* Peter Switzer * From: The Australian * February 26, 2010 12:00AM
Hagen Stehr, who is reluctant ot be called an entrpreneur, attributs his stubborn streak to his German origins. Picture: Kelly Barnes Source: The Australian
HAGEN Stehr, founder of aquaculture business Clean Seas Tuna, is sometimes called a fishing magnate, an entrepreneur, an inventor, but he describes himself as just a fisherman.
This just doesn't square up with the fact that Time magazine named his invention as the second best of the year in 2009, behind NASA's Ares 1 rocket.
The Hagen Stehr story out of Port Lincoln in South Australia is the stuff that legends are made of: a tale of passion, self-belief and intimate knowledge of his industry.
"Some people call me an entrepreneur, that's just nonsense; I'm just a fisherman," he insists.
"I've been in this business for 49 years and I like to think that I know a little bit.
"I'm from one of the major tuna families out of Port Lincoln and I think we knew our business certainly a lot more than scientists do and many people said to us it can't be done, but I've got a stubborn German background."
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Stehr's adventures included a stint in the French Foreign Legion as well as marine experience with the German merchant navy, before he jumped ship in Port Lincoln and married Anna, now his wife of 49 years. And that's how he wound up in tuna fishing.
Port Lincoln is the home of the southern bluefin tuna and has spawned many legendary figures.
There was Dean Lukin, the fishing trawler gold medallist weightlifter from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. Then there was Tony Santic, who owned Makybe Diva, the horse that won three Melbourne Cups on the trot. It had never been done before.
A scientific first
What Stehr and his Clean Seas Tuna are doing, in propagating the bluefin tuna in a land-based tank, has also never been done before.
And it's working for the company, which listed in late 2005 and now has 160 employees, a turnover of about $30 million. Although the company made a loss of $12.56 million for 2009, Stehr says this enabled the timely clearance of inventory and helped Clean Seas' entry into new markets.
In a world where quotas are threatening the tuna fishing business, this home-grown invention could effectively put tuna on tap.
"We've kept tuna over the last 11 years now in our sea pen off Port Lincoln and the science community around the world thought it was an impossibility," he explains.
"They said you could not keep tuna longer than maybe six months or eight months, but we proved you could.
"We've had a number of firsts in our organisation over the last few years: we proved that you can keep tuna for 10 years and we fought against white pointers, shark attacks, seals, disease problems, bad weather conditions and we kept all the fish through."
The aquaculture business complements the wild fishing business but represents a passionate entrepreneurial response to the threats of quotas and low stocks of a product whose potential is only now being realised.
Holding the line
So how did a fisherman -- or let's ignore Stehr's self-deprecation and call him an entrepreneur -- confound the scientists?
"We just kept on going and I was in the water every day and it took a lot of money because to protect tuna is very, very hard," he says.
"We had shark attacks and tuna disappearing, but we learnt fish husbandry practices over a period of time and we became better and better at it.
"I got a team of people together, working for two years, who sort of helped us out."
When it comes to entrepreneurs, they often see opportunity where others can see only threats, and this is a part of the Stehr story.
"Port Lincoln was virtually broke in the early 1990s and right now it's fairly hard going, but between the 60s and the 90s we caught that much tuna that thestocks were becoming run down," he explains.
"That's when I came up with ideas from my frequent travels overseas and I said, `Hey, maybe tuna farming, maybe tuna propagation is the way to go'."
The first successful tuna farm in the world was established at Stehr's facility in Port Lincoln.
The leading fishing families of the town came together and, with their shared cash, worked out what could be done.
"I thought it would never work: tuna farming, catching fish from 12kg to 15kg to 20kg and then growing them for six to eight, and then selling them to the Japanese or whoever," he recalls.
Stehr's ultimate goal was to close the life cycle of tuna in captivity, speeding up the growth process.
It has culminated in a land-based facility that has the technology to replicate the conditions of the tuna schools as they travel around the coastline of South Australia and then up the West Australian coast.
"We found [the farming] worked well and the next step was to close the life cycle of tuna."
Closing the cycle
The invention process involved trial and error and Stehr says they nearly went broke with some big losses -- as well as wins -- along the way. However, like many entrepreneurs hell-bent on success, he looked for partners with expertise to give him a competitive advantage.
"We developed our technology with our Japanese partners, the Kinki University, which has been doing it now for 35 years but [hadn't done it] offshore," he says.
There was also local government help. "The first 4 1/2 years we got $4.5m from government bodies," Stehr points out.
"We worked closely together with the CSI Fisheries Research and Development Corporation in Canberra, [which tried] to help us in regards to science and everything else like that.
"We've got together a group of the best scientists in the world and the government helps us a little bit."
Assistance also came from South Australia's Department of Trade and Economic Development.
Stehr says the Americans tried to breed tuna but failed, while the Japanese wouldn't try at all. The Europeans spent about E70m and couldn't do it.
"I went from one factory to another factory from around the world and we brought a team of people together who built a complex in Port Lincoln right on the water," he explains.
"Then [we] thought, how are we going to get big tuna from this ocean into our onshore facility?"
Eventually he called on some of his ex-Vietnam chopper pilot buddies to help. One of them is so good in his chopper that one of his jobs in the US is to place heads on statues.
"I said, `Listen guys, we've got to bring live creatures on shore and we have to lift the tuna out from two, three miles out at sea and bring them ashore'," he recalls.
"Of course, we've done something to the tuna, it's intellectual property which I can't tell you; but we lifted them out like an army-style operation."
The brilliance of Stehr's technology was that it confounded the scientists. They said you would have to keep them for at least three years to make them sufficiently relaxed to spawn, but it was achieved in three months.
The fish are taken out to sea, about 320km south of Port Lincoln, and then are taken west outside the continental shelf into streams that run west and east. They round the coast at the bottom end of Australia and then turn the fish north and go slowly from latitude to latitude north past Fremantle, Geraldton and Broome, up to the spawning area.
After that they bring the fish back down the West Australian coast. They then turn the fish east and bring them all the way back to Port Lincoln. The biggest shock, however, is the fish never leave the tank the whole time. They replicate the journey of the fish onshore, mimicking different temperatures and seas all in their facility.
The scientific puzzle was finally solved last year and this is the first year of the breeding program. Clean Seas plans to produce 25,000 fish this year and 10,000 tonnes by 2015.
Like most founders, Stehr managed everything until the company was listed and is now a director.
He is still very hands-on with the technology development.
Never say die
The company started 10 years ago and the operation went public after funding requirements became crucial. Stehr says it is a necessary evil but he gets frustrated by the paperwork and corporate governance that goes with being a public company.
Asked what made it all happen, he points to his disdain for the word "can't".
"A lot of people called me an arrogant bastard but I always thought that it was a full-blown conclusion and that it was only a matter of time," he says. "The rest of the world said it can't be done, but we just kept on going.
"You've got to have deep pockets, you've got to be little bit sick in the head, strong in the back and you have to have an absolute belief in yourself and really, you can't say can't; the word can't should be eradicated [from] the English dictionary."
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