narrator: on this episode of "earth focus," how cane manage, protect, and nourish our natural resources while meeting anthe growing global defor along the coast ogascarcontrol provide a blueprint for ocean sustainability and community building, while in san diego, scalability is the goal ashe resear work to build the first open-ocean fish farm in the united states. [film advance clicking]ki

man: in madagascar, we have more than 5,000 kilometers of coast, and a lot of fishermen communities. it's forbidden to fish sea cucumber with dive materials to preserve the species. buthere are many foreign investors that came here that pay the young malagasy people to fish sea cucumber with a bottle of gas, etc.

the chinese came herend, as usual, th tried to offer infrastructures like r and as a counterpart, they want to be authorized to n exploitatural resources. there is a very huge upsurge of these practices now, and it's a big threat to the natural resources, to their sustainability, and the environment in general. [man speaking native language]

y: we believe that fish stocks are declini for multiple reasons, one of them being access to international

markets. a lot of peoplin europe, a lot of people in asia eoy to eat seafood which exists here. the population isth growing inadagascar. there's lots of migration pressure as well. people from the inland come the ocean because they want access to resources on the coast here. people know that their fisheries are in trouble but they have no othion but to fish. there is not nough governance surrounding the fisheries, so, all those factors interlink, result in a decline in the resource. [man speaking native language]

[man speaking native language] [badouraly speaki

native language] [ratsimbazafy speaking native language]

[badouraly speaking native language]

[applause] da: lm.'s now in madagasc we have over 100. so, this is being really thought of as a to managing marine resourcesion because all over the world, the oceans are overfished. small-scale fishers have very, veryew rights. they have the same problems. [ratsimbazafy speakinggu native le]

[badouraly speaking native language] >> [shouts in native language] [rasolonaina shouts in native langge] [indistinct conversation]

day: so, the sea cucu project, we're working in partnership with a local collectorhat also produces juveniles. so, they sell juvenile sea cucuers to farmers. they look after them and th sell them back. [indistinct conversation] day: they lease a pena and they havseries offf ent rights and obligations. [siren] [rasolaina speaking native language] st day: farm exis in

the pens and once the juveniles taken away to be s mostlye et for asian market. grasolonaina speak native language] [film advance clicks] day: this is probably one of the most transformative so, just to givu an idea, many pple here will make about 120,000 ariari per month, and they will be making up to 400,000 now farming sea cucumber. [sire [rasolonaina speaking native language]

[indistinctonversation] razakamanarina: i hope this country will have the vision and e priorities to manage sustainably its natural resources. the vision for development tori geof this corruption and to decentralize power and resources. atmbazafy speaking native language]

[badouraly speaking native language] narrator: in madagascar, the villages of velondake have found that local marine regulation are pushing people towards a sustainable future of aquaculture, while in san diegoq california, innovation is threatening the local fishing culture.

[film advance clicks] [indistinct conversation] man: i grew up fishing. i made my first tuna trip when i was 9 years old. i'd get out of schoor early, you know, during theer suto go fishing with my dad, and then my son nick, he since he was little, too. man 2: immediately when i wor like, i knew. like, i didn'think that i was ever

knew i was gonna be a fisherman. david: rinse him a little. i never even thought about third generation. just a couple of weeks ago, i said, "well, wait a neration."'re third you know, i didn't even think about that, and my granddaughter is down here working at the market. that's fourthra geon. nick: our goal is to atch the bigeye tuna. the largest bigeye that we can catch is our goal.l. david: he's been fishing about a thousand miles out foruna, and a lot of people say, "well, why we're not ao fish withiniles?" 200 miles of the beach, our regulations in the united states. nick: it's kind of a struggle ainetimes. there's ce restrictions that, you know, really harm some fishermen. david: when we go fishing, like with this boat, we have an obserr on the boat 100% of t time, so they mark down everything we catch. we have certain size mono we have to use. we have to use a certain size hook. we're not allowed to use squid. you know, we're not allowed to use the best bait. we go through all these measus,

but these other countries don't. they're using filet mignon on the hooks, and we're using a hot dog. man: the u.s. is the largest importer of seafood in the. world import 91% of our seafood, and our primary source is china. it ces both at a large environmental cost in terms the carbon footprint, shipping fish halfway across the globe,nd it comes at a financial cost. the trade imbalance in seafood for the united states is $13 billion to $14 billion a year. nick: it seems like it would be a lot better for the americanet fishermen if we didn't import as much fish. david: in other countries, they gas the fish, or they actually, you know, dye the fish, basically, so you can't tell, you know, by the color or the

smell because it's, you know, been co2 gassed. it's a tough business for us. [film advance clicks] man: good seafood's not cheap. cheap seafood's not good, and you don't really have a lot of time. there's nothing as a 60-day, dry-ed tuna, so you got to get it, get it o the boat, and get it out there and get it served in restaurants. know your source is huge. we have no frequent flyer miles on our tuna. our fish is coming rsght off the boat in san diego. we're the stop from the dock. if it's getting flown ino frfiji or around the world, we don't know where it's coming from. there's no tra and trust. trace antrust starts at the dock from the boat. you're fishmonger, right box, and then where it goes. it's the little rules, verye have very regulations, no permits, no

licenses. they're doing everything wrong, and when the american guys are doing everytng right, yeah, it' very difficult for the american fisherman to compete with there n fish and the foreign pricing that comes into it. man: when i was 16, i learned to scuba-dive. i just love bng in the ocean, and then i saw an opportunity to become a sea urchin diver, so i learnedo process sea urchins, first in my garage, so i then started diving during the day, processing in the evening, and delivering to sushi bars. i had a couple tough years, but we lened to start buying local seafood. i started buying local lobsters and local sordfish and other local fish, and i started buying out of baja california i started buying groupers and snappers and scallops out of ieja california and divers the business. [saw whirring]

we budirectly from the boats. we know who we're buying from, and then we take re of the quality and get it to our whether it'slesaler in san francisco or whether it's a restaurt here in san diego or an individual who walks in the door. we'll bring the fish back here, and we'll grade the fish one by one, so each fish, we'll do a tail cut, a core sample. we'll grade the fish. uh, number one? thisne's a little different. the tail is a little bit off color, but the core is nice, so i grt a 2g with a two plus 4. we have a limited amount of wild fish we can take to keep the population avsustainable, and yet wea growing population in the world, so we need this seafood. there are more imports now. half the world's seafood supply is being farind. it's not happenin the u.s. it's happening in another country under probably less strenuous environmental conditions, and

meanwhile, we don't have it happening in the u.s. because of all our regulat growing seafood in water. the problem within freshwater, which is where most of it comes now, well, freshwater is going to be under serious pressure as we go farther into this century because of clite change, so we need to be looking to the ocean. we don't have a single fish farm anywhere in the united states in federal waters. at the present time, there are two applicatis for permits--one off san diego o an off long island, new york. in an area the size of lake michigan, we could produce an amount of seafood equivalent to the total global wild catch. [film advance clicks]

man: this facility was to grow juvenile white sea bass to then release back out into the wild to replenish the wild stock. but what we realized over time is, if we put a million fish out in the ocean and we get 10% of them back, that ans we got,0 10 fish back out of a million. if i take a million fish and put them ine and grow them, i can get a millionk fish bt and put them on the table. our plan here is towe take everythi've learned how to do in growing these species and demonstrate the technology, transfer the technology from the researc level out to the commercial level, and to do that, we're gonna permit a farm to produce 5,000 tons of fish about 4 miles out to sea. now, mussels and oysters, wedo

know how that. we've done that for a long time, and we fish, but we're not growing itn here. we're growing it in other pts of the world and then bringing it here. now we get back into the balance part o it again. does it rlly make sense for us to have our salmon coming from chile, being processed in china, and then flown into our market? does it make sense for us to have european sea bass grown in greece andn brought into southern californi we had 16 canneries in southern san diego and were 40,000es to people in the tuna industry alone in san diego and in nosouthern california, buall there is is the corporate offices for those tunaco anies. the processing and the western pacific now. all in we've seen the seafood industry nein southern california

quite a bit from when i was a kid, and at the same time, as i mentioned earlier, the world population has tripled, so we're bringing in less seafood, even though the demand ig up and up, so we have this opportunity to grow fish in the waters off the coast in clean, clear water that's not polluted. it's not within a bay. it doesn't interfere with water skiers or kakers or anybody else, but it'll be out in 200 ft of water in a quarter- a half-knot current going by, which means that the water stays clean and the biomass of the fish has no impact on the environment, andet we're still in very close proximity to thelo market, so the product when it's brought in is harvested and on the dock within a couple ofer hours at's taken out of the cage, which means it's very fresh and ready to go to market. [film advance clicks] david: it's a hard thing

because, as a commercial fisherman, first thing you say is, not a good thing because, you know, it's competition for us. but i try to look at, you know, the whole picture. gomes: it's very difficult to say because, as an american fisherman, you take pride in that. there's a tradition and a heritage, and you don't want tot lose th. my family's been involved in fishing here for over 130 years, so if you're gonna do aquaculture and you're gonna hire commercial fishermen that are gonna be displaced and they're going to be able to work, i'm all for it, but if you're not gonna hire commercial fishermen, then i have to be again it because you're putting those guys out of work. rudie: there are good mariculture operations, and there are bad mariculture operations, you kn. the good ones, they don't have the high densities, and they're able to

keep their densities low and control the type of food they ve so they don't have problems with disease or escape or parasites or all the problems that, let's say, the bad farms have. david: you have to be careful that it's not where they put too many fish in and they have tokn feed--yow, give them antibiotics and all these things, you know, so if it's more oa natural thing and they're, like, getting local sardines anchovies fro us to feed them, i'm kind of in support of that. kent: i's really in the environment's best interest forw us to feed theld to do it in she open ocean, and when , "we're not gonna do it here. we're gonna grow it in another country," we're jnd of saying, "we're not worried about the environmental issuess long w it anyre not here. g way you want, and we'll just bring it in," a that's not acceptable to me. no

cer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by the orange county community foundation and the farvue foundation.

you must be talkinglace. i call about chocolate. by place. how did you know? man: now, i know you ladies said that you wantedhe to see howhocolate gets made. she's just about to start grinding these cacao beans into this luscious, luscious paste. marilynn: this is one of the happiest days of my life. shei: i want pretzels. oh, look at this. marilynn: i want chocolate. you can''t have all that sug watch me. now it's time to build our new crea on. sheila: a beautiful bread pudding made with chocolate and pretzels. man: to chocolate and gluten and the brass sters. marilynn: this is the best birthday i've ever had. [laughter] marilynn: we're the brass sisters. sheila: we have over 130 years combined cooking perience. but there are still so many things we've never tried. so we're off on an adventurec