Billfish: A Challenge for Survival
Dateline: any ocean on the planet.
On a charter boat an angler is fighting to pull in a 1,000 pound blue
marlin. It’s one of the
most familiar images of saltwater fishing. And, one of the most powerful.
A huge, glistening fish leaping out of the water and lashing its rapier-like
bill through the air while an angler struggles to tire the animal and
haul it to the boat. It’s a classic struggle, a powerful image,
almost a cliche, but it’s always different, and sometimes absolutely
unique.
Cut to another charter boat and another angler, an elderly man. At the end of his line we can make out a startling vision — what appears to be an albino sailfish. The excitement aboard the boat is palpable. The captain shouting and prompting him with advice, “Careful, reel, reel, reel…This is a once in a lifetime kind of deal! This is special! Let’s do this right and get some pictures of it.”
And special it is. It was the first recorded sighting of a rare albino sailfish. And it confirmed that while humans have been fishing billfish — swordfish, sailfish, marlin, spearfish — since at least the first recorded account appeared about 50 B.C., we really know little about the lives of these top-of-the-food-chain predators. Until now.
Billfish: A Challenge For Survival will
dive into their realm and, for the first time, reveal the real life struggle
of these unusual sea creatures. Viewers will witness a struggle that
begins with millions of newly hatched fish — tiny feeders with
gapping mouths filled with teeth — devouring everything edible
within reach, including their own siblings, while floating with the currents
among sargassum seaweed. It’s a tough start. Of the millions of
eggs released by one female, as few as two might survive.
Billfish: A Challenge For Survival will show how the odds of survival get even worse as the fish grows. Rather than growing to maturity, reproducing to replace themselves, billfish today are more likely to die before ever reaching maturity, drowning at the end of a hooked line along with thousands of other fish. They’re then indiscriminately and ignobly hauled into a factory ship where, if marketable, they’re prepared for later processing into steaks or pet food, or otherwise simply dumped back into the sea as garbage. Meanwhile, some of the best breeders, mature females at their reproductive peak, end up as trophies on den walls, or a statistic in a world record book, despite the sincere efforts of recreational anglers.
In
between, these nomadic creatures swim the world’s oceans feeding,
growing and reproducing as they have since prehistoric times. Their dramatic
appearance and array of colors have been the inspiration for ancient
myths and contemporary tall fish tales. A Challenge For Survival will
reveal in dramatic visual style — including the first recorded
sightings of albino sailfish — and compelling narrative and
interviews, the life of these marine animals and the uncertain future
that lies ahead for them. With insights by scientist working on innovative
experiments and developing new tracking techniques, and startling underwater
photography from several of the world’s leading marine cinematographers, A
Challenge For Survival will trace the life cycles of billfish. It’ll
follow their struggle to rise from near the bottom of the marine food
chain, at birth, to their natural place at the pinnacle as apex predators— only
to find themselves, once again, at the bottom of the food chain when
man invades their habitat armed with modern machinery and technology.
During the course of the one-hour documentary, A Challenge For Survival will bring viewers deep into the domain of these magnificent fish. Viewers will see them feeding, using their rapier-like bills to slash their prey as they migrate across vast reaches of oceans. Viewers will witness the speed of these animals, one of the fastest in the ocean, and marvel at their agility and stealth, as well as their sparkling natural colors, best observed under water. The mysterious spawning and hatching process in tropical waters, where the rule of eat or be eaten is the unbendable and unforgiving law of survival, will be revealed in all its wonder and drama.
On the surface of these same waters viewers will share in the thrill in the classic struggle of sport fishermen against the power of a sailfish or marlin as it fights for its freedom at the end of a line. It’s a struggle of power and beauty that has been an inspiration to art and literature. The stories of Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway recount the excitement of the fight and the grace of these animals. Meanwhile, artist Guy Harvey has captured their images on canvas, on film and in video tape offering viewers of A Challenge For Survival spectacular, never before seen views of these fish in their natural environments.
Today, recreational fishermen have a new respect for the beauty of billfish and the challenges they face in their struggle to survive. Consequently, recreational anglers have adopted special techniques, and have encouraged the passage of new laws to protect the fish and ensure the preservation of the species and of the sport. So, after a struggle that exhausts hunter and hunted, the fish is released back into the water to resume its own quest for food and mate.
Also
on the surface, viewers will see a different kind of hunter. One for
whom efficiency and profit, not beauty and sport, are the driving forces.
Commercial fishing boats, as they have for centuries, ply the oceans
of the world in search of food to satisfy the demands of a hungry world.
Today, using modern technology and equipment, including long-line fishing
boats that deploy lines stretching across 60 miles or more of ocean
in one night, from which hang thousands of baited hooks, they have
raised the efficiency of their industry to the point where seafood,
particularly tuna and swordfish, is affordable and readily available
to consumers around the globe. Unfortunately, this method is not at
all selective. It hooks virtually every predator in the ocean, not
only marketable species, but non-targeted, unmarketable fish, or bycatch,
including huge numbers of marlin, sailfish, sharks, sea turtles, and
juvenile swordfish. So, as the fisheries industry becomes more efficient
at harvesting the ocean for food, the scientific community believes
that the industry not
only pushed the population of swordfish, which is fished along with Atlantic
tuna for its meat, below healthy levels, but it is also decimating the
sailfish and marlin.
In fact, in an odd play of the law of unintended consequences, the efficient long-line fishing techniques used to bring in Atlantic tuna, are bringing in so many sailfish and marlin as bycatch, that these animals are in greater danger than their deep swimming cousins, the swordfish. In just one year, millions of pounds of dead marlin were killed as bycatch by commercial long line fleets alone. A Challenge For Survival will take viewers on to the decks of these huge harvesters of the sea where they’ll witness the true cost of inexpensive food in terms of needless slaughter and the threats to the ecosystem balance.
Marine biologists will explain how this process is sending destructive ripples down the food chain. Ripples that will adversely impact dozens of other species that depend on the maintenance of the delicate balance of life in the oceans. Ultimately, they’ll explain, it could result in a virtual meltdown of vital commercial and recreational fishing industries — including large and small equipment suppliers and boat builders — and, of course, the loss of a critical source of food source in tunas and swordfish.
Fortunately, some of the same technologies that have made commercial fishing so efficient may also provide the tools that will save the swordfish and other billfish. A Challenge For Survival will show viewers how marine biologists around the world are trying to learn what they can about the lives and life cycles of billfish. Tagging fish, for example, with satellite technology may someday track where they’ve been — what depths, which oceans, what temperatures they’ve experienced — revealing some of the secrets of the swordfish and marlins, leading to conservation techniques that may ensure their future and the future of the industries — both recreational and commercial fishing — that depend on them.
Can these nomads of the ocean, who recognize no borders, be saved while preserving the legitimate commercial interests of the world’s fisheries industries, and sports fisherman?
A Challenge For Survival will look for answers from the people who daily face the challenge on the water, under it and in the laboratory — the captain of a long-line fishing boat; a Pacific islander fishing to feed his family, scientists at the National Marine Fisheries Service; marine biologists at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science; scientists and conservationists at The Billfish Foundation, the National Coalition for Marine Conservation, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas and at the International Game Fish Association, among others.
Billfish: A Challenge For Survival is a voyage into a teeming, but vulnerable world of startling beauty and ferocity, that pits man against nature. But as the viewer will discover, it’s a world in which man will lose if nature is vanquished.
©COPYRIGHT
BROADCAST QUALITY, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 1999
Photos ©Guy Harvey, Inc. 1998