAN KAYE: I love sushi.
And this was part of the motivation
to make it portable.
Uh, I realized that I was eating more and more of it.
But, you know, when you eat sushi,
you're tied to a table.
You're tied to your chopsticks.
It's not something that's easy to walk around and eat.
Just looking at the shape of sushi rolls,
well, it starts off as a cylindrical object,
and then you slice it into pieces.
Well, why not just keep it as a cylindrical object?
And maybe there's a way that you can put it in a container
and it would be dispensed out in some way.
And the push-up device seemed like a good way to go.
And we decided we'll put the soy sauce in the handle.
We can now bring it to places
where it wasn't that convenient to go before.
Airlines have expressed interest,
and we're running tests for them.
Amusement parks, cruise lines.
Kids are going crazy about our product,
because we are really just igniting the excitement
that's already there.
- [laughter]
- EVAN KAYE: The Sushi Popper roll
is a very fun way to eat sushi.
- [laughter]
- We're passionate about portable sushi,
and we really want to respond to the demand
that we've seen globally.
- Welcome to Matsuko,
one of the most popular sushi restaurants in Beijing.
Historically, most Chinese don't really like raw fish.
But with incomes rising, palates are becoming more sophisticated.
This is Chef Tom.
He's Chinese, but was trained in Japan.
And right now, he's slicing bluefin tuna,
which is flown in every other day.
By some estimates, there will be 50 million new sushi eaters
in China in coming years.
But the growing market comes with a catch.
There's concern China's appetite for sushi alone
could wipe out the bluefin tuna population.
- KEN BANWELL: The supply is falling internationally
and demand is growing.
It's just gonna get worse and worse.
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: Most of us in the industry
are quite surprised at how fast and how rapid sushi
has become a very popular dish around the world.
- ♪
- [indistinct chatter]
- ♪
- DR. BARBARA BLOCK: The love of sushi and sashimi,
the raw fish market,
is driving a global effort to get tuna.
It's one of the most lucrative animals on Earth.
What we have to do as nations is begin to understand that
the effect of removing bluefin from the sea
is that that species won't be here for future generations.
- ♪
- The bluefin tuna is an apex predator.
It exists at the top of the food chain of its ecosystem.
Large bluefin tuna, a mature bluefin tuna,
nothing in the ocean can touch it.
Nothing.
An animal like that provides
an irreplaceable ecosystem benefit.
We need top predators in the ocean
because they eat smaller animals.
And that's how things work.
So you take the top predators out of the trophic system,
then all of a sudden, the sub-predators explode
in numbers, because there's nothing to eat them.
And so now they are in such enormous numbers
that whatever was below them,
what they fed on is being devastated.
So you lose the top predator, and then you lose the third,
because the second eats the third.
And then when the third is gone, the second disappears,
'cause it has nothing to eat,
and you're left with jellyfish and urchins.
That cannot be allowed to happen.
And the bluefin tuna provides that service
to the Mediterranean, to the Atlantic,
to the Gulf of Mexico, to Cape Cod.
We can't afford to lose it.
- There is no species that has fared worse
at the hands of humans than the Atlantic bluefin tuna.
The populations have been reduced by 60% to 80%
of their historic abundance since the 1950s.
So in the last 30 or 40 years, this species has been taken down
to less than 20% to 30% of what it was before.
- DR. BARBARA BLOCK: What we have to understand is that
it's our generation of life on Earth that's taking
the bluefin tuna out of all three oceanic environments
at a level that, in some cases, exceeds sustainability.
- ♪
- HIROFUMI HAMABATA: [speaking Japanese]
- [speaking Japanese]
- MITSUHARU KANAZAWA: [speaking Japanese]
- HIROFUMI HAMABATA: [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- HIROFUMI HAMABATA: [speaking Japanese]
- ♪
- CASSON TRENOR: I grew up in a little town
in Washington State, on the beach.
When I was little, I used to be able to go down to that beach
in the summertime and dig for clams, and mussels,
and little shrimp and stuff,
and take the clams back and eat them.
As I got older, that beach started to die
because of pollution in Puget Sound,
and overuse and runoff.
Now it's to the point where I would never touch anything
that came out of that beach.
It's filthy.
And it really made a huge impact on me.
This is a sushi restaurant that only serves
what we consider to be sustainable seafood.
That means most and many of the items that you might see
at an average sushi restaurant you're not gonna find here.
You're not gonna find farmed salmon.
You're not gonna find bluefin tuna.
You're not gonna find a lot of different kinds
of farmed shrimp or--or hamachi from Japan.
You're not gonna find eel.
All of these things have really major environmental consequences
associated with their production or their harvest.
And, uh, we don't want anything like that coming in here.
I want to have a atmosphere where our customers
can come in and they can have a guilt-free sushi experience.
They can still see, wow, you can maintain the beauty
and the quality of the art of sushi and the cuisine
without compromising the health of the oceans.
That's really our mission.
- [indistinct chatter]
- So, basic fish that we've replaced
is salmon, tuna, and unagi.
So we don't do the unagi,
so we do something called fauxnagi.
This is a black cod that we get from British Columbia.
We sear it the same way.
We put the sesame seeds and the sauce on top as well.
And then we only do wild salmon.
So when we can't get the wild salmon,
instead of doing farmed salmon, we do the Arctic char.
That's the iwana.
This is a closed farm fish,
so there's no impact to the surrounding environment.
And that's from the Pacific Northwest.
We don't do bluefin tuna.
We have the handline yellowfin tuna.
Okay?
- Our overall goal is to change the entire sushi industry.
We're not out to be a niche restaurant.
We're out to be a vanguard restaurant.
We want to demonstrate to the rest of the restauranteurs
here in the United States that are out there making sushi,
hey, you can do this sustainably and you can make it profitable.
Yeah, we're doing it in San Francisco first,
but that's not the end of the story for us.
- YASUHARU LIDA: [speaking Japanese]
- I've always thought sustainability
is a pretty simple concept.
Uh, it essentially means to use, but not use up,
to leave some for the future.
- ♪
- CASSON TRENOR: Well, with seafood,
if you're not aware of the seasons,
you're not aware of the behavior and the dynamics
of the fish you're enjoying, there's no way
you're gonna be able to be sustainable
in how you're harvesting from a farm
or how you're capturing from the ocean.
You look at something like salmon.
Salmon's a perfect example.
Salmon's a seasonal fish.
It runs in and out.
It spawns in a river and dies.
The eggs hatch in the river.
But now we've got farms that are producing salmon year round,
all year, every year.
That's not a normal cycle, but we developed a taste
to be able to have salmon any time we want.
It's gonna be very difficult to break down
that consumer preference.
Maybe there is a way to farm salmon sustainably.
Maybe there is.
But the way that's being done right now is not sustainable.
To have a sustainable fish, when you think about it,
should theoretically cost less,
because you're not dealing with resource scarcity.
You're not dealing with the overexploitation of a fish
that's gonna drive it into this rare category
that's gonna make the price skyrocket.
Look at bluefin tuna, all right?
- MIKE SUTTON: Many of the species like bluefin tuna
that are preferred by sushi lovers, sushi markets,
are internationally protected because they migrate.
Those species are regulated by international bodies.
In the case of the bluefin tuna in the Atlantic,
it's the Atlantic Tunas Commission, or ICCAT,
that has authority over the management of that species.
- Yeah, ICCAT stands for, um, the International Commission
for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.
But recently it's been, uh, said to stand
for the International Conspiracy to Catch All Tunas
because of their ineffectiveness.
Basically, compliance was their biggest challenge.
Unfortunately, it requires a great deal of collaboration
amongst those nations to manage the stocks.
And the history that they've got of, uh,
wars over the years,
over the centuries, I should say, um...
Yeah, it's very hard to get them to agree on anything.
- CASSON TRENOR: We are never going to be able
to save the bluefin tuna when it's such a low priority.
- Governments have failed.
They've failed repeatedly.
The fish is just too valuable for its own good.
- Well, if we can't protect the, you know, the men, women
and children from slaughter in Rwanda, how are we going to,
you know, protect tunas from slaughter in the ocean?
- HIDEJI OOTSUKI: [speaking Japanese]
- FEMALE NARRATOR: We knew the Albatun Tres
at 115 meters long was huge.
But to see her up close was something else.
This ship can take 3,000 tons of tuna in a single trip,
which is nearly double the catch of some Pacific island countries
in a whole year.
Tuna stocks in this fragile region are declining,
and there simply isn't enough fish in the sea
to keep filling the holds of these large vessels.
- MIKE SUTTON: It's going to take direct action
to get people's attention.
It's going to be up to sushi lovers
like us to make sure
that there's a future for bluefin tuna in the oceans.
It's gonna be up to groups like Greenpeace and others
to take action that will make the headlines
to keep this issue in the forefront of people's minds,
to force governments to do justice by bluefin tuna.
- [speaking Japanese]
- Aquaculture done right, bluefin tuna farmed right,
could play a major role in the future of the species
for the sushi market.
We have to make sure that bluefin tuna has a future
both in the ocean and in the fish farm.
- HIROYASU ITOH: [speaking Japanese]
- I came to Australia in 1961.
It was the start of the tuna industry.
We literally caught thousands and thousands
and thousands of tons.
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: In the Australian industry,
it's a ranch product.
So the original fish are wild, and we just value add.
We can catch fish from the ages of, say, two to five years.
They spend only three to six months in the cage.
So they're very much a value-added wild product.
- So, that's--that's just rule of thumb, just rough.
- It's been caught in the Great Australian Bight.
It's been fed mackerel from California, herring from Europe.
It's been fed hand-grated pike from Taiwan.
- MIKE SUTTON: So for every 1 pound of tuna, we think that
at least 15 pounds of other fish have to be consumed
by that bluefin in order to yield 1 pound of tuna.
That's a net loss to the ocean if you have to feed
15 pounds of sardines to get 1 pound of tuna.
We ought to be eating the sardines, not the tuna.
- ♪
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: For about eight to ten years,
there's been a lot of research in the Australian industry
to basically produce a pellet that we can feed to fish.
And of course, you have the fish protein, the fish oil
replacement research that's going on as well,
so that we could use pine oils and proteins in a pellet
to make it more sustainable.
- [indistinct chatter]
- Put that one inside of the box here.
And that one on the outside.
The fish we catch here are packed onshore in Port Lincoln,
then shipped eight hours by truck to the Adelaide Airport.
From there, they're sent on to places such as Singapore,
and then onwards to Tokyo.
At Tokyo, they're sold at the auctions.
And the fish we raise here end up in sushi restaurants
in Japan, America, Europe, and other parts of the world.
- I know that here, my father-in-law
did some information on tracking product
and fresh product as far as--
And this?
This is for what?
- Uh, essentially, it's called-- it's called ikejime.
- Ikejime?
- In Japanese.
- Oh yeah, I know what ikijime.
So you do all the tuna ikijime?
- You have to.
Basically it eases its way into rigor mortis
and then eases its way out.
Rigor mortis is not as severe as--
You end up with a firmer texture flesh for longer.
- How many days out of the water?
- This? Oh, I've got to think about it.
Australian time. Um...
- Like, from--from--
- From harvest to where we are right now?
Four days?
- My judgement, I'd say three or four days.
- Yeah, four days.
- [unintelligible]
And that's about the best time
to actually eat the fish,
I think. - Yeah, exactly.
You've got, uh--
- If it's too fresh, it still has the metallic, iron-y flavor.
- Yeah.
- The flesh hasn't totally relaxed yet.
And it hasn't brought on all of the integral, you know,
taste that it could have.
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: Yeah.
Yeah, no, it's exactly right.
Tyson's obviously respected both by Japanese peers here
and, uh, within, you know, within the food industry
within the United States.
It allows us, through Tyson, to communicate to the consumer
about our product and why it's important to the consumer,
make sure to ask questions about where it's come from,
whether it's being fished responsibly,
that are sustainable, whether it's organic--
all those sorts of things we want to get through
to the consumer, but through a respected voice.
What I love about what you're doing
is that you're differentiating the species.
You're differentiating that it's coming
from the Australian industry, which is sustainable.
- Yes.
- And it's getting to the--
like a Japanese restaurant, where the chef is talking
with the customer and educating them about the product,
because that's what they do in Japan.
It's a conversation between the chef and the consumer.
Americans are basically on a beginning level
when it comes down to understanding sushi, sashimi.
It's grown so rapidly, and it's at a large scale
in a relatively short period of time.
Uh, Tyson's taking it to the next level.
He's educating consumers on sushi and cuisine,
but he's also evolving it, which is also pretty exciting.
Yeah, what I'm trying to do with Southern bluefin tuna
is get it into Japan and get the consumers to have a choice.
And they can basically determine the ethics of business
in that sense so that they can, uh, reward an industry that is,
uh, looking to produce a sustainable tuna.
- When we're talking about Southern bluefin,
you're talking about wild caught,
or a ranch product, or farmed product?
- I'm talking about the wild-caught product
that is then put into cages, so it is a ranch product.
It's not a farm.
There's no sort of thing as a farmed--a farmed tuna.
- And you think that's a sustainable product?
- In the Australian Industry, what we do is
we have a quota of about 5,000 tons each yield.
We go out and we catch that in [unintelligible] nets.
We tow those tuna in and we transfer them into cages.
And we use underwater video cameras to film
every individual fish that comes into the fishery.
And I would agrue, that it's probably the most sustainable
and most monitored tuna fishery in the world.
- But we're still using a relative determination there,
right?
The most sustainable bluefin tuna population
in--or fishery.
When you look
at the other bluefin tuna fisheries in the world,
and you just see a lot of things that have gone wrong.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- And when you talk about,
like, Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin,
and you talk about the problems that we've had with ICCAT--
- I think I'm very concerned about tuna,
and what's going to happen
when, basically, the Chinese taste for sushi expands.
- CASSON TRENOR: Okay.
I--I think that's totally understandable,
because you saw it here, you know?
The explosion of the sushi market
in the United States
over the last 15 years has just been unparalleled.
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: Yeah.
- I see your system and your theory.
I see it working in a lot of ways.
I do, because I've seen it in other species
and other fish here in this restaurant.
But why is it better to work and to offer the consumer
a slightly better or significantly better
bluefin option rather than to say don't eat bluefin?
- Because when the Chinese get a taste for it,
bluefin will go.
- CASSON TRENOR: What would it take to educate
the Chinese consumer--
- I guess I know what it doesn't take,
and that's the current--
the current strategy of a blanket approach.
Uh, and I know that's not going to work.
The blanket approach by the conservation societies
are saying that all bluefin are bad,
and the equivalent of that is--
- CASSON TRENOR: Uh-huh, which is mostly been done, basically.
- Or you can--yeah, that's what's being done.
- It's saying all bluefin are bad
because we're dealing witor three, really.s--
You're dealing with populations,
the fact that populations are crashing all over.
The bluefin is being overfished.
- I disagree.
It's another way where we disagree.
- That's--that's--that's fair. - Southern bluefin tuna--
- But that's one of the arguments that's being made.
- Southern bluefin tuna populations,
I would argue, are going the other way.
- CASSON TRENOR: I think it's unfair
to blame the environmental movement--
- I'm not blaming the environmental movement.
I'm just saying that history may reflect poorly--
- -- the demand in the industry. - Right.
- The problem is coming from the demand in the industry,
not from the environmental movement.
- And as I say, 99.9% of the people
involved in the industry want it to be sustainable.
All of them, actually, I should say.
But the people that are involved are just earning a living
to provide for their families.
And this machine is geared to unsustainably fish tuna.
- Absolutely.
It is geared to unsustainably fish tuna.
- Now, we need some economic, uh--
- But it's not fair to levy the blame on the people
that are saying don't buy bluefin.
- I'm not leveling the blame, but I'm just saying--
- But that's what it sounds like.
- Well, okay, let me put it this way.
- I'm just saying--
- History may reflect poorly on the decisions
that you've made to this blanket approach.
- It may, but it also may reflect poorly on the decisions
that people have made to fish the hell out of the bluefin.
- And where will we end up with tuna?
Then we end up with no tuna.
- Right. - No more bluefin.
- But that's what we're trying to stop.
- [indistinct chatter]
- MALE VOICE: Seaweed.
The seaweed, the black radishes.
The red radish.
Tofu, ginger powder.
- Hi, Lisa.
If anybody tries to sell our tuna
that is actually not our tuna,
the inspector can go in, have a look, take a sample.
Uh, they can call us up and we can do a DNA check
to make sure that what they're selling is actually--
what they're saying it is is actually what it is.
- How much illegal fishing is going on, about?
- That's a good question.
- So you guys have to turn around
and be DNA testing fish.
- ICCAT, which is the group that manages the Atlantic tunas
and the Mediterranean bluefin,
have been saying that there's been a lot of illegal fishing.
80% of their records, I believe, have missing data,
and they can't tell whether it's actually legally caught
or illegally caught.
This allows us to trace it right from the point of capture
to the point of consumption, and verify it all the way
through the supply chain, which is really, really important.
- ♪
- What would be if it would be possible
to close the lifecycle or spawn tuna in captivity?
The plan in itself was preposterous.
When I was actually an illegal immigrant,
I jumped a ship here.
They locked me up, and I had to wash police cars,
and I cleaned the yards, and this and that.
And it was only a small amount of people,
and not many people here.
I'm talking '60s, now.
And, uh, never left.
And I met my wife and never left.
And brightest move I've ever made in my life.
- ♪
- Hagen Stehr has had a visionary idea
to build this remarkable facility.
There's nothing like it anywhere on Earth.
- People really thought we were mad.
I mean, it would not work, it would not work.
They said, "Why the hell do you want to do that?"
- DR. BARBARA BLOCK: By spawning the bluefin tuna
in an on-land facility,
they can control the environment the tuna's in.
They could take the eggs, hatch them,
and raise the larvae through their lifecycle.
- HAGEN STEHR: I backed it with my own money,
and we took over a little hatchery
about 100 kilometers north of Port Lincoln.
We got the best scientists from around the world,
which I thought were the best scientists.
In a military-style operation,
we picked the fish up from the sea
and put them into the hatchery, into an opening
in the hatchery on the top, in the roof, huh?
That was the first time the transfer of tuna
from the sea onto shore.
And that's when it all started.
- MILES WISE: We manipulate the fish using natural cues,
which we've taken from the wild.
We regulate the currents.
We regulate the temperature.
And then we regulate the light.
- HAGEN STEHR: So we have got the stars.
We have got the moon.
We have got the water current.
And the big thing is
the fish never leave the tank.
- MILES WISE: Every time, we monitor all the oxygen,
all the water quality, all those kind of things.
We know the cues that basically cause courtship
and things like that, and that gives us
an understanding of what we're doing with those cues.
And in the end, end up with the eggs.
From 20 fish, we can produce,
you know, in one night, millions of eggs.
- Over the next six or seven years,
the tuna you will eat in sushi shops
and eat as sashimi will be all propagated tuna.
There's just no other way around it.
I'm a tuna fisherman.
I've been tuna fishing all my life
since I came to this country, yeah?
I know that that is the future,
and that's what we have to concentrate on.
- ♪
- HAGEN STEHR: Oh, thanks, mate.
Thanks, mate.
Okay, mate.
Give me a ring maybe a little later on, huh?
[mumbling]
Aw, shit!
- MALE SPEAKER: Jeez. So it's--
- Fucking hell.
Yeah, no.
It's a bloody good day.
- MILES WISE: You know, it's huge
for the whole industry, for the whole world.
Aquaculture for me is not just about producing fish.
It's about the sustainability as well.
Um, I used to commercially fish in the old days,
and rape, pillage, and plunder.
But this is,
this is definitely the wave of the future for us.
- ♪
- [speaking Japanese]
- 90% of the large fish of the oceans--
- the bluefin tuna, the swordfish, the sharks--
are gone.
We've caught them all.
Uh, and that fundamentally changes ocean ecosystems.
Uh, we need to bring those species back.
There's still a few of 'em around.
But if we don't watch what we're doing in the oceans,
if we don't start taking fewer,
we're gonna run out of wild-caught seafood,
scientists tell us, as early as 2048.
- [speaking Japanese]
- We're gonna end up eating differently in sushi.
The question is, do we do it now,
allow these stocks to come back,
and preserve them for the future,
or do we just wipe them out?
- [speaking Japanese]
- You have to ask yourself,
what can an individual sushi lover
do to help the bluefin tuna when governments themselves
have failed in their responsibilities
to conserve the species?
I think this is a case where consumers
can actually do more than governments.
That's why we invented the Seafood Watch Program
here at the Monterey Bay Aquarium,
to enlist the help of seafood lovers around the world
to provide commercial incentives for better fishery management,
better care for our oceans.
Our Seafood Watch Guide was designed to help sushi lovers
make better choices and contribute to the conservation
of fisheries like the bluefin tuna
around the world.
There's a red list, species to avoid.
But there's also a yellow and green list.
So if you love seafood, order from the green list.
- But any restaurant that's out there serving seafood
is going to have something that is on that green list,
and that's the item that we really encourage people
to try, especially if it's your first time.
Give it a try and see if you enjoy that
as one of your new favorite sustainable seafood items.
What we need to be is knowledgeable
about what we're consuming from the sea.
The idea that we have a bounty-less ocean
that's got endless sources of protein
for all of the people on Earth is a myth.
- HIDEJI OOTSUKI: [speaking Japanese]
- ROBERT DYBALSKI: [speaking Polish]
- We can do anything if we put our minds to it.
I have absolute total confidence
in the ability of the human race.
And, um, in a lot of ways, we're on the wrong track
right now when it comes to this stuff.
But we're gonna figure it out.
- ALISTAIR DOUGLAS: I think that the world's love of sushi
will continue to grow.
China, India, and other emerging markets
are just beginning to eat sushi.
Huge markets for sure.
People may have to adjust to farmed fish
if they want to continue eating certain species.
Perhaps consumers will have the ability to do
what governments can't,
eat sustainably-caught fish, and promote those companies
and fishermen that offer such alternatives.
The choice is ultimately ours as individuals.
- ♪
♪ [unintelligible lyrics ]
♪ Scrambling for the exit
♪ The world is awaiting
♪
♪ Loud green lightning
♪ Frightening phantoms
♪ [unintelligible] runners
♪ Kill themselves
♪ The sea is sleepwalking
♪ Talking in a stupor
♪ While confuse
♪ Rust away on shelves
♪ The world is awaiting
♪
♪ Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
♪ Ooh
♪♪