narratoror: on this s episode of "earth f focus," howow can we mannage, protetect, and nonourir natural resources while meeting the growing global demand for food? a model of local control along the coast of madagascar provide a blueprint for ocean sustainability and community building, while in san diego, scaalability is the goalal as researchers work to build the first open-ocean fish farm in the united states.. [film adadvance clicking]

[man speaking foreign language]

[applause]

>> [shouts in foreign language] rasolonaina: [shouts in foreign language]

[[indistinct conversatation] [indistinct conversation] [siren]

[film advance clicks]

[siren] [indistinct conversation]

narrator: in madagascar, the villages of velondriake have found that local marine regulations are pushing people towards a sustainable future of aquaaculture, while in s san di, california, innovation is outpacing federal laws and threatening the local fishing

culture. [film adadvance cllicks] [indistinct conversation] dadavid: i grerew up fishihing.e mymy first tununa trip whehen i9 years old. i'd get out of school earrly, you know, during the

summerers to go fishing with my dad, , and then my y son nick, e loved fifishing sinince he wasas little, too. nick: immediately when i was born, like, i knew. like, i diddn't thinknk th i i was eve gonna do anynything else. i just knew w i was gonna be a a fishe. davidid: rinse hihim a littlelei never even thought abouout third generatation. just a couplele of weeeeks ago, i said, "well, waia sesecond. we're ththird generar" you know, i didn'n't evenen thik about that, and my graranddaughr is down n here workiking at the market. that's fourt generaration. nick: our goal is s to catch t e bigeyye tuna. the largegest bie that we can ccatch is our goal. david: he'e's beenen fishing a a ththousand mimiles out f for tud a a lot of people say, " "well,y do you fisish a thousand miles?" we're not t allow to f fish witn 200 0 miles of t the beach, , or regulations in the united states. nick: it's kind of a struggle sometimes. there's certainin restrictions that, you know, really harm some fishermen. david: when we go fishing, like with this boat, we have an observer on the boat 100% of the 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 measures, but these other countries don't. theey're using filet mignon on the hook, , and we're ususing at dog. schuhubel: the u u.s. is thehe t imimporter of f seafood inin the world. we e import 91% of our seafood, and our primary source is china. it ceses both at a a large environmental cost in terms of the carbon footprint, shipping fish halfway across the globe, and it comes at a financial cost. the trade imbalance in seafood for the united states is $13 billion to $14 billion a year. nick: i it seems like it wouldle a l lot better for the american fishermen if we didn'n't impopos much fish.

david: in other countries, they gas the fish, or theyey actuall, you know,w, dye the fish, basicallyly, so you c can't tel, yyou know, b by the cololor or e smell because it's, you know, been co2 gassed. it's a tough business fofor us. [fifilm advance clicks] gomes: : good seafofood'ss not . cheap seafood's not good, and you don't really have a lot of time. there's no such h thing aa 60-day, , dry-aged tuna, so yoyu got t to get it, , get it offffe boat,t, and get i it out thererd get it sererved in resestaurant. know your source is huge. we have no f frequent f flyer milin our tuna.a. our fish h is coming rigght off t the boat in s san . we're the first stop from the dock. i if it's getting flown in from fiji or around the world, we don'n't know where it't's cog from. there's no trace and trurust. trace and trust t start the dock frorom the boat. you're

offloading rightht to the fishmonger, right t to the box, and then where it goes. it's the foreign fleetthey have e very little rules, , very littlee regulations, no permits, no licenses. thhey're doing everything wrong, and when the american guys s are doing everything right, yeah, it's very difficult for r the americn fishsherman to c compete witithe foreign fish and the foreieign pricing g that comes into it. rudie: when n i was 16, , i lead to scuba-dive. i just love being in the ocean, and then i saw an opportunity to become a sea urchin diver, so i learned to process sea urchins, first in my garage, so i then started diving during the day, processing in the evening, and delivering to sushi bars, so i had a couple tough years, but we learned to start buying local seafood. i started buying lococal lobststes and locacal swordfisish and othr locacal fish, , and i started buying out t of baja a californ. i starteded buying g groupersrsd snappepers and scallops out t of bajaja californinia and diveverd

thee business. [saw whirring] we buy directly from boatats. we know who we're buying from, and then we take care of the quality and get it to our different customer levels, w whether it'sa wholesaleler in san f franciscor whether it'ss a restaururant hee in san diego or an individual who walks in the door. we'll bringng the fish back here, and we'll grade the fish one by one, soso each fish, we'll do a t tal cut, , a core sample. we'e'll ge the fifish. uh, number onene? this one's aa little dififferent. ththe tail a littlele bit off c color, but te corere is nice, soso i graded ia 2g w with a two o plus 4. we haa limited amountnt of wild f fishe can take to keep p the populatin sustainable, and yet we have a growing population in the world, so we need this seafood. there are more imports now. hahalf the

world's seafood supply is being farmed. it's not happening in the u.s.s. it's s happening g in ananother coununtry under r proy under leless strenuouous enenvironmentatal conditioions,d meanwnwhile, , we don't have e t happening g in the u.s.s. becauf all our regululations. schubel: aquaculture refers to growing seafoodod 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 climate change, so we need to bee looking to the oce. we don't have a single fish farm ananywhere in the united statesn fedderal waters. at the preseset time, there are two apapplicatis for permits--one offff san diego aand one 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] kent: this facility was built to grow juvenile e white sea a baso then release back out intnto the wild to replenish the wild stock, but what we rerealized over time is, if we put a millllion fish t in the o ocean and we get 10% of them back, that means we gott 100,000 fish back k out of a millilion. if i take a millllion fish and put ththem in a cage ad grow them, i can n get a million fish back out and put them on the tablble. our pplan heree iso take everything we've learned how to do in growing these species and demomonstrate the technology, transfer the technolology from the researchch level ouout to the commerciall level, and to o do that, we're

gonna permitit a farm to produce 5,000 tons of fifish about 4 mis out to sea. now, mussels and oyoysters, we know how to do that. wewe've doe that for a lolong time, and we reasonably know how to grow fin fish, but we're not growing it here. we're growing it in other partsts of the woworld and ththn bringingng it here. . now we get bacack to the b balance parart t again. does it really 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 and then brought into southern california? we had 116 canneries in southern california from los angeles too san n diego and were 40,000 people in the tutuna industry alone in san diego and in southern california, but now all there is is the corporate offices for those tuna

companies. the processing and the ships, the boats are all in the western pacific now. we've seen the seafood industry in southern california wane 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 is going 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 kayakers or anybody else, but it'll be out in 200 feet of water in a quarter- to 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, and yet we're still in verery close proximity toto e markrket, so thehe product whens brougught in is harvested and on the dock within a couple of

hours a after it's taken out of the cage, which means it's very fresh andnd ready to go to mara. [fiilm advance clicks] david: it's a hard thing because, as a commercial fisherman, first thing you say is, not a g good thing g becaus, youou know, it't's compmpetitior us, but i try to look at, you know, ththe whole p picture. gomes: it's veryry difficultlt o say because, as an american fishsherman, yoyou take prpriden ththat. therere's a tradititiona heritage, and you don't want to lose that. my family's been involved in fishing here for over 130 years, soso 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 against it because youou're putting ththose guys o out of w

rudie:e: there are gooood mariculture operations, and there arare bad mariculture operatitions, you know. the good ones, they donon't have the hihh densisities, and they're able to keep theieir densitieies low and conontrol the e type of f food y havve so they don't have prprobs with diseaease or escacape or pararasites or all the prorobles that, let't's say,y, the bad fas have.e. david: you have to be carefull that it's not where they put too many fish in and they have to feed--y-you know, g give them antibiotics and alall these things, you know, so ifif it's more of a naturural thing a and ththey'rre, like, t they'rere gg localal sardines s or anchovivim us to feed them, i'm kind of in supppport of that. kent: it's really in the environment's best interest for us to feeeed the world to do itn thee open oceaean, and whehen w, "we're not gononna do it here. we're gonna grow it in another country," we're just kind d of saying, "we're not worried about the environmental issues as long

as they're not her grow it a any way you want, and we'll just bring it in," anand that's not acceptable to me. announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by the orange county community foundation anda

(upbeat haitian n music) - in haiti, music is the biggest tool to make political statements. (m(music) - i'm a tough girl. i can express myself in rap. i wanna make women feel proud, strong. (music) - my photography is one way to address tolerance and d acceptance. if you don't talk, you don't exist. (neon buzzing)