In the 1950s and ’60s Cabo Blanco, Peru was a mecca for fishing, both for food and for sport. There, the collision of two ocean currents created the perfect conditions for a thriving ecosystem of sardines, sharks, squid, and the most prized gamefish in the sea — billfish.
In fact, the billfish — a group including marlin, swordfish, and sailfish — were so plentiful that the stretch of open ocean just a few miles off-shore from Cabo Blanco came to be known as “Marlin Boulevard.” Fishermen traveled there from all over the world to try their hands at reeling in a “grander,” a billfish weighing greater than 1,000 pounds. One day in August 1953, Texas oilman Alfred C. Glassell, Jr. caught a record-breaking marlin that weighed over 1,500 pounds. Glassell’s record still stands today: the largest bony fish ever caught by rod and reel.
Today, however, nearly all of the granders are gone from Cabo Blanco. Over-fishing has played a large role in the depletion of billfish populations in the waters off Peru. Now, the government there is taking steps to protect these fish.
On April 2, 2008, Peruvian president Allan Garcia signed a Presidential Order that, effective immediately, will ban the commercial harvest of billfish in the country’s waters. Developed in cooperation with The Billfish Foundation, a Florida-based non-profit dedicated to conserving billfish populations, the plan also includes other conservation measures and promotes a sustainable, catch-and-release sportsfishing industry in Peru.
NATURE’s “Superfish” explores the world of the elusive billfish. It follows marine biologist and award-winning filmmaker Rick Rosenthal on his quest to swim with and film these amazing creatures. Learn more about Cabo Blanco and its marine life at NATURE Online. Watch the premiere of “Superfish” Sunday, May 4 at 8pm on Thirteen.
More Nature documenteries like Superfish please! What a welcome change to have the documentarian, marine biologist and photographer Rick Rosenthal, tell the story and take us along to worlds under the sea, which we can only imagine. Enough of the predictable, oh-so-dry-and-serious PBS narrators! To be honest, I rarely watch Nature. But I can’t wait to watch this ‘old man and the sea’ and his superfish again.
Superfish was awesome. A no-nonsense program, no storms on the horizon for melodrama!! Rosenthal is great, wondeful, breath taking photography. A definitive method of doing documentaries. Thank you.
Amazing program. Well done Rick Rosenthal! The oceans would have a missing peice without the magnificent Billfish.