After pioneering tuna fishing in Port Lincoln more than 70 years ago, the Tacoma has just delivered water to a parched sheep farm on an island off the Eyre Peninsula. Skip to main content.

By the late 1980s, almost all of Port Lincoln’s tuna fishers were in receivership. There were dozens of foreign and domestic operators racing to catch every fish they could find.

He eventually moved his tuna fishing ambitions from Ulladulla in NSW to Port Lincoln as a 21-year-old in 1959. He remembers when the first Croatians arrived there a few years later.

Port Lincoln tuna titan Hagen Stehr made his fortune on the sea. ... Growing up on boats and dinghies, don’t ever turn your back on the sea. “I still worry because you just don’t know.