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Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda
Urchinomics
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Abigail Carroll LinkedIN
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To hear my conversation with Brian, tune in on Apple, Spotify, or Google. And don’t forget to subscribe on your platformto get automatic updates. If you like what we’re doing, please do spread the word.
Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda
Urchinomics
Facebook
Instagram
Abigail Carroll LinkedIN
Happy Planet LinkedIN
Twitter
Listen on:
APPLE
YouTube
SPOTIFY
www.happyplanetpodcast.com
HOST VO: Welcome to Happy Planet where we speak with entrepreneurs, investors, and thought leaders driving the impact economy. I am your host Abigail Carroll.
Today we’ll meet the entrepreneur whose business inspired me to start this podcast. Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda, the CEO of Urchinomics.
I found out about Urchinomics during an accelerator run by Bright Tide - Harry Wright’s consultancy company that we learned in our last episode. I knew he was on to something and, as it turns out, so did a lot of other people in this space. Fast forward a few months and he is speaking at DAVOS!
So what does he do? Urchinomics is growing sea urchins for the uni market. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. He’s simultaneously restoring kelp forests and the biodiverse species they provide a habitat for. And he’s the first company to be verified for the blue carbon credit market for wild kelp. The company is one of only three commercial ventures in the world to be endorsed by United Nations Ocean Decade.
But let’s hear it from Brian.
Abigail (00:54):
welcome to the show, Brian. Thank you for coming.
Brian (01:29):
Thank you very much for the opportunity.
Abigail (01:32):
you were sort of the inspiration for this whole podcast. I have to say, when I heard about...
Brian (01:37):
Whaaaat?!
Abigail (01:37):
..your business, I thought it's, it's actually, it's true. I thought, oh my God, this is so incredible. you know I just want more people to know about this, these types of projects, <laugh>, because they're so innovative. can you give us sort of the synopsis of what you do at Urchinomics?
Brian (02:11):
before I get into ergonomics, we first need to frame the,ecological challenge that we work on. so what we do at Urchin Omics is we specifically target that problem, and we go after and hunt and remove those urchins from the ocean floor, and we re-home those urchins into our land-based recirculating aquaculture systems, where we then convert them into premium seafood. So as a result of removing them from the ocean floor, we help the kelp forests come back while at the same time producing a premium seafood, uh, that helps pay for the restoration work and provides returns for our investors.
Abigail (03:53):
that's wonderful. it's like nature sometimes produces too much of a good thing under dire circumstances. It's like an algal bloom. You could end up with a sort of a dead zone. Is that what you're saying?
Brian (04:10):
Kind of. But I, I wouldn't blame nature. I would blame us humanity. Yeah. Because essentially it's, it's human activities that have created the imbalance that essentially allow the urchins to opportunistically take over. So it's definitely our fault.
Abigail (04:24):
right. what animals normally eat sea urchins? Like what, what's missing in the ecosystem?
Brian (04:34):
So, the species that usually keep urchins in control are often the ones that are very yummy for us humans <laugh>. So whether it's cod, crabs, lobsters, trigger fish, all the stuff that you kind of associate, with wonderful seafood happen to be the predatory species that keep urchins in control. So it's because of our, you know, our consumption of, really yummy seafood, that tends to be the cause of these sea urchin barrens proliferating.
Abigail (05:05):
You'd think with all those little spines though, that they would be, better protected from something like a cod. Maybe I could understand a lobster grabbing it and cracking it, but a cod Yeah,
Brian (05:18):
Well, that's, that's, that's also part of the challenge, right? so urchin population control happens before they become those spiky, intense, critters. most urchin predation happens when they're still in their larval, or juvenile state when they're still kind of cute and, you know, fuzzy. Uh, so, so when, when pelagic fish swim by and open up their mouth, they eat lots of urchin larva and, that's how nature balanced itself. And only a small percentage of those urchins, you know, after broadcast spawning ultimately become big spiky animals. But when you take away all the different predatory species, then too many of them reproduce, too many of them,established, too many of them grow, and you got too many of those spiky ones, which are a lot harder to devour than, when they're on the planctonic state. So, yes, it's definitely that balance that we've screwed up.
Abigail (06:08):
And this is all happening in a fairly close coastal zone, right? the sea urchins are growing in these kelp forests.
Brian (06:20):
So kelp forests are naturally found in shallower, waters, because essentially you need the sunlight in order for kelp to, to photosynthesize and grow. so normally urchins are typically sitting in the deep, and only a small handful of them survive, coming up into the kelp forest, because usually there's lots of predatory species there, and most of 'em get predated on, but, when you don't have predators anymore, they can all just kind of march up into the kelp forest and devour everything without anything stopping them. So that's the situation we have.
Abigail (06:51):
Yeah. And what do they eat?
Brian (06:58):
the urchins normally eat the kelp, but urchins are known to eat everything. So they're, they're quite omnivorous, once they, once they've finished eating all the kelp.
Abigail (07:10):
tell me a little bit more about the importance of these kelp forests, because biologically they're critical to the health of the ocean.
Brian (07:20):
kelp forests are the foundation of pretty much all marine life. It's where most fish and vertebrates and crustaceans essentially rear their young or hide their young as they grow up. it's essentially the bread basket or the food basket of, the oceans because, you know, deep ocean and the big blue, there's not much going on there. But most of the dynamic life happens on the coastal ecosystems, particularly in the kelp zones. And it's part of the reason why kelp forest have one of the highest, levels of biodiversity on the planet. there's very few ecosystems, both on land or sea that can even remotely compare, to the biodiversity that we find in kelp forests.
Abigail (08:08):
So when you remove these predators, these sea urchins from these former kelp forests, how long does it take for nature to kind of bounce back in that area, to reestablish itself?
Brian (08:24):
So, so that's one of the beauties of marine ecosystems is that once the overgrazing pressure of the urchins are removed, kelp forests can bounce back as quickly as three and a half months in areas like California, or for example, in the Nordics where the sun disappears for <laugh> a little over half a year, you're looking at about six to seven months. But, kelp is incredibly resilient and incredibly fast to grow back once it has the right conditions. It's just that, you know, when you have voracious urchins covering the entire ocean floor, nothing can grow because the moment anything established itself and starts to grow, the urchins wake up, nibble away at it, and eat it and turn it into nothing. So, if the urchins are away, yes, kelp forests are incredibly resilient, they can come back between three to six months.
Abigail (10:58):
uh, so before we get onto the aquaculture part of this, which I just think is absolutely fascinating too, I just wanna linger on the kelp question because we're hearing a lot about kelp as part of the whole carbon credit, world right now one type of carbon removal process. Are you involved in that at all?
Brian (11:26):
the short answer is yes. so there is a lot of discussion about, kelp, being a potential blue carbon credit opportunity. But, uh, the only country that has formally come out with a blue carbon credit methodology for kelp is Japan. And Japan published their methodology, this year. we submitted our restoration data from Japan, to the state appointed research institutes. in November, we secured the world's first, blue carbon credit, a voluntary blue carbon credit for kelp restoration. you can say that we are the first in the world to have secured this. and we hope that this becomes a precedent, uh, that other regions and other countries of the world will also recognize, kelp’s potential as blue carbon opportunity and essentially help to decarbonize the planet while also supporting biodiversity.
Abigail (12:20):
Wow. first of all, congratulations. It's like a huge win for the planet, and it's a, an incredible win for you too,
Brian (12:30):
Right? Absolutely. It's a huge win for the planet because,when, the IPCC and IUCN has been focusing very much, on mangroves and salt marshes and seagrass meadows, which are super important, of course, to restore as well. But kelp kinda is, was kind of, I won't say forgotten, but was left out because the methodology didn't fit the traditional terrestrial view on how to quantify, carbon, binding and sequestration. but the Japanese, I guess, you know, they've been dealing with kelp for, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years as a food product, as an agriculture product. So I think they were just more attuned to it. So, so when they figured out, their methodology of how much, uh, carbon is bound and sequestered in the deep sea from kelp production, they were able to put a number on it. And I think that's what really made that happen. So when we submitted our data, the data was crunched in the math, independent scientists validated it, and we were able to figure out how much, carbon was, uh, approximately sequestered through the restoration work we were able to do.
Abigail (13:31):
That's amazing. so something has been established specifically for reestablishing, seaweed forests, or are they talking about sinking seaweeds like s ome people are trying to do? Or is this just for a very specific application?
Brian (13:53):
my understanding of the, Japan Blue Economy blue carbon credits, is that this encapsulates both farmed as well as wild, kelp restoration. The point being that whatever is grown, a percentage of it gets deposited into the deep sea and gets buried into the sediment. and so the Japanese scientists have established a certain methodology to figure out how much of this type of kelp when produced goes into the deep and then can be calculated as a blue carbon credit. we, have focused on the wild kelp restoration side, but my understanding is that the methodology also incorporates, farmed kelp,
Abigail (14:44):
Which is wonderful because we need more people to grow more kelp, uh, cuz it seems like there's so many applications. So this should really, really help encourage more kelp farming.
Brian (15:08):
there's huge demand for kelp everywhere in the world. so producing more kelp, I think is,a good thing just to satisfy the, supply demand balance. But as a result of, that production, if a portion of that does get, sequestered into the deep sea, that's, that's a legit,blue carbon. So, I think that's a, that's very exciting for us. our focus, while the blue carbon benefit is great, we are doing the kelp restoration more so for the biodiversity, uh, angle. it's not one or the other, it's both. It's just that for us, I think the biodiversity factor is so much more important because, I mean, carbon sequestration is nice too, but the amount of biodiversity that kelp forests can bring back is just exponentially greater than any other ecosystem on the planet. So, that's our main focus.
Abigail (16:02):
I think that's what I've found so intriguing about this project when I learned about it this spring, is it just checks so many boxes to sound trite, but it, you know, you're hitting biodiversity, you're hitting carbon, you're hitting food, you're hitting aquaculture, you're hitting so many different, different important, uh, themes of our day. I just think it's a really incredible project.
Abigail (16:42):
I love that I asked you about urchinonomics, and you said, first I wanna talk about the mission. So, and, you know, your the ecological challenge. I think that's a really interesting new framework within which a whole new generation of entrepreneurs in the impact world are starting to, think and find their motivation. So where does this come from? You have a pretty interesting background. You're a polyglot. I mean, you speak <laugh>, you sound like an American, I think you're educated in England, you speak Japanese, you speak Norwegian, you live in Norway. tell me a little bit about Brian and why he cares about the planet so much.
Brian (17:35):
I wish I had a cool origin story as you described, but it is not, it's not that special. born in Japan, raised in Canada. I studied, in part in South America now, married to a Norwegian and living in Western Norway. but, how should I say it? this whole kelp and ocean thing is actually a relatively new thing in my life. I graduated business school and I was more of a finance marketing type. but,, having moved to Norway, uh, uh, within, I guess it was about a year, uh, then we saw the, the tsunami hit Eastern Japan. Uh, and then in, in 2012, it was a delegation of Japanese fishers that came to Norway to learn how they could, uh, uh, rebuild their industry, you know, and maybe in integrating some of the Norwegian fishing technologies.
Brian (18:35):
And it was just through that chance meeting that I happened to meet some, uh, Japanese fishers who told us, well, the bigger problem we have is not so much the rebuilding, but it's the fact that once the tsunami came and it washed away all the predatory species, and so the urchins were left alone with no predators. So they were able to reproduce and reproduce and reproduce, and they ate up the foundational kelp forest, which was really the, the, the fishing grounds for, right, for, for these fishers. So it, it was, it was through that chance encounter that I started thinking, well, wait a minute. You know, we got lots of cool aquaculture tech here in Norway. Can we not leverage that knowledge that is already here and just apply it a little bit more specifically, uh, to the Japanese context? And it was through that initiative that I started to learn about urchins and urchin barrens and kelp.
Brian (19:18):
And then I realized it wasn't just a, an Eastern Japan problem, it was a Japan national problem. And then as I started talking to scientists, it's like, no, no, it's not just a Japan problem. New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the US, Norway, Mexico, anyone that has an active fisheries region or industry pretty much has urchin barrens. It's just a difference of how big of a scale it is. So when we realized that this was a global issue, that's when I thought, okay, well, you know, we gotta find a scalable way to, to tackle this. And that's when we, you know, cooked up the, the, the commercial, uh, for-profit model of ergonomics. And that's pretty much what I'm driving today.
Abigail (19:56):
Yeah. So, uh, that's, I mean, that's really interesting. And it's, you know, um, we, you know, it, it's interesting how, how they sort of like something, you know, how you, how something like this can be built in reaction to something like a tsunami, and how sometimes it's takes this sort of confluence of, of ideas and, and, um, and intelligence from different places to kind of put together the right solution to a challenge like that so that you're in Norway where they have a ton of aquaculture, you know, understanding and you happen to have these ties to, to Japan. It just seems like you're probably the, the, the perfect sort of cultural and geographical fit for that at that moment. And probably it sounds like you're Yeah,
Brian (20:46):
Yeah, I agree. I, I feel like I was at the right place at the right time, um, with the right challenge to pursue., but, but we've been incredibly supported by so many stakeholders from around the world, because the mission is normally quite challenging. Uh, so to, to find a, a, a for-profit model that could potentially, uh, systematically change these ecosystems from dead baren states to vibrant kelp forests is, is quite unique. And, and it looks like that momentum is only continuing.
VO: After a short break, we’ll talk about Urchinomics’ technology and their plan for global expansion. We’ll also hear why he says his farmed UNI tastes as good as any on the market today. I also aksed brian what happens to the shells - and he had a great answer. Stick with us.
BREAK: Spark no 9 & maine Venture fund.
VO: Welcome back to Happy Planet. Let’s dive back into my conversation with Brian.
Abigail (21:38):
When did you realize you could breathe life into these near dead sea urchins? Because that was a little bit of out of the box thinking too, right?
Brian (21:53):
Well, again, again, I can't, I can't take, uh, credit for that either, because that research was being done globally, particularly in the nineties. Uh, I mean, the Norwegian government and the Norwegian government scientists were studying this for over 25 years. So this isn't a new idea, it's just that it's never been able to be executed in the way that we're being able to do it now. So the feed technology that we have, for example, is essentially built on 25 years of Norwegian state research, which we have secured the global licensing for. We've then polished that technology with, uh, uh, no Sun, which is, um, a 100% subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation, uh, to essentially get that feed to the level that even the top Japanese sushi chefs can taste our uni and say, okay, this is, this is quality product.
Brian (22:45):
and, uh, we've been tapping global resources. So we haven't tried to do all of the problem solving here on our own here in Norway. And we recognize that, you know, certain aspects of the expertise here in Norway are really strong, but, you know, downstream stuff is definitely not this country's expertise. So we've, you know, uh, worked with the researchers and market partners around the world to, to get us to where we are.
Abigail (23:15):
So you mentioned that these barrens are basically everywhere they're fishing. what kind of scale are we talking about? Are we gonna run out of, urchin barrens?
Brian (23:30):
Oh, no, I would say that it's quite the opposite. The barren problems are probably substantially bigger than we even, uh, can remotely dream of. So the one country that has sufficient financial resources to really, uh, monitor their ocean beds, uh, is Norway, uh, because of, of <laugh>. You know, they have a 1.2 trillion, uh, oil fund. Um, and when you, when you look at the, the, the urchin barrens that they've documented, so Norway has a pretty good idea, and they estimate it to be around 5,000 square kilometers in area. So that is a massive, massive area that is completely covered with sea urchins. That's, that's that much land mass or, or I guess ocean bed, uh, that is literally covered, uh, all over with sea urchins. We suspect that the barrens in California and Canada, uh, in Japan and elsewhere, could potentially be bigger, uh, which means that, yeah, there's, there's a lot of cleanup we gotta do.
Brian (24:28):
So I don't think that even if we are wildly, wildly successful and our next 10 potential competitors are equally, wildly, wildly successful, I don't think we're gonna be able to make, uh, that significant to dent, at least in terms of the total biomass. What I think we can do though, is that we can make a serious dent on the most important part of the ecosystem, which is the kelp region. So urchins survive and live in the deep sea as well, as well as the kelp, the shallow kelp regions. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, we are only interested in restoring the ecosystems in that shallow kelp region, because that's where the kelp grows. Right. The urchins can stay in the deep, cuz that's where they're supposed to be. We just, just, they just gotta kind of stay there. Yeah. So, so we're really focusing on the impact and the shallow ecosystems.
Abigail (25:14):
in all these different areas and these different geographies, you've got pretty different looking sea urchins, just the difference between the east coast sea urchins and the West coast sea urchins at a sushi bar that's like a different animal. So it is, can you eat all the sea urchins around the world?
Brian (25:47):
Yeah. So most of the sea urchins that are causing ecological challenges, whether it's in the North Atlantic, the Pacific, the South Pacific, most of them are edible. Uh, so fortunately we can apply our market-based, uh, approaches to restoring, uh, kelp ecosystems. So that's, that's good. Uh, I don't think all urchin species are edible, though, but fortunately the ones that are not edible are, don't seem to be the ones that are causing much problems. So, I guess we kind of lucked out in that one.
Abigail (26:15):
That's a convenient situation. tell me how this works then. who's harvesting all these urchin barrens?
Brian (26:29):
Right. So what we do is we partner with the local fishers, uh, who are essentially the most, uh, skilled and talented in, in, in removing urchins. So we get them, uh, to harvest the empty, uh, destructive urchins, and we have them deliver it to our facilities where we then put them into our land-based, uh, recirculating agriculture systems and, and convert them into premium seafood. So the first step is working with our local fishing partners. Uh, so we pay them as, as much as we can, uh, within reason to, uh, to, to harvest the empty urchins. In some places, we're almost at par with regular urchin prices, which I think is a huge success. Um, some places are a little bit less, but, uh, the point is, is that we want to provide a fair compensation to the fishers so that they have an economic incentive to continue, uh, doing restoration work with us.
Brian (27:19):
So then again, those empty urchins are then put into our systems, and we feed them a formulated feed, uh, naturally derived, uh, made actually from the off-cuts of, uh, of, uh, farmed and wild kelp production. Uh, and, uh, and so yeah, we, we give that to the urchins and in about, yeah, six to 12 weeks, uh, on average, probably closer to the 10, I think is, is the general average when you look at all the different species. But, uh, yeah, within that time period, we fatten them up and then we get them to a commercially viable state, and that's when they, uh, they go into the market for top dollar.
Abigail (27:50):
Amazing. So in different areas, will you have to use the different species of kelp to appeal to their specific regional diets, or, uh, or does, you know, is one kelp kind of, they're not that gourmet?
Brian (28:06):
we deal with many, many urchin species now, uh, but, uh, we're currently using our core feed technology, which is using, uh, the off-cuts of kombu kelp for human consumption. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So this is the, the kelp species that grows in northeastern Asia, uh, in Hokkaido area particularly. And it's the kelp that has the highest level of umami per gram or per kilogram, uh, compared to all of the kelp species. So, so we use that because that is essentially the quintessential quality, uh, kelp that gets hokkaido sea urchins, the crazy prices that are out there. So in a way, we're kind of democratizing the raw material that makes hokkaido uni so crazy good. whether it's California purple urchins, or whether it's the greens in, in Eastern Canada, or, uh, these don't have access to kombu kelp, so they taste different to the urchins at eat kombu until we provide them our feed, and suddenly they start rivaling, or sometimes surpassing, I think, some of the best, uh, uni in the world. Uh, and it's just the, way the urchins, uh, synthesize, uh, uh, the, the, the kelp based feed and, uh, yeah, it, it turns in some really, really exciting, uh, product.
Abigail (29:22):
That's amazing. We really are all what we eat, aren't we?
Brian (29:25):
Literally, yeah.
Brian (30:44):
<laugh> we just opened up our second, uh, commercial scale urchin ranch in Japan. Uh, so the first site had 84 raceways. Uh, this new site has 200, which in Japanese context is relatively larger, in a European, north American context, is probably much very much on the small side. Uh, but, uh, uh, the idea now is to then, now that we're kind of proving to ourselves as well as our investors, that we can scale our, our operations to commercial scale in Japan, we're now going to raise additional funds to, to scale up our, our operations in California, Eastern Canada, and Norway, uh, to prove that we can do the same outside of Japan as well. Uh, and so once we, once we can prove that we can commercially operate at scale for very different, uh, uh, countries and geographies with different species around the world, I think that gives us the evidence we need to be able to say that we're a very much a global solution. Then we'd focus on, you know, raising even more capital and essentially just copy and pasting our business model, uh, to accelerate, uh, the impact. Um, because, you know, we gotta, we gotta move fast. <laugh> or the kelp forest are gonna disappear,
Abigail (31:57):
it's gotta be a special challenge to, you know, You're not a, you're not a business glo growing globally so much as you're really a global business because in every country you're gonna have like, key operational, you know, inputs. So I mean, are you, are you franchising it? Are you, like, how, how do you manage a global business like that?
Brian (32:27):
we started off the entire concept globally because we recognized that the problem was very much global. And so it didn't really, it didn't really make sense for us to try to solve for one particular region and then, you know, wait another 3, 5, 10 years to figure out the next, next. So, um, so we, we very much, uh, took it from a global perspective. Um, however, there are obviously some mar uh, some markets and some regions that are more strategically important for us than others. Um, ie those regions that will allow us to accelerate what we do going forward. Um, so if I were to narrow it down to four, I would say the four regions that we are particularly focused on is Japan, Norway, Canada, and the United States.
Brian (33:17):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, and, and there's various regions reasons for that, but it's primarily because of upstream competence. So land-based aquaculture in the Nordex is, you know, very advanced. So there's a lot of knowledge and technology we can develop there. Japan is incredibly skilled at downstream efforts when it comes to ni. They know how to make different Unni products out of OGs. There's so many different recipes that they can, uh, that they've already developed. Uh, and then of course, when it comes to North America, you have the, the, the, the amplification potential of, uh, of, of, of the global media platforms that exist in North America that just doesn't exist in Norway or Japan. And then there's what I would call the next tier of markets that we want to get to, but we don't have the resources or the time to get there today.
Brian (34:11):
And those are the regions where we, uh, co-invest and partner with local stakeholders that can help drive it much faster. So, uh, regions like Mexico, Spain, uh, New Zealand, Australia, uh, uh, Taiwan, uh, Hong Kong, these are all regions where it would just take a lot longer for us to build out our own team and get the knowledge, understand the biology, and do all that work. So what we've done is we've partnered with various regions, stakeholders, governments, and NGOs, whatever, uh, who can accelerate that work locally with our tech. And once they've kind of proven it, that's when we can go and goin invests with them. So they're kind of priming the conditions for us so that we can move faster. And the, the last tier, which is kind of the, the, the broader tier, uh, is, is uh, the regions that we, that, that we would like to approach via our urchinonomics impact program.
Brian (35:10):
And the urchinomics impact program essentially says this, we recognize that for profit capital probably cannot flow to these regions because of country risk or, or biological risk or whatever, but we know that our technology can actually still do good. It's just that it's not appropriate for, for-profit or traditional capital to go in. So, um, we are prepared to license our entire suite of technology, uh, as well as market access and everything to, uh, mission-aligned nonprofits or governments who want to do urchin, uh, ranching and kelp restoration for the sake of ecological impact. We'll license it at non-commercial rates to them on the condition that any profits that are generated are reinvested back into the restoration effort. So that's kind of our way of, of making our tech have the most ecological impact and not just within tightly controlled hands of, of a for-profit entity that we are.
Abigail (37:00):
That's amazing. It sounds though like we all need to start eating a lot more uni,
Brian (37:05):
<laugh>.
Abigail (37:06):
Are there enough eaters of uni to support your, your, your global, uh, production scheme?
Brian (37:13):
Well, if the market prices today are any reflection of the lack of supply and the exploding demand, I mean, sea urchin prices are through the roof. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, they are literally since 2011, we're seeing double digit growth. And, uh, the latest is that the raw material. So, so the unprocessed version of the uni hit 10,000 Japanese kilo, uh, a couple weeks ago, which is like, you know, I don't know, maybe in US dollars today around $80, and that's just in the raw animal, unprocessed, right. Processed, you're looking at, well probably close to a thousand dollars a kilo. Now. You probably surpassed that.
Abigail (37:51):
So there's, yeah, there's plenty of margin for you to wiggle with given you have a higher production cost than people who are just out there collecting them randomly. Well, so there's, there's plenty of wiggle room for you, it sounds like, which is,
Brian (38:03):
Well, not, not just that, but I mean, we have to, we have to produce so much uni just to, just to flatten down the, the, the price increase that we're seeing around the world because supply is in and is short and, and demand is exploding. So, like I I'm suspecting that we're probably gonna need to build 20 to 50 factories before we maybe have some, uh, downward pressure on the upward trending curve of pricing. So just to get it to flat, I think is going to require a, a monumentous effort to get the prices to come down, which is what we want to do. Hmm. Because at the end of the day, we need to get the prices down so that uni becomes mainstream and we can get, you know, essentially right sea urchin row, you know, in the long, long term should become as common as, as farm salmon or farm tilapia, ideally, uh, because it's a low trophic, low impact, uh, marine protein that, uh, that he can find its way in Asian cuisine, like in sushi or even in Western cuisine like French, Italian, Spanish, they all use, uh, uni.
Abigail (39:14):
Like why, why should we be eating more, aside from the ecological, um, benefits, which are very clear.
Brian (40:26):
I think the great thing about low trophic species like oysters and uni, uh, is that it's just they, they pack so much flavor. And so from a, from a a foodie perspective, uh, there's, there's, there's so much to play with. And, and, you know, I think the urchins are quite unique because typically when we eat the protein of an animal, uh, it's the animal is absorbs. It's eating nutrients, it's digesting it through its stomach, and then it's redistributing the proteins to its flesh, and we eat the flesh. So there's like a, there's like a one step bounce, uh, before you, you get to the part you eat. Sea urchins are quite unique because when they eat, they almost directly deposit whatever they were eating into their roe sac, uh, in, into their caviar. Uh, so, so urchins reflect what they eat much more precisely than any other, uh, animal out there. Uh, which is also the part that makes it fun. If you give really, really good ingredients, the flavor is awesome, but if an urchin is eating a dead fish, it'll literally tastes like dead fish tastes.
Abigail (41:40):
<laugh>, well, that's another reason to eat farmed, um, farmed uni, because then you know what, it's been fed rather than eating the dead fish.
Brian (41:51):
that's exactly it, right? So in the traditional urchin industry, you have processors that are essentially, uh, opening up all these urchins and they're mixing them together so that you get a nice average flavor mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and that's what you need to do, because, you know, fishers and divers have no idea whether that urchin was eating a dead herring or was just eating kelp. So, so, so that, that's what's necessary with what we're doing, because as you say, we can, we harvest the empty urchins with nothing in them, and then we feed them a formulated, standardized feed, all of them become quite similar in flavor and taste in color and texture. So we can provide a value proposition that the wild industry simply cannot. And that's just a level of consistency that, that, that is physically impossible to do from wild catch.
Abigail (42:37):
That's amazing. So just outta curiosity, the byproduct, when you process them, you have those shells, there's, there's a little bit of meat stuck to it. Is there a use for that? Are you thinking about that a hundred percent utilization?
Brian (42:50):
Absolutely. Want,
Abigail (42:52):
I wanna hear it.
Brian (42:53):
the inspiration again comes from, you know, just traditional practice. So we, we've been watching, uh, Japanese, uh, farmers, uh, almost get into fisticuffs with each other because they wanted to, uh, secure, uh, the, the, the waste of the, of the urchins because of urchin shells, I guess supposedly are, are really effective, uh, to help, uh, grass, uh, production mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So for ruminants, uh, you know, the, the, so the, the farmers, yeah, they, they secure the shells and what they do, and I I love this, they, they, they leave the urchin shells out on, on, on, on, on the ground for a while, and they let the rain wash away the salt mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And so next season when they start to see that weeds are growing in between the urchins, they know that the salinity has come down to the level that they can use the shells as fertilizer.
Brian (43:41):
So then they crush it up, and then they distribute it over their fields, and it helps, uh, maybe it's the, uh, or if I understand correctly, it's the, it's the calcium carbonate that's in the shell. Yeah. It's the boron, it's the, uh, the, the, the nitrogen and then some phosphorus or some other trace elements that's supposedly really good. Uh, so it's typically used, uh, as, as a soil, uh, improvement, uh, ingredients. Um, however, lately because of bioprospecting and, uh, and, and, and you know, the, the, the markets out there for functional foods, uh, supplement manufacturers as well as pet food manufacturers have been jumping on, uh, on the bandwagon, and they're looking at ways to try to extract more of the high value, uh, ingredients out of the waste. Yep. And then whatever is left goes to soil, uh, improvement.
Abigail (44:42):
it sounds like there are a lot of similarities too, oyster shells, um, which are used in supplements they're used for, um, in fertilizers, they're used in skincare products. They're great source of calcium. Um, so it's, um, that's great. where can we get your product today? Or can we, do we have to be in Japan?
Brian (45:10):
so in the States, uh, so we, we have our pilot sites in, uh, in, in California as well as Okay. Uh, new Brunswick and, and Norway. So, so we have, we have activity outside of Japan. Uh, our California purple urchins, uh, recently, uh, went out, uh, onto the market. And, uh, essentially, uh, we had four, uh, Michelin star restaurants just take the whole thing <laugh>, and that that was it. And
Abigail (45:41):
We just need to get ourselves to a Michella four star restaurant.
Brian (45:45):
given that feedback <laugh>, we realized that, okay, no, we gotta scale up much faster. So our plans now is to accelerate the, the commercial scale up because, uh, the, the, the, the market feedback from our ranched purple urchins were beyond, beyond what we had expected. And, and frankly, I, I think, I think, I think I prefer the California purple urchins over all the other ranched urchins that we've done, uh, anywhere else in the world. There's something unique about the way those purple urchins metabolize our feed, and they come out really sweet and nutty and buttery and creamy, and it's just, yeah, like that, that stuff can go toe to toe with hokaido. I do, I genuinely beleive.
Abigail (46:40):
That's amazing. Amazing. So, I mean, just listening to you, I understand why you were invited to Davos. You have, you have sort of personally been launched into the stratosphere. Um, you're getting a lot of sort of public attention right now, and you've got a wonderful mission and story. Um, what's that been like?
Brian (47:06):
Hello?
Brian (47:16):
Uh, yeah. So we've been very fortunate. So two, two major developments I think have really thrust us into, into the limelight. Uh, the first was the public endorsement by the United Nations Ocean Decade. Uh, that I think was the, the, the big one. You know, to, to have a un organization essentially endorse, you know, publicly endorse what you do, <laughlike, people don't need to ask us about, you know, what is the impact? but then of course having the, the World Economic Forum and uplink endorse us there was, was huge. I mean, it, it gives us access to, uh, stakeholders and, and, and, you know, the people who essentially, you know, pull the levers of the planet, uh, we, we, we get the opportunity to connect with them and tell them our story and, and, and, you know, leverage their relationships to, to achieve our goals.
Brian (48:16):
So it's, it's partially for that reason that we're, we are doubling down on our global, uh, approach. So, so we're leveraging all of that attention we're getting and trying to get ergonomics out there as, as quickly as possible,I want my kids to look back at what I do and or did and, and feel like, you know, that, that I did the best I could, as opposed to, you know, like there's a commercially prudent way of doing what we do that does not take time into consideration.
Brian (49:06):
We have rejected that approach. We have prioritized impact and speed, even though sometimes from a commercial perspective it looks a little bit crazy. And it kind of is probably, you know, uh, conventional, you know, business school 101 would tell you that my strategy is a little bit on the nut side, but again, that's because you don't factor in time when you factor in. Yeah. The biodiversity loss that we're seeing, the fact that 40 to 60% of kelp forests around the world have already disappeared or on the way to be, uh, to, to disappear when you're faced with those statistics, and we are the only one that seems to have a reasonable solution to this, we gotta get out there.
Abigail (49:45):
Yeah. Yep. Amazing. Um, so what advice do you have to, for other impact entrepreneurs, <laugh> who are, who are starting out or, you know, suffering in the, in the throes of, you know, startup life, which is not always easy.
Brian (50:24):
if there is one thing, I, I think the key here is to really stick to your values. Um, there have been so many other opportunities for us to want to, uh, you know, be tempted at, at taking different types of shortcuts that could have gotten us to, to our target faster, but, but it, it would've compromised some of our values and approaches.
Brian (51:18):
Um, I feel like we are in a new world of capitalism where mission aligned, dedicated focus is rewarded as opposed to punished. Uh, so those that are, you know, fighting the uphill battle, trying to tell a story about an ecological issue that they're trying to solve, that that might not connect, uh, immediately, uh, I think that the audience and the world is paying more attention and are more willing to listen now. And I think when you can tell the story properly, I think you're gonna get a lot more support and you can get over those humps.
Abigail (52:33):
I think that's really well said and insightful,
Abigail (55:02):
Well, thank you so much, Brian, for being here. It's just so exciting what you're doing. And thanks for all of you, all you're doing for the planet and for the marine ecosystem. I can't wait to have your sea urchins.
OUTRO
VO: I have loved watching his company skyrocket. On a mission level this project is so comprehensive -it’s upcycling, carbon, sustainable aquaculture, no waste. I think he’s also likely to make oodles of money. Hard to beat that. On a business level, I am impressed by Brian’s pragmatism. He learned that there was an opportunity to solve a problem and rather than reinventing the wheel, he worked with a lot of existing technologies to solve it. He demonstrated how you can build huge success just by knowing how to pull together the right technology and players. I think that’s a really important lesson. For more about urchinomics, check out their website in our show notes. Soon you may be able to eat them in a restaurant near you.
Thank you for listening. Please follow the Happy Planet wherever you listen and leave us a rating and review - it really helps new listeners discover the show. Happy Planet was reported and hosted by me. I am also the Executive Producer. The talented Dylan Heuer [hoyer] is our producer and editor. Composer GEORG BRANDL EGOFF created our theme music. Learn more about my work and get in touch by visiting happyplanetcapital.com.