Tuna Baron Hagen Stehr

The preferred fish of the Japanese is sashimi.

Hagen Stehr is an interesting man. He served with the French Foreign Legion and was also in the German merchant navy. He jumpd ship in Port Lincoln and married Anna, his wife of 49 years with only a pair of blue jeans and one pound in his pocket. He joined a group of tough migrant fisherman and went hunting for the bluefin tuna. Gone are the days when boats would leave Port Lincoln harbour without navigation lights to get the jump on the opposition. They carried rifles on board and often shot at other boats in a bid to claim the prized catch. They were catching so much tuna that Stehr knew it couldn't go on forever so he had a dream - tuna propogation. The Americans tried to do it but couldn't, the Japanese wouldn't even try and the Europeans spent about 70 million euros and failed. Now his Clean Seas Tuna are propogating bluefin tuna in a land-based tank and he has established the first successful tuna farm in the world.

He was home in Adelaide when he got a telephone call from his chief scientist with the news that their $60 million gamble had finally paid off. "Big fella, you'd better come back" Morton Deichmann said to 6 foot 1 inch Hagen. With tears in his eyes, he jumped in his old Landcruiser and drove like a man possessed to Port Lincoln, over 500 kms away, to see the fertilized eggs with his own eyes.

"They said you couldn't keep tuna for longer than six or eight months, but we proved we can keep them for 10 years. But we had a lot of problems - white pointers, seals, disease and bad weather but all the fish came through. We now have technology to replicate the conditions of the tuna schools as they travel around the coastline. It sounded impossible and they said it couldn't be done but we did it" he said.

He needed help to lift big tuna from the ocean into the onshore facility so he called on his ex-Vietnam chopper pilot buddies to help. It wasn't an easy job but they did it, they lifted tuna from three miles out to sea and brought them to shore. The next step was to get them to spawn. The scientists said you would have to keep them for at least three years to make them sufficiently relaxed to spawn but they did it in three months.

And here's the amazing thing which sounds unbelievable - they replicated the tuna's journey in the wild. These amazing fish swim 320 kms south of Port Lincoln, then head west outside the continental shelf into streams that run west to east. They round the coast at the bottom end of Australia and then head slowly north past Fremantle, Geraldton and Broome and up to the spawning area. After that they come back down the West Australian coast and all the way back to Port Lincoln. And the fish never leave the tank the whole time, they have replicated the different temperatures and seas which all takes place in the tank. Unbelievable.

He admits to having a stubborn German streak and knows that people called him an arrogant bastard at the beginning but he knew it was just a matter of time. Like most founders of mighty industries, Stehr managed everything himself until the company was listed and is now a director. "You have to have deep pockets" he said.

Clean Seas plans to produce 25000 fish this year and 10,000 tonnes by 2015.