narrrator: on n this episosode f "e"earth focus," how canan we mananage, protecect, and nourisr 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, scalability is thehe goal as researchers work to build the first open-ocean fish farm in the united states. [film advance clickingng]

mann: in madagascar, we have more than 5,000 kilometers of coast, and a lotot of fishern communities. it's forbidden to fish sea cucumber with dive materials to preserve the species. but there 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 here and, as ususual, they tried to offer infrastructures like roads, and as a counterpart, they want to be authorirized to exploit natural 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]

day: we believe that fish stocks are declining for multiple reasons, one of them being access to international markets. a a lot of people in europe, a lot of people in asia enjoy to eat seafood which exists here. the population is growing in madagascar. there's lots of migration pressure as well. people from the inland come to the ocean because they want access to resources on the coast here. people know that their fisheries are in trouble but they have e no other option but to fish. there is not enough 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 speaking native language] [ratsimbazafy speaking native language]

[badouraly speaking native language]

[applause] day: lmma's now in madagascar. we have over 100. so, this is being really thought of as a low-cost and efficient solutionn to managing marine resources because all over the world, the oceans are overfished. small-scale fishers have very, very few rights. they have the same problems.

[ratsimbazafy speaking native language] [badouraly speaking native language] >> [shouts in native language] [rasolonaina shouts in native language]

[indistinct cononversation] day: so, the sea cucumber project, we're working in partnership with a local collector that also produces juveniles. so, they sell juvenile sea cucumbers to farmers. they look after them and then sell them back. [indistinct conversation] day: they lease a pen and they have a series of different rights and obligations. [siren] [rasolonaina speaking native language]

day: farm exists in the pens and once the juveniles come to an adult size, they get taken away to be sold, mostly for the asian market. [rasolonaina speaking native language] [film advance clicks]] day: this is probably one of the most transformative activities for communities. so, just to give you an idea, many people here will make about 120,000 ariari per month, and they will be making up to 400,000 now farming

sea cucumber. [siren] [rasolonaina speaking native language] [indistinct conversation] razakamanarina: i hope this country will have the vision and the priorities to manage sustainably its natural resources. the vision for development to get rid of this corruption and to decentralize power and resources.

[ratsimbazafy speaking native language] [badouraly speaking native language] narrator: in madagascar, the villages of velondriake have found that local marine regulation are pushing people towards a sustainable future of aquauaculture, while in sasan d, california, innovation is outpacing federal laws and threatening the local fishing

culture. [filmlm advance e clicks] [indistinct conversation] man: i grew up fhihing. i made mymy first tutuna trip whwhen i9 years old. i i'd gget out of scl early, you know, during the

summmmers to go fishing with my dad, and t then my son n nick, e loved d fishing since he was little, too. man 2: immediately when i was born, like, i knew. like, i didndn't think t that i was ever gonna d do anythi e else. i just knew i i was gonna be a fisherm. davidid: rinse him a littlele. i never even n thought ababout thd gegeneration. just a cououple of weeks agago, i said,d, "well, wa secocond. we're third generatit" you knnow, i didn't eeven thinkk about thatat, and my granddaughr is down here working at the market. thahat's fourth generation.. nicick: our g goal is t to catce bibigeye tuna. the largegest bie that we cacan catch isis our go. davidid: he's been fifishing aba thouousand mileses out for t tud a lot ofof people sasay, "well,y do you fish a a thousand m mile" we're not aallow to ffish within 200 miles s of the beach, our regulations in the united states. nick: it's kind of a struggle sometimimes. there'e's certain 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. they're using filet mimignon on thee hooks, and we're usingg a hot dog. man: ththe u.s. is s the largest importrter of seafafood in thehe world. we import 91% % of our seafood, anand our primary y soe is china. it comes both atat a large environmental cost in terms of the carbon footprint, shipping fish halfway across the globe, and it comes atat a financial cost. the trade imbalance in seafood for the united states is $13 billion to $14 billion a year. nick: it seseems like it w woule a lot better for the american fishermen if we didn't import as much fifish.

david: in other countries, they gas the fish, or theyey actuall, you know,w, dye the fish, bassically, so you can''t telll, you k know, by ththe color orore smell because it's, you know, been co2 gassed. it's a tough busininess for us. [film advance clicks] man: good s seafood's not c che. cheap seafood's not good, and you don't really have a lot of time. there's no such h thing aa 6060-day, dry-aged tuna,a, so yu got to geget it, get t it off te boaoat, and getet it out ththerd geget it serveved in restataura. know your source is huge. we have nono frequent t flyer milen ourur tuna. our fisish is coming rright offff the boat t in san . we''rere the first stop from the dock. if f it's getting f flownn from fiji or around the world, we dodon't know where i it's cog from. therere's no trace and trust. trace anand trust startst the dock from the b boat. you're

offloadingng right to the fishmonger, righght to the box, and then where it goes. it's the forei fleet. ththey have vevery little reses, very littltle regulations, no permits, noo licenses. t they're doing everything wrong, and when the american guys are dodoing everything right, yeah, it's very difficult fofor the ameerin ffisherman t to compete e with e foreign fish and the foforeign pricing that comes into o it. man: when n i was 16, , i learnd 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. i had a couple tough years, but we learned to start buying local seafood. i started buyiying local lobsters aand local s swordfishsh and otr local l fish, and i startedd buyying out of bajaja californi. i starteted buying g groupers ad snappers and scallopops out of baja calalifornia anand diversid

the business.s. [saw whirring] we buy directly frorom the boat. we know who we're buying from, and then we take care of the quality and get it to our different customer r levels, whwhether it''s a w wholesaler n francisco or whetheher it's a restaurant herere in san didiegr an individual who o walks in the door. we'll bring the fifish bak here, and we'll grade the fish one by one, so each h fish, we'l do a taiail cut, a core samplel. we'll g grade the fish. uh, number one? thisis one's a little different. thehe tail isa little bitit off color, but the core is n nice, so i graded it a 2g2g with a two plus 4. we hava limited amamount of wild fish we ccan take to keep the population sustainable, and yet we have a growing population in the world, so we need this seafood. there are more imports now. half the

world's seafood supply is being farmed. it's not happening in the u.u.s. it's happenining in ananother couountry under probay less strtrenuous enviroronmental c conditions,s,d meananwhile, we e don't t have t happenening in thehe u.s. becace of all our regulationons. schubel: aquaculture referers to grgrowing seafafood in watater.e 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 be lookining to the oce. we don't have a single fish farm anywhwhere in the u united statn federal w waters. at the present time, thehere are two a applicas for permits--onene off san diego and one o off long isisland, 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 built to groow juvenilele white seaea bao then relelease back out i into e wild to replenish the wild stock. but what we realizized over time is, if we put a millioion fish t in the ocean and we get 10% of them bacack, that means we got 100,000 fisish back out of a million. if i takake a million fishsh and put them in a c caged grow them, i i can get a million fish back out t and put them on the table.e. our plan n here iso take everything we've learned how to do in growing these species s and demonstrate thee technology, transfer the tecchnology from the resesearch level out to the e commercial level, annd to do that, we''re

gonna pepermit a farm to produde 5,000 tons of fisish about 4 mililes out to sea. now, musselels and oysters, we know h how to do that. we'veve e that for a l long time, and we reasonably know how to grow fin fish, but we're not growing it here. we're growing it in other pararts of the woworld and ththn brbringing it t here. now w we t back into o the balancnce part t agagain. does s it really make e 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 16 canneries in southern california from m los angeles to san diego anand were 40,000 people e in the tuna industry alone in sasan 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 brbringing in n less seafofood,n though the demand is going up and up,p, so we have ththis 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'e're stl in very c close proximity to the mararket, so the product when 's brought in is harvested and d on the dock within a couple of

hours a after it's taken out of the cage, which means it's very fresh and ready to go to market. [film m advance clicks] david: it's a hard thing because, as a commercial fisherman, first thing you say is, not a good thing because, yoyou know, itit's ccompetitionr us. but i try to look at, you know, the whohole picturure. gomes: i it's very dififficultlo say because, as an american fisherman, you tatake pride i in that. there's s a tradition anda heritage, and you don't wanant o lose that. my family's been involved in fishing here for over 130 0 years, so o if yo'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 i it because e you'rere putttting those e gu out o of w.

rudieiethere are gogood mariculture operations, and thehere are bad maricultuture operatitions, you u know. thehed onones, they don't t have the hh densitieses, and they're able o kekeep their densities s low and control ththe type of f food thy hahave so they don't have prpros witth disease e or escape e or parasites o or all the problems that, let's s say, the bad farms have. david:d: you haveve to be cacarl that it's not where they put too many fish in and they have to feed----you know,w, give thehem anttibiotics a and all these thingsgs, you know, so if f it's more of a natural thing and they're, likeke, gettingg local s sardines oror anchoviesm us to feed them, i'm kind of in support of ththat. kent: it's really in the environment's best interest for us to feed the world to dodo itn thehe open oceaean, and whehen , "we're not gonna do it hehere. we're gonna grow it in another country," we're just kind of saying, "we're not worried about the environmental issues as long

as they'y're not here. groww ity way you want, and we'll just bring it in," and t that's not acceptable to me. announcer: "earth focus" is made possible in part by the orange county community foundation and the farvue foundation.

[captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from pacifica this i is democray now. >> it the investigator the e source was. it was not the white house, it was not saudi arabia. amy: the public dispute between the world's richest man, amazon ceo jeff bezos, and the national enquirer isi