Wicked Tuna: Sustainability: Bluefin Bait

Woman 1:  Oh no.

Woman 2:  Greg is coming.

Man 1:  What has been most detrimental to this fishery was herring draggers. They’re called pear trawlers. They scoop up tons and tons of herring. The herring is the natural feed for the tuna fish. So if there’s no feed the tuna fish don’t come. If the tuna fish don’t come, we can’t catch them, we can’t survive.

Man 2:  When these fish are out roaming to eat they go to the restaurant and if there’s no food they go to the next restaurant.

Man 3:  Fish have two things on their mind. That’s sex and food. If there’s no food they’re going to keep moving on.

Woman 3:  They wiped out the bait that the tuna fish eat.

Woman 4:  Tuna fish are not going to come here if there’s nothing for them to eat.

Man 3:  So the fish would come here as they do every year. If there’s no food they move on and most of them wind up in Canada where there’s plenty of herring.

Man 2:  Over the years as the bait situation got worse and worse and worse…