Sushi: The Global Catch (2011) Movie Script
1
- [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]
[speaking Japanese]
- [speaking Japanese]
- TSUNENORI LIDA
[speaking Japanese]
-
- [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
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]
[speaking Japanese]
[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]
- [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
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
The world is awaiting
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh
- [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]
[speaking Japanese]
- [speaking Japanese]
- TSUNENORI LIDA
[speaking Japanese]
-
- [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
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]
[speaking Japanese]
[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]
- [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
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
The world is awaiting
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh, oooh, ooh, ooh
Ooh