Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast features the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
363 James Arthur Smith - Mercury-free, microplastic-free, and Omega-3 rich: the future of seafood
A check in conversation with James Arthur Smith, founder of Seatopia, about their data-driven focus on nutrient density (plus mercury/microplastics testing) resonates more strongly than abstract “sustainability” marketing strategy and it ultimately driving real ecosystem restoration. We explore how Seatopia defines regenerative aquaculture in a multi- trophic system—integrating finfish alongside shellfish and seaweeds, how they measure and quantify our impact at every step and how they partner with artisan milling companies developing species-appropriate feeds that eliminate fishmeal, soy, corn, and canola oil—pivoting toward insect protein and algae-based oils.
More about this episode on https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/james-arthur-smith-2.
==========================
In Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast show we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems while making an appropriate and fair return. Hosted by Koen van Seijen.
==========================
👩🏻💻 VISIT OUR WEBSITE https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/
📚 JOIN OUR VIDEO COURSE: https://investinginregenerativeagriculture.com/course/
💪🏻 SUPPORT OUR WORK https://investinginregenag.gumroad.com
- Share it
- Give a 5-star rating
- Buy us a coffee… or a meal! www.Ko-fi.com/regenerativeagriculture
==========================
🎙 LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST AND SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL ON
🎧 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/4b7mzk8c9VNM7HX5P3pM4u
🎧 Apple Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/investing-in-regenerative-agriculture-and-food/id1268558109
📽️ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@investinginregenerativeagr8568
==========================
FOLLOW US!
🔗 Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/company/investing-in-regenerative-agriculture
📸 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/invest_regenag/
==========================
The above references an opinion and is for information and educational purposes only. It is not intended to be investment advice. Seek a duly licensed professional for investment advice.
Thoughts? Ideas? Questions? Send us a message!
https://groundswellag.com/2025-speakers/
Find out more about our Generation-Re investment syndicate:
https://gen-re.land/
Thank you to our Field Builders Circle for supporting us. Learn more here
Feedback, ideas, suggestions?
- Twitter @KoenvanSeijen
- Get in touch www.investinginregenerativeagriculture.com
Join our newsletter on www.eepurl.com/cxU33P!
Support the show
Thanks for listening and sharing!
We just say certified clean seafood, mercury levels that are safe for pregnant women to eat, zero detectable microplastics, sushi grade, Everybody's interested. But to explain what is regenerative aquaculture takes oftentimes a whole podcast.
Speaker 2:Take a deep breath and another one. Every second breath we take comes from the oceans and over half of the fish we eat is farmed. That's why we dedicate a series to explore the potential of regeneration. Underwater Oceans and other water bodies cover most of our planet and have stored most of the excess heat so far and, at the same time, have some of the best opportunities to produce healthy food, mostly protein, store carbon, create materials, fuel, biostimulants and much, much more Plus, create a lot of jobs in coastal communities. We have largely ignored the water-based farming, aquaculture industry in this podcast until now. In these conversations, we explore why aquaculture is so important for the future of our planet. If we get this wrong, we have a serious problem. What are the risks and challenges with feed, the reliance on soy pests yes, there are pests underwater Antibiotics, microplastics, etc. What does it mean when you apply regenerative principles to aquaculture? What can soil-based agriculture learn from aquaculture and vice versa? And what should investors really know about water-based farming and what the potential is of regenerative aquaculture? A series of interviews with the people putting money to work, entrepreneurs and investors in this crucial and often overlooked sector. We're grateful for the support of the Nest family office in order to make this series. The Nest is a family office dedicated to building a more resilient food system through supporting natural solutions and innovative technologies that change the way we produce food. You can find out more on TheNestFO, that is TheNestFOcom, or in the links below.
Speaker 2:I want to welcome you back on the show, james. I can't believe it's two and a half years. This is crazy and I'm going to make so many of these jokes this time, but it's time for another deep dive. It's time for another deep dive in Seatopia, a pioneering region, aquaculture brand and direct-to-consumer. When we talked last time, a lot of things were starting and it could be, and, of course, we're in development and I think you've been going from strength to strength, so it's absolutely a great time. We're now talking in April 25, and last time was in August or end of summer, 2022, in the life of a startup. That's a lifetime ago. So I'm very happy to have you back on the show. Welcome back, james.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Really great to be here. It's so nice to reflect on how much has happened. You know, like in startup plan it's always just like from one sprint to the next, but to look back at what hasn't been accomplished in two years is actually pretty cool. So yeah, thank you. I think it's really stoked to be here again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's a lot to unpack and to dive into. I listened to our previous conversation the last days or yesterday actually, actually and it was just fascinating to see the connections there with the agriculture, space and how similarities, but also because it's so perishable, it was very tricky, but just to to refresh our minds. If somebody hasn't listened to the one, don't go now, do it after, just to see the difficulty, the massive gaps and the massive advantage, but just to refresh the minds of people. What is Seatopia now? As we talk in April? I think it's still similar, just a lot bigger. But what is Seatopia now, in 2025? And when you have to I don't know introduce yourself at a dinner party, somebody on the left or the right ask how about James? What do you do actually for a living? Cool.
Speaker 1:Kind of describe it as certified clean seafood delivered direct to your door. And we use lab tested certified clean seafood sort of as the surgeon horse to get regenerative aquaculture into people's free podcast. But if we just say certified clean seafood, like like mercury levels that are safe for pregnant women to eat, zero detectable microplastics, sushi grade, everybody's interested.
Speaker 2:You know, everybody speaks like healthy, yeah, yeah yeah, focusing on nutrient density and cleanliness is how we cut through a lot of the noise yeah, which is such an interesting point when we get to the agriculture, or let's say soil-based farming as well, where we sort of come to the same conclusion, like we can talk all soil, we can talk animal welfare, we can talk plant welfare, et cetera, et cetera. But if you have to share or get somebody's interest in a sentence or two, that's probably the sentence or two you want to use. And how did you get to that? Because I don't think it was that, let's say concise and that clear, and that sharp, not sharp, like, but sharp as in cutting through and like get to straight to the core a few years ago, like, how did you not stumble upon? But how did you refine that one of like lab tested, clean, tasty seafood in your freezer?
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of it was trial and error, and then a huge light bulb went off the second time that my wife got pregnant she was like I'm not going to eat anything except for these ones that you've been telling me about that are certified mercury safe and no detectable microplastics and quantifiable the highest levels of omegas, and that was just interesting.
Speaker 1:Like she's like well, all of these fish are great, you know, all the seafood is great. She's like yeah, but you have the data, like I only want the best ones, the very best, and this lab data empowers highly motivated consumers in a way that just didn't. With anything talking about sustainability, regenerative environment, right, but when you get down to the level of, here's a pregnant mom who wants the very best for her baby and she's willing to pay for it, and she's willing to pay for it. And then that gave us enough confidence to say let's invest more in testing, let's really quantify the most comprehensive nutritional analysis of any seafood brand and let the consumers vote with their dollars, vote with their forks or the best brands, because invariably, what farms need is an incentive to improve farming practices and feed models. Right, as the feed improves and the feed models and the nutrient density improves and the practices improve.
Speaker 2:We see some of these analytics showing up and this was has really driven a lot of what's working for us with c-topia and that's so fascinating because you were doing lab testing on every batch already back in the day and were you just not like, was it more for internal use and what was the decision? Or you thought maybe consumers weren't interested in the lab tests. Like what was the decision to? To not share that yet or not share it.
Speaker 2:So so loudly, let's say on the front of the package or on the front of the sentence, because I remember, as I did my prep, because I listened to the podcast we did before, that you were already lab testing, you were testing and but I don't remember you speaking about it so so loudly, in a good way, like what changed that? And actually, consumers motivated consumers or customers or whatever you want to call them, or eaters, they want to know this. Like what motivates you to put it on the front of the package of your message, instead of saying somewhere in the back, oh, this is lab tested and actually, yeah, be pretty loud about it uh, well we've.
Speaker 1:we were investing a lot in this stuff and then figuring out how to communicate it Very expensive.
Speaker 1:Like the microplastics tests are like a thousand bucks a piece. You know, depending on how many farms you got and how many products, how many lots, it gets very expensive. So it really was a long debate on like what to, what things need to be tested for with every lot, what can be tested annually, what can be tested on a skew basis and developing our standards right, really getting clear on what drives safety through the lens of the consumer and we put that most like high risk, high profile, most demanding customer, like, as our brand archetype is like a pregnant mom, right, what does she care about and what's going to drive her decisions? And through that lens we said we have to be doing microplastics testing. Doesn't matter how expensive it is, we're going to figure out how to do it. Do we do it with every lot? Do we do it with every lot? Do we do it annually?
Speaker 1:And we just continue to figure out, like if the environment's not changing, if the feed's not changing, what is the rate at which we can be? We can, our interval in which we can be testing for something like microplastics. So the more expensive ones. We can't logistically test with every single item, but we're doing it, these intervals that make sense, that are giving consumers really good information, and it also gives good information back to the farms. We've seen like these really cool dialogues happening with farms as we stare at the static and a lot of farms just aren't testing except for maybe they never have that, yeah, they don't even know what's in the feed.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes you know you have a little bit of background in aquaculture with your experience with aquaspark right, like there is a huge disconnect between seed mills and farms and the end product and consumers. Right, and oftentimes there's even mistrust between the farms and the feed mills and feed mills. You know we're they're dealing with huge commodity products, you know, at massive volumes, so if there's a fluctuation in the price of anchovetas, they're going to switch to something else, you know. So all of these commodities are inconsistent or they're not consistently available year round to what the farmer is expecting and there's not a lot of transparency. So, anyways, the data that we get gives farms oftentimes more information than they even had. So we just wanted to put it front and center and let this data help inform us, help inform our decisions, help for consumer decisions and also guides the farms. So and then, if I looked at you know we're always looking at the regenerative agriculture, land-based, soil-based movement and seeing what's working and there was, you know, some brands that I really look up to are finding some of the same messaging right around nutrient density is what consumers really demand.
Speaker 1:So the venison farm here in Hawaii is really interesting with Maui Nui. Venice is really talking about nutrient density and testing. It's a lot easier because they only have one product, one skew, but that messaging really resonated with you know, how do we demonstrate that some of these farms actually have invested so much in microalgae and insect protein and all these things? How do we show that this is true superfoods? Right, this is not just canola oil fed fish. Right, this is truly like nutrient dense, aligned with the species appropriate diet that these fish once upon a time you know were part of our ancestral evolution and now we can get that again. We can. Seafood can live up to those expectations of being, you know, the mediterranean diet, the superfood, the original super nutrient, if we think about how we've evolved and you know our connection evolutionary all the way back to microalgae.
Speaker 2:You know single cell organisms when we came out of the sea, yes, yes, and because that I think a big piece we covered last time. But I would love to just reiterate like, not all fish, obviously, is rated equal. We have this romantic view of as long as it's line caught in somewhere far away, it's fine, or it's better than anything else. And basically what you're saying let's get the data in, let's see omega-3, 6. Let's see detectable microplastics, let's see mercury, and then you have a good. I think that's what you're, I think that's what I'm hearing. Then you have a good overview. Okay, if you have those three, then you can see broadly. And if you, of course, measure over time, you know the farm, you can see broadly. Or you know the fishery where it came from, you can have a good discussion. Okay, this is good food for you, or mediocre, or really bad.
Speaker 1:Yeah there's a really cool another brand that we really drew inspiration from is this ice cream brand called halo top. I don't know if they do anything in region, but I just was really inspired by their branding and marketing. This is an ice cream pint, right, and you see, in the ice cream shelf, the thing that you would generally expect on the front label of ice cream is the flavor. Is it strawberry, is it vanilla? Whatever? The largest thing on their front label was they had a couple variations. One was calories, another one was protein, another one was sugars. Right, and this is the huge first thing that you call out, not the flavor. The primary thing their name was, wow related to how many, how much sugar or how many calories, and that it was. Another light bulb was like. This is differentiating on the shelf and giving consumers something to think about.
Speaker 1:That's that you know, they already know what you know, that they're getting ice cream, which one is the best for them, which? What's going to affect their health and that's what we're learning here is that so much of regen sustainability at the consumer level is out of sight, out of mind, right, it's not. It's nice. It sure is nice that this is benefiting the environment, and I want to support that, but how does this affect my health? How does it affect me today? And that's just what's working. You know, when we started Zootopia, we were promoting the most sustainable from the most sustainable farms, using the most sustainable feeds, and I'm so invested in that as a nerd that really wants to celebrate that I'm just imagining that, the dinner table, the dinner party.
Speaker 2:Again, we have to explain. You started with that sentence instead of the other one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just, it's really long winded, you know, and there's all these stigmas and it's just like you know, a couple of marine biology nerds like really enjoy it, you know, like recirculating aquaculture systems and all these things, but it didn't really drive dollars Right. We and I was so attached to that. It was really hard to let go of that. I'm still very like mission oriented with that. But the health has to sell, right, it has to sell and this is what's driving consumer interest. And behind the scenes, when we switched our messaging, it really started to resonate. You know, we had, for example, gwyneth Paltrow talking about Seatopia on her Instagram and she explicitly said I love Seatopia because not because they have great flavors or all these other things, because she was paid. Not because she was paid. Like frankly, when she posted, I didn't even know she was a customer. You know, like we found out she was a customer because she was posting. She said because they're testing for mercury and microplastics and that's very important and you know. And then we have you know.
Speaker 2:So how did that go, that switching? Not how did it go that she became a customer, but how did that? Like you just said, I was very attached to the sustainability and the regenerative message and the multi-traffic. And then did somebody in your team start saying, yeah, but Tims, we need to sell this stuff. And, frankly, everybody, except a few, let's say, aquaculture nerds, already fell asleep. Like how did that? How did you decide to test it or to switch that messaging? And then how did that go? You said well, but like I'm curious about where you said okay, okay, let's test flavor, let's test sustainability in terms of health and let's see if that drives more sales than, let's say, the underwater world.
Speaker 1:Well, we've been playing so much in this direct to consumer space space right that it's given us a lot of data. You know, we do a lot with our brand, the fact that we don't sell primarily through wholesale, the fact that we didn't start with a retail on shelf. We are getting a lot more direct. We're getting more reps with consumers because every day we're talking to our customer and we're seeing data. We're driving traffic to the website through different landing pages, through different ads, different ab tests. We're sending emails. We even do one-on-one calls with our customers. When somebody comes in to be a subscriber, they get a free one-on-one session and that is a really great. It's another sort of like children horse. We're bringing them value on, like showing them okay. But we're also getting so much information from our customers.
Speaker 1:Why did you buy? You know who did you hear about it from? You know what's interesting? You know how do you feel about the price, all these questions and invariably we're using that information to make decisions. But the quick considerations I would say is a lot of the ads that we do and a lot of the messaging tweaks, the A-B testing, and does that drive conversion? Does it drive lifetime value?
Speaker 1:And you can see that we don't do sales right. We're not a discount brand. What we're doing is expensive, so you have to focus on generating lifetime value per customer and a lot of education and delicious and sustainability just weren't driving that LTV there. You know you might get a conversion. You might get more conversions if you just focus on like there you know you might get a conversion. You might get more conversions if you just focus on, like you know, michelin star, but like delivered to your door, delicious and affordable, like that might convert quicker. But you're not really viewing the consumer with an understanding of why this product is differentiated.
Speaker 1:And I initially wanted to go down the path of you know the ecosystem services provided by this integrated multi-trophic aquaculture and how we're drawing down carbon, increasing biodiversity and all these things, because that stuff is cool. But the consumer, it's cool but not very sexy, just it's just. We need bite-sized pieces, right? So bite size for us, worked with. Like this is quantifiable lab test. Like this is mercury safe? And here's the reference dose that the fda shows. And for pregnant woman, she shouldn't eat you know more than a paper clips weight tuna, but she can eat our beautiful sushi grade yellowtail three times a day, seven days a week. Right, when you start giving people mercury safe, lab tested, you know zero detectable microplastics, it just quickly imbues confidence.
Speaker 2:It sort of suggests that the lab is not really good. That's interesting. Like detectable means they didn't find it, Not that they didn't test very well Like oh, let's not look at this.
Speaker 1:I wish I didn't have to use that word, but that's like you know, we're at the point.
Speaker 2:now we have to use it. Of course, the lawyers made you say it, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1:And then you know there's like actually the size, like the, you know, one thousandth of a millimeter versus like one millionth of a millimeter, and there's very few tests in the world.
Speaker 2:It's interesting how we didn't talk about it at all last time two and a half years ago, not that it wasn't a thing yet, but I think plastics and plastic pollution and microplastics and nanoplastics and all of that, and the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow who is very busy with her health, obviously, but mentions that like the fact that's a thing now, good, and that it's everywhere, we're talking about it in manure slurry on farms, like it's really scary in that sense, but the fact that it's like together with mercury, the two things you mentioned plus omega-3, so the two bad things are not there and the good thing that is there is interesting. That became the sort of triangle of communication and two years ago it wasn't, yeah, which says something about how quickly global mind of course, of the affluent consumers, forward thinking etc. Etc. Are really health focused. But it definitely has switched because it wasn't like plastics wasn't really a thing, except for straws you're right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a couple years ago there wasn't.
Speaker 1:There was a couple of tests, of large studies that came out since then, right, and one of those was looking at, uh, microplastics in the coronary tract, right, and showing that microplastic was crossing blood barriers and was showing up in people with coronary heart disease and all these other things.
Speaker 1:So some of these tests really sparked more mainstream awareness and help us justify the expense to to do these tests right, because these tests really sparked more mainstream awareness and help us justify the expense to do these tests right. Because these tests are not inexpensive. Um, yeah, I think that's the main thing. And now more labs even have invested in buying that equipment because it's very expensive, like massive microscope with some sort of light thing that reflects certain particles, and they have different tests they can verify not only like the size of the particles but the type is it a fiber-based plastic or is it a plastic like a pet plastic? But yeah, it's expensive and a lot of laboratories. You know, I think two years ago the laboratory we were working with didn't even have that, so we had to seek out different laboratories to even find that equipment yeah, wow.
Speaker 2:And so you started thinking about it. Okay, how do I not replace or let go, but change the narrative? You started seeing that, so you started doing testing with ap, testing with different landing pages, with different ads, and the results were different, I'm imagining from the sustainability angle to what is good for you or not good for you angle, and then were you reluctant to double down on that.
Speaker 1:There's yes, but not for very long right In startup land.
Speaker 2:You know we have pretty small cash.
Speaker 1:You know we're not sitting on tons of cash. You know, tell people about, you know the nuances of different feed models and different farming practices, but if it's not paying the bills, then that you know. I'm going to switch real quick. So what's working and what's driving dollars and still achieving our mission is what we're doing now and you know we'll see how it evolves. But yeah, the latest iteration of our actual product labels are super cool, like we're.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's on the website yet, but you know we're really leading with that concept of like the Halo top and like putting the milligrams per serving of bioavailable omega-3s and the cleanliness, the actual parts per million of mercury, the zero detectable microplastics and then all the details of selenium and vitamin B and vitamin D and all the nutrients right on the front of the label. And you just don't see that in seafood. It's interesting, like if you compare seafood to some other industries, there's just not as much traceability and it's because the nature of most wild-caught seafood has so much variability it's almost like not even worth it to do tests on some on. You know, a thousand different pieces of yellowtail tuna could have a thousand different variations when you get into farmed products. In theory, you have way more consistency because you have controlled feed and controlled inputs and more predictable outputs. So, yeah, we're just, you know, modernizing the labeling of seafood to at least bring it up on par with with, you know, what you see in regenerative beef.
Speaker 2:Which is probably on the forefront of like labeling and packaging and how to reach the consumer, their consumer set. That's really looking for that health shot as well and talking about that in terms of accessibility and in terms of like your customer or consumer set or your client, whatever you call them. How do you see that? Because often the thing, or the eaters, yet the thing that's thrown at this movement in that sense is like it's just for happy few, like organic was already for that, if you imagine region, and then we see gwen at all throw tweeting about it and of course, or instagramming about it. Of course that doesn't help in that sense. But then you see also people. I just had a conversation might be out when we release this or maybe not yet, but you see people in Mozambique making very different fish decisions when they shop in the market. You see people.
Speaker 2:It's not necessarily a wealth thing. Obviously it helps if you have that accessibility. But what do you see in your customers Like how does that cut across, let's say, different layers and just into play of affordability, which is a thing that we don't discuss enough, I think, in terms of whether actually the health, healthy side of food could help the most is obviously where people can't, or barely can, afford or live in a food desert somewhere. So what do you see there in terms of the eaters of Seatopia?
Speaker 1:Well, the main eaters of Seatopia definitely are in that more affluent cohort. That's where we've really started, because that's where we could make it work Again. We didn't come to this market as an NGO. We came with a market-based approach in order to solve a problem which was not there's not enough. There was not sufficient optionality in the aquaculture market to drive incentive for change, and so Seatopia, in response to what was missing in the market, is helping foster demand from consumers, aggregate demand from consumers for better armed seafood.
Speaker 2:And this wasn't a complaint or an attack, by the way just I completely understand. And the entering in the higher end, the Tesla way. I mean we can't say that anymore. We can, but still, like, what makes it work makes it work. I'm curious, like, do you see shifts and cohorts and new ones there that would be good to highlight, because we get that question often okay, not how we're going to feed the world, we're going to get there in a second, but how do we make this accessible?
Speaker 1:and it's only blah blah, happy field and things like that well, uh, next week or this week we're receiving our first shipment of seatatopia hot dogs, which I wouldn't say are like premium luxury, like you're not going to. I guess you can put caviar on it, but it's intended to hit that segment.
Speaker 2:With an oyster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's intended to hit that segment of kids and just the everyday, and it's from a really cool farm raising fish with no corn, no soy, no canola, no fish. It's a fish-free diet and it's, in order to get that product to market, required a lot of r&d and feed trials and a small milling company that was willing to make investments and work with sorry, but there's no fish in the feed right.
Speaker 2:A fish free feed and also no corn and soy and canola right.
Speaker 1:So achieving that was is a long time coming and then using it in a manner that can broaden, like get kids or a eating fish seafood getting their omega-3s in a healthy way and there are other fish dogs in the market but they're still using fish meal to raise those fish right. So doing it in a truly scalable way is really interesting. And we start moving more broadly. You know there's other products that we want to launch that will move us more broadly into other segments. So we would like to eventually do fish chips, we would like to eventually do fish turkeys, we would like to eventually do canned foods and as we continue to evolve into these other categories, we move into sort of different cohorts. Can you still?
Speaker 2:hear me Fascinating, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And it's also worth noting that the economies of scale and production of key ingredients like microalgae are shifting right and there's more enthusiasm than ever.
Speaker 2:Let's get to that because that was a big piece. Last time you were saying we're doing trials and it's like who's making the investments and how do we scale the feed side of things? We've discussed feed actually a lot on the podcast and, yeah, how do you switch away from all the ingredients you don't want to ingredients you do want to mention the insects and microbes and others, but their economies of scale are so important because you're competing with a commodity infrastructure on the other side which, of course, is only driven by price and availability. And so what has happened there in the last two and a half years in terms of feed and in terms of innovation, in terms of driving because that's probably the biggest lever, I would say, apart from the type of fish you choose is what feed you actually are managing or able to put in. Of course, what drives the health outcomes and the mercury levels and the microplastics to a certain extent on the other side?
Speaker 1:That's one of the big things Can the changes in the feed have a big enough signal on the lab tests in order to drive consumer change right? And that was our big thesis. And we do see that we can see certain things, like you can quantify omega-3s, 6s and 9s and kind of show where those came from. You know, because you know, if you're feeding them canola oils, you know you're going to. You just boost the omega-9s and 6s, right.
Speaker 2:This is, by the way, the first time I heard somebody say omega-9s, which, of course, I dare to just never realize. Okay, you want more or less of omega-9s, just for the people in the back.
Speaker 1:Well, it's just not as efficient, right. And if you, if your body is working to convert omega-6s and nines into omega-3s versus just giving them omega-3s is not working as efficiently, right, your body really wants those omega-3s and the balance, the ratio is way out of proportion in most like american diets, because you know you're eating, not me but a lot of people are opting to eat affordable products that are made with canola oil and whatnot and they're just getting levels of omega sixes and nines that are so much higher than they would if they're just eating whole food right, whole real food, and that throws it out of whack. So you don't also want to be giving it to your fish because a it's not fish, didn't originally eat that and it just like in us, it spikes inflammation and makes them more susceptible to disease. It does the same, you know, in us, it does the same in fish. So microalgae is species appropriate. It's pure omega-3s, it's the triglyceride form, but what we're seeing shift is that there's, more than ever, microalgae startups in the market that are bringing to market a novel strain, a novel species species, a novel extraction model, and all of them are competing because they're seeing more and more demand and they're getting some of this investment and that's really exciting.
Speaker 1:We were just at this investment conference Aquaculture and there were some guys that came from Nigeria and they have a startup in nigeria dealing with aquaculture and they're there talking about, you know, talking in this room of all these other startups, mostly from the west, and saying, hey, how do I bring this back to nigeria? What species and strains can we grow and what feed providers can we get into nigeria? And it's just, it's starting to percolate because they're seeing, hey, how do we create optionality for our consumers as well? How do we get healthier outcomes? You know, if you can get healthier survival rates, healthier grow out rates, better feed conversion rates, those levers are huge and a lot of that is just shifting the thinking from volume production to quality production right, and when we start to focus on quality, I think it it shifts.
Speaker 1:And when more and more tech is coming into the market and more startups are investing and experimenting, we're seeing this shift right. And if you look at, you know a couple of the they're really only like corby and and varamaris are the two largest providers of industrial scale microalgae based omega-3, zpa and dha, and I think both of them were at capacity two years ago, you know, and they've both made huge investments to expand their production and all of these new ones are coming online. So we're seeing just I think economies of scale will come, will are already starting to benefit the production of microalgae and then also the anchovetas, like there's these finite. There's a finite supply of wild fit for fish and if we're just depending on anchovetas, which you know, that fishery has collapsed and drove prices through the roof. And then, unfortunately, there's a lot of interest for krill, which is very scary. I don't think, I definitely do not condone going to the arctic and mining the base trophic layer of krill. I think that's like a.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just for background. Why is that potentially destructive?
Speaker 1:Krill are amazing and they work really well in our culture because it is this base, trophic, super nutrient rich tiny shrimp Organism. This base, trophic, super nutrient rich, tiny shrimp that is all of the all of like. You have so many birds, you have so many seals and fish and massive whales that depend on this as their primary food source and in aquaculture is really works great because it's nutrient rich and it's very delicious. Apparently it's as an attractant.
Speaker 1:Just including a small amount of krill in feeds has shown that fish will eat more of it and grow more, and so it's hard to get some of the big guys off of it because they're like, oh, but it works so well, you know, but it's potentially dangerous because this is a pristine environment and or these massive, some of the largest per seing vessels in the world are going down the arctic and fishing this krill.
Speaker 1:Based on data that is intended to say like what is this maximum sustainable yield? But our science on that is so flawed, right, and those numbers vary so much and it is such a disincentive to have some of the industry actually putting their own like studies on, like how much they caught and how much is in the area. It's just people don't necessarily realize that there are huge ecosystem services provided to all of us on the planet just by having whales in the ocean, right like the carbon sink of whales moving through the ocean is and migrating across the oceans and consuming massive quantities of carbon that's at the surface level and then going down and hooping and putting down there. There's so much happening in the arctic with whales and seals and penguins and birds and all this and if we disrupt that, we're disrupting, waiting to be collapsing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, collapse, we've already collapsed, so many other ecosystems to do it, and then one of the last, pristine. The farthest, most remote place on the Earth is yeah, it could be.
Speaker 2:It's tricky, it's potentially disastrous. I think they did a calculation just on the carbon side of whales, like what would their value be? And it was like a quarter of a million or something. Very interesting, weird study. But you can quantify, like their poop and the manure they bring very deep and of course they bring nutrients up as well. And of course they bring nutrients up as well, like it's a and but you're seeing, like if microalgae, another form of krill, or if that starts scaling fast enough.
Speaker 1:There's no need, or at least you can undercut the attractiveness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one other thing right. So the attractant that you can't farm krill.
Speaker 1:Nobody's done it yet, but in theory you can. I mean you can farm. You know artemia and rotifers are farmed at most farm. Any pelagic farm around the world they farm. You also grow sea monkeys, these brine shrimp. They're very small shrimp and they're actually very easy to grow. And you feed them to species like cityola reveliana cellula landi, because, unlike salmon, they have not born with a really big egg yolk, so they have to eat live feed. When they're born, like as soon as they're born, they have to eat something that's alive, and so you give them these little tiny except these brine shrimp. A lot of kids in america when we were a little we had at least in my generation there was things called sea monkeys. Right, you got these little like, you put them in water and they came to life. He's a little tiny shrimp, those are our team.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I wrote a first. Lot of them come from the salt Lake, utah. Anyways, yeah, I think you could. I don't know who's done it or as experimented with it, but you know, as we continue to collapse some of these resources, the economies of the union economics start to change right, like the value of farmed krill or farmed s. I think it's more interesting to grow microalgae and figure out attractants, because the attractant is one of the things. You know, like there are certain things that need to be put into the feed to get some of these feces to to really want to eat it and to grow efficiently. You know there's touring and a couple other key nutrients that you can't just give some of these fish. You know, know a purely plant-based or I mean not that zooplankton are plants, but anyways, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then we talked about we talked about as well last time this sort of ideal world of regen aquaculture or the permaculture version, like the multi-trophic, which means you can farm in layers, which is what we're starting to do in agriculture, soil-based as well, of course, with agroforestry, with hydropic agroforestry, really playing with 3D and playing in different layers.
Speaker 2:That has been happening on a small scale in aquaculture as well. Of course it's easier because things float or you can put things at a certain depth, yes, meaning fish on top, bivalves in the bottom, on the bottom to clean, of course, your kelp forest around it, things like amazing places to dive, basically, yes, but you also mentioned last time it's happening in pieces, meaning pieces next to each other, maybe, but not like integrated yet at scale. Has that changed in the last two and a half years, let's say in terms of how these systems come together? Because it's not easy, of course, because you're managing different things in the same vertical. That's already difficult on soil. Imagine in water, where everything is moving all the time. What do you optimize for, what do you play with? How has that space evolved over the last two and a half years?
Speaker 1:It's still evolving slowly. One place where we're seeing a lot quicker response is in land-based multitropic systems. So we're seeing a lot more enthusiasm for sort of hydroponic multitropic systems in RAS systems. So, for example, we're working with a RAS farm that is also doing a bunch of different species of vegetables with, you know, using the poop for fertilizers. And then in estuaries we're working with an estuary farm that is growing. That took a beautiful.
Speaker 1:They took an environment that was once I don't know if we talked about this last time, but they took a, an estuary that had been, that had been drained and turned into a cattle farm and then they reconfigured all of the canal that reflooded it and then did in a way that really optimized for a abundant growth of microalgae and then that microalgae feeds an abundant growth of the local shrimp and that native shrimp then becomes a primary food for introduced native branzino and sebring. So they raise in a hatchery these branzino and sebring and release them into these estuaries that are just teeming with microalgae rich shrimp and that becomes a core part of their diet. So this sort of model of cultivating the environment and the so that the microalgae grow, so that the shrimp grow, so that you can feed your branzino and shrimp, is doing really well and that that white fish is has the highest levels of omega-3s of any fish that we've any other white fish that we've tested and it's just a testament to environment.
Speaker 1:Right, it's like if you're farming in the cattle through the regenerative sort of principles you really want, you know the healthiest soil, that grows the healthiest grasses and that gets you know healthiest cattle, and then you know, the same thing is happening here, like they create an environment where these microalgae thrive, and then the shrimp thrive, and now you have the healthiest, most you know omega rich white fish.
Speaker 2:You know that we've ever seen which reminds me of the story of dan barber. I think he did it. How I fell in love with the fish? Yeah, but it's interesting.
Speaker 2:It's semi wild, but you do introduce but local species, but you do create the circumstances for the feed to exist and then you can harvest. Of course, you need to play cost and revenue very well, but it's also you quote unquote outsource a lot to nature in that sense, and so you probably have a very different balance sheet or very different spreadsheet than the average farm on land that could be a neighbor. That is, of course, a lot more concrete and a lot more feed and but probably have other costs and you lose some to to the birds that pass by and take your small like. You need to make sure, yeah, at the end you get enough out of it. But if you can tweak that in a way that it makes sense, you're, yeah, you're onto something, and then if you find somebody like you that can actually sell, yeah, super fish or superfood as an omega-3 bomb, then of course you become, then becomes a very interesting combination that's the perfect example.
Speaker 1:Right, so that farm was struggling and continues to differentiate themselves, like at a. Call it a fish convention. Right, like a seafood convention. Right, like they have a banner that says, like sustainable, like the most sustainable farming methodology. Right, and and we're like, just look at the omega-3 levels. Like this is the highest omega-3, dp and dha of any other branzino or seabream. Like, show me one that's higher. And it comes down to the way it was farmed and you know, extensive aquaculture is that same model. We're now working with a shrimp farm doing the same thing raising shrimp without feed, not feeding them. Right, they're creating an environment where they can eat. Right, they're creating the nutrient-rich environment, cultivating the environment where they can naturally forage on zooplankton, phytoplankton, at that base trophic level and that's all they need yeah, yeah, which I'm thinking.
Speaker 2:What would the analogy be in soil-based farming, like you sort of invite the deer to come and feed on your argo forestry system in autumn and then you harvest them, or like what would be the version? Somebody must be doing that. Send me an email if you know somebody. Yeah, what would be that version?
Speaker 1:I don't think it's. I mean, only because we're dealing with predatory fish does it feel a little bit different? But you know you're growing. If you want to grow great cattle, you grow great grasses. In order to grow great grasses, you got to create good soil right. And here we're just. If you want to grow good fish, you got to have good waters that can create an abundance of microalgae that can feed the shrimp and zooplankton and phytoplankton and they feed the fish. I mean, we have these animals right, but that's, I think, the main difference.
Speaker 2:And do they now? Did they change their banner at the conferences? Do they just put out like the Omega 6 level and all the other stuff? Have they shifted? Presently? Not yet.
Speaker 1:Everybody's. If you're like a marine biologist and you come into this space and you're like this science, this tech is going to change the world, save the world. It's hard to you know, change your messaging, but yeah.
Speaker 2:You're showing and I think we can learn a lot from it. In the soil-based one, like eaters care, there are enough eaters not all eaters, not all eaters. Yet there's a lot of education, of course, blah, blah, blah but there are enough eaters that care and that have the capability to pay for it. If that means that they let go of other things, if that means they, they wouldn't see the difference at the end of the year. That's not irrelevant, but it's sort of irrelevant at the moment because it's driving, it's the pointy end of the spear and I think there are so many people that are absolutely able to pay for this and absolutely are not at the moment. Like, let's get that group first to start. Like, oh, actually, with this crazy budget that I have, or with the significant budget that I have, I can drive significant change and that will. I mean there are all the economies of scale and there are all the other and we have to work in accessibility. Accessibility.
Speaker 2:But there is a big group of people and a friend of the show loves to ask this question to a group of investors and like who buys organic? Most of the time are 99, and then like a big group of people that absolutely can afford it and could search for things like it's surprising and that should know about food and ag because they are invested in that space. There's a surprisingly low amount of hands that go up that say, actually I feed myself and my children and my family and predominantly clean food, and it's like, okay, let's start with that. Go up that say, actually I feed myself and my children and my family and predominantly clean food, and it's like, okay, let's start with that group because that's hundreds of billions probably in purchasing power that we're not attracting. And you're saying it's not the soil, it's not the clean water, it's in your face, good for you and it's not going to point out.
Speaker 1:Another interesting thing that's happened is the success of function health and lab testing, sort of concierge health. In the United States, you know there's our health care systems are so backwards, right but people are opting for concierge health where you get a subscription and you just go and get your lab. Somebody can come to your house or you go to the lab and they do your blood panels and then that gets sent to a doctor who reviews it online and then, based on this extensive data of blood panels that your traditional doctor wouldn't even do normally, you now have access to a lot more information than they point you to like to talk to a specialist or not. It's just cuts out so much back and forth. Anyways, we do. We do that. A lot more people are doing that.
Speaker 1:Function Health has become very much a cultural sort of leader in giving people information about what is their mercury levels, what are their omega levels, and we have customers who are seeing quantifiable changes in their health based on eating seafood that's clean and rich in omega-3s and it's so. It's not just like, oh, I'm eating organic because I think at the end of the year, you know, I may or may not feel better at the end of the year. But I'm going to do it like we're seeing, actually see it, little changes, right, like we have people coming to us because their functional medicine doctor and their attritionist said hey, your mercury levels are spiked. Stop eating seafood unless it's quantifiable and seatopia is the only one that we know about that's quantifiable. So use that one and same thing with, like, omega-3, the omegas like oh, my omega levels are really low. I want to boost my omega index.
Speaker 2:I want to eat more seafood, but I want it to be cleaned and that's a proper difference, I think, between like now and two and a half years ago, like it wasn't that, like you didn't have mark hyman raising I don't know much money and all the other companies popping up and of course there are a lot, there's a lot of noise, but it wasn't that accessible. I think that food hackers were doing this five years ago, but the general public definitely wasn't doing that two and a half years ago. And gut microbiome Zoe in the US and UK only, I think, but you have a lot of other companies looking at that and it drives a search for then almost functional food or almost food as medicine. We can start like a food as recovery or like. Of course there's a lot of gray area there, but if you can see like you're eating, you're cutting out the non-Seatopia or non-lab certified seafood and you change that and two months later or three months later you do another test and it's way better and you didn't change a lot of other things. I'm not saying it changed you, but there's a pretty high chance that was the main driver and if it started feeling better and so there it's interesting how that the lab tests both for you and the sea and the food on the fish side and for people have have significantly changed the ball game.
Speaker 2:Do you see the rest of the fish industry waking up to that? I asked it as well to other people Is that the health of the? Because the world always just was seafood is good for you and you should just eat more of it, the fatty side, blah, blah, blah. Now we're all like, oh, seafood is bad for you because it's full of all kinds of other stuff. Do you see the industry? Do you see others popping up? Are you talking about it even, or mentioning or looking into it, maybe on conferences, just on the back room with you like, oh, we're actually looking into Omega 3.6 and it looks pretty bad or pretty okay. What has changed there, let's say, in terms of colleagues or competitors?
Speaker 1:You know, the bulk of the industry still doesn't care. They don't notice because they're selling to people who don't care. Right, the bulk of it goes through these commodity distribution channels where people just prices all that matters. Right, yeah, that's it. Here's a little behind the scenes.
Speaker 1:So two years ago we went to Boston seafood show and New Zealand seafood, new Zealand kingfish company, like New Zealand king Salmon Company, didn't even give us a time of day. This most recent seafood show, they showed up with like eight of their executives, including like the CEO and like all the heads of the different regions, and they're like what are you guys doing and how are you all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like one of our biggest buyers? Right, and an interesting thing happened when talking about feed was that the and this really gets to our core customers it's not these executives, it's their wives. This is what the conversation was essentially. You know, my wife just finished this integrative nutrition course and we've been having a lot of conversations around the dinner table about what's in the feed, and I think you're really onto something Wives and children driving to change yeah yeah, it's interesting and there was multiple of these.
Speaker 1:It started with the CEO and then two other people. Yeah, they chimed in like this happened.
Speaker 2:You know, like my wife just did this and it's which is, by the way, interesting that it's mostly a man's world and that it has to go through like second degree order. I'm happy with any change. Just pointing it out there. That's pretty, but it just took a while. Welcome to the party yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's where it's at. You know, like it is there the conversations are happening around the dinner table about should we be feeding our fish crap or should we at least give them the quality of feed that we give our dog? Right, like it's crazy to me that you go to the dog the story. You can get really good quality pelleted feed that is like just organs and all the good stuff you know, like no corn, no, so you can get really good quality dog feed and a lot of these feed mills say that they can't produce like I eat, sell it's without canola oil.
Speaker 2:My hypothesis is that there are quite, actually quite a few people so that's a second group to target that spend more on their pets, on food-wise, and then on their own food, and they probably would be better off and I'm going into an interesting area to eat their pet foods to a certain extent than the food they buy for themselves, just saying it's cleaner, it's more traceable, it's fascinating.
Speaker 1:I mean it's interesting. The life expectancy of the average American dog is what, like seven, eight years, and then you give him good food and he lives to be 20, you know 20, you know, wow, what change. And then you also look at like the average American life expectancy is going down or plateaued. I wonder what's going on there, like, yeah, these correlate, yeah, parallel.
Speaker 2:Is that something in the fish industry Like? Is there like a minced meat or the organ side? I mean you were saying maybe box or broth and and maybe in these hot dogs like somewhere where I don't know like the off cuts is, is it?
Speaker 1:We're doing it in the dogs.
Speaker 2:Part, of course, you sell arts and livers, like that Is. Is that, uh, is that something where, let's say, the functional health people are even more interested in? Because, of course, that what you see with the grass-fed beef, or grass-finished beef as well, the organs are interesting, the bones are interesting, etc. Like that whole fish concept. Is that does it? No, absolutely it does.
Speaker 1:I mean, who's doing it right now? Nobody really, but we're gonna do it and we're know it'll be in the market in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2:Ah, sorry, we have a mini scoop. That's very interesting because that of course like the more you can use it to finish and the less goes to dog food. Maybe well-paid dog food is interesting from a margin perspective, but the less, let's say, the more things with a good margin can be sold. Yeah, better for the businessardines. The sardine is the bone inside. She always wants the bone first, like if we eat it from our can, and then wants the rest, like the rest is sort of packaging the crunchy, which is fascinating and my yeah, I don't know why.
Speaker 1:My daughter, my eldest. I have two daughters, a student, a half year old. She, like we, you serve her a big piece of salmon, you know, and she will eat the skin first and then she'll ask for your skin. And then you have to like when you have to eat your fish too. She just loves eating the skin first, like that's her jam.
Speaker 2:Which is fascinating, but probably there is something there that just pulls, which is I think we yeah, we have to trust.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and all the like subcutaneous fat is right there right below the feet. Yeah, that's where a lot of the really healthy fats are.
Speaker 2:Chickens. With the chicken as well. I mean, what's the best part that we're getting off? I mean, flavor is very important and children can tell. There's this fascinating study in. We're going to get them on the podcast, ultra processed people. Chris mentions it.
Speaker 2:Chris, in the US, where they gave children this was in the 50s I think they gave children complete access to unprocessed food Children of six months, and they took them away from their parents, which probably now you can't do it anymore. But it's a fascinating study. We have it at least. And they had like, without any encouragement, they had this full table of just, I think, boiled vegetables and raw vegetables, all kinds of other stuff, nothing sweet, nothing but butter, like the whole suite of things they could or should be eaten. They tried everything without any encouragement. It was just there, was somebody just looking at them making sure they didn't fall. They tried every single thing and there was a thing about somebody had, because they put MRI scans as well and they saw that one person had, think, not the density, the bone density he needed, and they put a bottle of cod liver oil, which and the boy just drank it until he was satisfied and never touched again and they could see the effect.
Speaker 1:That was the only thing they knew at the time for and at six months old we apparently can do that, yeah, and then we lose it, I think, with a lot of punishment, that you have to eat your vegetables and stuff it's also like some things when pregnant, when women are pregnant, when they go to the doctors like it's a regular question on the questionnaire the nurses will ask have you by chance been eating pennies or putting pennies or any weird metal objects in your mouth? Because your body just intuitively and subconsciously not yours, but women going through this process are often drawn towards these metals. If they're deficient in some areas and they don't even realize it, it's just yeah, it's just the body.
Speaker 2:In that sense, we've done a whole series, two whole series on nutrient density and quality and, interestingly enough, in animal science there's a lot more research, logically, because you don't do these trials anymore. But, like, how do you make animals choose? And if you give them mixes, it's actually tricky. And if you give them all kinds of minerals spread out, especially with ruminants, they will select what they need and what they're missing. They will eat certain plants that we think are toxic, and then we do research and actually at that moment when they're flowering, they're actually super beneficial for goats at that moment. And so there's a lot of more observational and actually deep research on the animal side compared to the human side, which makes sense, but it's interesting.
Speaker 2:I want to wrap up with a question. Let's hope it's not another two and a half years and at some point we'll do this out in the ocean, maybe diving, because you told a lot of stories last time about how it is to swim through these, which is still on my bucket list. But what do you see the next couple of years happening with Cetopia and also the space? At one side we see the destruction of the krill mega trawler fishing, which I dare everybody to Google after this or to search Ecosia, whatever you want to use. And then the other side. We see this actually growing interest in food as medicine and what your food aid and really see this connection. You're able to provide these farms an offtake that is looking for quality and is looking for not poisoning themselves. What do you see in the next couple of years, amidst all this chaos, because we're in a chaotic time what do you see happening? There's a bit of a glass ball question, but I'm just curious what is on your plate? What's happening on?
Speaker 1:your plate. What's happening? Oh, we're at this radar. We're at this really cool inflection point, right where we're starting to be have enough aggravated demand and volume to purchase entire lots of seafood, and that was really that's like the big thing. So we used to only be able to move the needle for artists and farms and that was cool, because it's great to work with artists and farms.
Speaker 1:But to affect change, to really scale impact, we have to be able to go to a large farm and say we will help you transition to better feed and better practices Through our purchasing. We will take away the risk and we just demand that you use these feeds and not those feeds and these farming practices. And as long as you produce it according to those standards, we will buy the whole thing. And the problem up till now was if our volume was not enough to buy the whole lot and with some salmon farms a pen could be huge, the amount of fish that's in there you can't feed half of them. One thing and half the other. You have to be able to buy the whole thing.
Speaker 2:I guess you weren't able to pay so much more that you could influence the other half of the pen. It would be nice, it would be an interesting impact model.
Speaker 1:But yeah, if it's better, if you say, I'll buy the whole thing just yeah, so so we're starting to be able to work with larger farms, which is starting to scale our impact and as big farms are coming on board and seeing and you know that there is a financially viable business there is economic incentive in producing healthier feed or healthier fish, and so I see more of that happening. I see that as we produce healthier fish in larger volumes and buy in larger ones, we'll also be able to sell it into other markets, right, like we've only sold direct consumer to our customers. But there's, you know, if we're buying, you know, larger volumes, we could also put some into retail. So we're going to start seeing more collaborations with retailers. We're going to start seeing more necessity to have a shelf stable product. You know all these, those other products that we talked about, whether that's canned or the fish jerky or the broth.
Speaker 1:As we have larger volumes, we're going to need to move into these other categories. So I really think that we'll see a lot more collaboration with larger players in industry that can scale this impact and changing the feed model, making healthier fish, removing some of the crap that has been sort of the mainstays of the commodity seafood industry, and I also see that there's a renewed interest. At least we're really excited about it. I think when we tell other people're really excited about it, I think when we tell other people they're excited about it, and that's okay, because otherwise, if you're only, if you're only excited about it, then we might not pass.
Speaker 2:It doesn't pass the marketing team.
Speaker 1:Sorry, extensive extensive aquaculture I think is gonna is is coming into its own right, like the model. Like you mentioned, the dan barber model is so beautiful and applicable into so many other areas, whether we're talking about the shrimp farms in Ecuador or Indonesian black tiger shrimps, or here in Hawaii, where we're at Like, the reintroduction of traditional fish ponds and extensive aquaculture has so much application. It's such a beautiful way to raise fish. So these are things that I'm really excited about. Over the next couple of years, I think that we'll see a lot more large farm collaboration that can really scale our impact, and I think we're going to see more species being farmed in extensive aquaculture models.
Speaker 2:Fascinating. Yeah, extensive, it's always. It rings this. I don't know we need a marketing team to think about that, because it does always makes it sound like we're never going to feed a lot of people with that. And actually this is on like extra land. This is on like pieces where we're currently like under performing ecosystems or like these are ecosystems that can be brought to life and we can eat from it. This is not extra land that we need to take from somewhere else. It could also grow blah, blah let's put the term aside but I really find it fascinating because what I remember from the Dan Barber I fell in love with the fish and I recommend everybody to look at the TED Talk is that they were struggling, probably because they mentioned sustainability, as well as the one you mentioned and they didn't have a market for omega-3, for highly rich and good for you fish, and if you, of course, sell into the Branzino commodity market, you're competing with detail in the Greek and other Spanish that have a very difficult cost structure.
Speaker 2:But now what is changing is that there is a market, not an easy market, but there is a market for quality and then, like sushi grade, you can safely eat it as a pregnant woman and it's very good for you, also, if you're not pregnant, for your children, et cetera, like that's feels like a fundamental shift, because if you don't have that, it's just a nice hobby and maybe you could do it because you have another business going, but it's not going to drive change into it. It's not that other people in Hawaii are going to say, oh, let's also do that, or other people in Ecuador, et cetera. So that, yeah, that's the big shift, I think, is the market side and how much we can hate the market forces, et cetera. That's the current force that's with us or that is there and let's use it because apparently there are enough eaters that care if they're served. And of course, it has to be easy, it has to be convenient, it has to be a lot of things, but it seems like that is working also in fish, which I think is a huge, yeah, a huge shift compared to a couple of, even a couple of years ago.
Speaker 2:I remember my time at AquaSpark, which is now 10 plus years. 12 years ago that wasn't the case. There weren't so many, there wasn't so much interest, simply from the market side. It was about cost. It was about fish is always better and okay feed ingredients. We should look at it mostly from a cost perspective and from a fish health perspective, not from a human health. And it seems slowly that that dam is starting to crack very slowly it needed to be a financial incentive model.
Speaker 1:You know that, like it, you can't just have the idea of it being like good for somebody else. Or you know, like how many fish companies say they're not sustainable. They all say they're sustainable. Right, like sustainability means nothing. You know, like so many one fish company, seafood brand like that doesn't say they're sustainable seafood, like it's just, it has no meaning anymore. You really have to have something quantifiable. Prove it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Prove it. There are so many lessons there for the aquaculture space and the non-aquaculture space. I want to thank you so much, james, for coming on here. I know it's very late where you are Sunday evening. You're making time for us to share your journey, share your updates, and I want to thank you so much for doing that and, of course, wish you a lot of luck and hopefully it's not going to be another two and a half years and maybe even in person.
Speaker 2:I'm just putting it out there. Maybe it's going to happen and I would love to taste, of course, and swim with the fishes in this case, not the creepy mafia movie way, but in real life. But we but in real life, but we'll make it happen at some point. Thank you so much for what you do and for coming on here on your Sunday evening to share my pleasure, thank you. Thank you for listening all the way to the end For show notes and links discussed. Check out our website investinginregenerativeagriculturecom slash posts. If you liked this episode, why not share it with a friend and get in touch with us on social media, our website or via the Spotify app, and tell us what you like most and give us a rating on Apple podcast or Spotify or your podcast player. That really really helps us. Thanks again and see you next time.
