#78 - James Arthur Smith @ Seatopia

Episode Recap:

ReGen Brands Recap #78 - Seatopia Bringing Regenerative Seafood Direct To Consumers - (RECAP LINK)

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated with AI and is not 100% accurate.

Kyle Krull - 00:00:15
Welcome to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers operators and investors to learn about the consumer brands, supporting regenerative agriculture, and how they're changing the world. This is your host, Kyle, joined by my Coves, AC, gonna take us into the episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:00:33
On this episode, we have James Arthur Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Seatopia. Seatopia is supporting regenerative aquaculture with its direct to consumer business, building consumer demand for innovative aquaculture practices, in hopes of scaling a truly regenerative seafood supply chain to feed the planet and restore our oceans. In this episode, James breaks down the massive problems with current commodity seafood systems, how Seatopia is pioneering aquaculture 3.0, and why integrated multi trophic aquac culture in the ocean is the same thing as regenerative agriculture on the land. If you're ready to take a deep dive (pun intended), into marine ecosystems and planet-positive commercial-scale food production, then this episode is for you. Let's dive in. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of The ReGen Brands Podcast. Very excited today to have our friend James from Seatopia with us. So welcome, James.

James Arthur Smith - 00:01:32
Honored to be here. Let's do this.

Kyle Krull - 00:01:35
James, we're super stoked. I'm personally super stoked. I didn't tell you this during pre conversation, but I'm a former divemaster, fellow free diver. So talking about anything ocean related, I'm gonna be this is right in my I'm really excited to talk about this.

James Arthur Smith - 00:01:48
Good. Good. Good. But before we go too far,

Kyle Krull - 00:01:52
to help our audience understand know, what sort of products do you produce and where can people find you today?

James Arthur Smith - 00:01:59
Seatopia is providing certified clean seafood mostly, sushi grade, yellowtail, salmon, king salmon, some Atlantic salmon, scallops. These are proviant scallops on a half shell. I see Brancino, Bear Mundy, things like that. It's all, portioned for individual consumption in individual vacuum bags. We sell frozen, but not traditionally frozen. We sell super frozen. So like nitrogen frozen, vacuum sealed, and we sell direct to consumer, only available online. We our website is setopia.fish.

James Arthur Smith - 00:02:32
So sushi grade seafood, but one of the interesting things about everything we do is that we put a certificate of analysis on all of our products. So we microplastics test, we mercury test, We test omega-three levels. These, the level of, assurity that our customers have because of the certificate analyses that are available transparent on our website makes Seatopia as a brand, a unique offering of certified clean seafood. Hell yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:03:11
Incredible. I'm already ready to buy it. You know, that was that was enough for me. We'll still do the whole episode, but I'm like, I'm ready to purchase.

James Arthur Smith - 00:03:20
Right on. I mean, it resonates with a lot of people, especially if they're, you know, health conscious foodies.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:03:28
Yeah. And I feel like, you know, for me in preparing for this, I learned a lot more, and it it took me back to when I started learning about region from a land based agriculture perspective. So we've had, you know, we've had some Kelt based brands, but really that was just kind of single single crop, focus, I guess, in the aquaculture world, and this this seems to be much more expansive. And so just really, really kinda cool. I feel like I opened a new filing cabinet in my brain, so to speak. And I'm also I'm also feeling a little bit threatened because I got a couple guys on here that have more oceanic experience than me. But, you know, we're gonna we're gonna set that aside.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:04:01
You know, James, this is kind of a a deep personal quest for you that has a lot of personal and formal work experience tied into it. So I guess just take us back to kind of your background and also how Seatopia came to be.

James Arthur Smith - 00:04:18
Yeah, Well, the ocean welcomes all. So don't feel intimidated, Anthony. We you are also of an ocean background. If we all come from this origin of the ocean. So, you know, we we have this place there. That's why we're all connected to it in a in a uniquely romantic and genetic way. My my story, is that, I was brainwashed into being a water baby. My dad was a lifeguard. I grew up on the ocean. Like, his idea of of taking care of us was just taking us to work and, you know, as little little kids who were just like underneath the lifeguard tower running around the beach.

James Arthur Smith - 00:04:49
And it on the other spectrum, my mother worked at SeaWorld, and this is you know, 40 years ago. Right? So it's a different era. You know, Shiamu was amazing back then. We didn't realize, you know, confinement that these creatures was was such horrible slavery to huge, hugely, emotionally intelligent animal but, I had the opportunity because she worked there to sort of get behind the scenes access and and spent time with some of the trainers and some of the animals. And I just fell in love And I, you know, from a very young age, was like, I wanna be a shamu trainer, and then I needed a work experience.

James Arthur Smith - 00:05:28
And I started volunteering at Aquarium, and at aquarium. I learned about aquaculture and re and the ideas of restorative aquaculture, and this this idea was planted on a path that matured many, many years later. Wow. Wow. But If we get more into how I got into aquaculture specifically and Seatopia, it's worth it. I think even clarifying for your audience One of the unique things about Seatopia is that we do not source any wild caught seafood. It is a 100% off culture.

James Arthur Smith - 00:06:01
But what we're doing that's very different than traditional aquaculture is that Seatopia is this niche product, this niche sales channel that is designed to support ARGUSAN aquaculture projects that are not necessarily applicable for the commodity distribution channel. So I ended up working at a farm in the city of Cortez that was raising these beautiful yellow tail that this Sediolo Rivaleana, some of the most beautiful sushi grade seafood in the world, you know, this is deep water pens, you know, over a 100 feet deep, in turquoise water swimming with, you know, imagine swimming in an aquarium with 10,000 friendly fish that wanna come and rev up against you. That that's what Kibachi are. They're really interesting. Wow. Amazing and and social sort of social. At least we proceed it as a social.

James Arthur Smith - 00:07:01
And In this process, I realized that while we were doing, like, low density farming in the best potential location, and raising fish using algae based feeds, that once we got into the market and tried to sell it that we were getting lumped into the same bucket as other farms producing the same species, but with higher density farming practices, with corn and soy feeds, with, copper nets that provide, you know, that are fouling heavy metals into the environment. And this lack of optionality and incentive from the the buyers, from the distributors, from the importers, just was like a a a real limitation to the ability to grow and innovate and build a financially, like, financially sustainable business that was doing best in class aquaculture, truly hard at the solution. And this, birthed Seatopia through in the short story, you know, I build Seatopia as a sales channel to provide consumers Initially, in my community, my friends and family that I knew about this product with direct access to the best quality sushi grade seafood that was, you know, raised on algae rich diet and, you know, no antibiotics, no hormones doing it right. The longer form is I also, in the interim, had to build a wholesale distribution. I had to drive fish. I had to, like, knock on the doors of of restaurant tours and bring chefs down there and do events. Yeah.

James Arthur Smith - 00:08:44
So And and going further back, I also, prior to that, had a lot of experience, in having built an energy bar company that we got to nationwide distribution and whole foods through all the distributors, the k e's and UNFI's and all that stuff. And that experience kind of helped guide me on what I do and don't wanna do with Seatopia and and kinda how we're really positioned initially just on building this trusted brand and, and harvesting this sort of niche direct to consumer segment of of audiences. Of of people.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:09:31
I'm just picturing James inviting chefs to dive with the 10,000 fish as their As they're buying event?

James Arthur Smith - 00:09:39
Dude, it was amazing. It was so fun bringing chefs down there and as part of the vision of Seatopia is how do we bring more people to farms because the the biggest challenge for us is, again, there's this that this limitation on who you can sell to if people are gonna lump all farmed fish into the same bucket. Right? To be totally fair, most farm fish is done for commodity distribution, and most farm fish is not something that I would feed my family. The exceptions to the rules would exist and need to be celebrated. When you go to a farm like this, it is just a beautiful example of of the type of environment that you wanna swim with, that makes memories that will last forever that you take photos from here. Friends are like, wow, are you where are you?

James Arthur Smith - 00:10:23
You know, it's not when you're in a breed protective environment and you're surrounded by thousands of fish and shellfish and kelp and sharks and whale sharks. That's beautiful. I wanna go there and it was awesome and what we're trying to do with COVID is to to get more people to to realize that there are places that are absolutely beautiful just like, you know, a lot of people have driven up the 5 freeway in California and smelled these, you know, factory farm cattle, you know, these these feedlots are disgusting, and you would never wanna have a picnic there or go for a walk there or live there, but then you get up to big, sir, and you see these beautiful ranches and and cattle with an ocean view just roaming around and you're like, wow, let's have a picnic here. Let's live here. This is that is the difference between farming practices and intention and sort of outcome. So, there are some really, really beautiful farms, like ones that we're working with in New Zealand or Hawaii or Peru or Mexico and these places, I hope over time become sort of household brands in the same way that, like, white oak pastures and some of these truly, like, legendary examples of rotation crops and grazing animals integrated into these culture systems, these practices and these farm brands are helping sort of raise the tide and all ships are racing with, like, regenerative agriculture.

James Arthur Smith - 00:11:17
The same thing is happening starting to happen with with aquaculture. There's a handful of these farms that their stories are worth telling, and we're enabling consumers to vote with their dollars for those specific farms and those specific farming practices. Amen.

Kyle Krull - 00:12:13
Chase, my brain is having a hard time keeping track of the different directions so we can take this conversation. There's, like, splinters of different, like, veins we can go down. Right? And there's there's so much to cover.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:12:23
We got time.

James Arthur Smith - 00:12:23
I really appreciate

Kyle Krull - 00:12:24
it. We got some time.

James Arthur Smith - 00:12:25
I I

Kyle Krull - 00:12:26
was actually gonna go towards that beef example that you just provided. How, you know, commodity raised meats for a long time, you know, beef was beef. You know, the newest grass fed, grass finished beef, and now there's regenerative beef and how you can utilize animals to have a positive impact on the ecosystem. And I think you're spot on with that. Sort of parallel line you're drawing with, like, the way farmers is different than aquaculture. But dive into that a little bit and help our consumers understand, like, what is, like, traditional farm raised fish versus what you were doing to seetopia and why is it so important both from, like, a ecosystem impact perspective and a human nutrition perspective.

James Arthur Smith - 00:13:00
Yes. Yes. I'm so glad that you asked that. And that those questions are very important. Right? So let's talk about maybe I'll just back up a little bit and give you sort of the the history of aquaculture. Right? So Yeah. Unlike farming of livestock on land, which we've been doing for 1000 years, farming of fish in the ocean as far as, like, raising from eggs to maturity. We've only been doing since the 1970s. There's a rich history in, like, Hawaii and Asia raising sort of extensive farming practices, extensive farming is allowing them just to grow in semi controlled environments, cultivating an environment where let's say, phytoplankton or a zooplankton, you're like, you're kind of like creating environment for the zooplankton to to live.

James Arthur Smith - 00:13:28
And then there be those zooplankton, fireblade, being eaten by larger organisms, and you're creating this environment that sort of ranching has been going on very rich history in Hawaii and Asia and different places. Oftentimes with lower trophic animals, smaller animals, and herbaceous animals. But with, what we're talking about with modern aquaculture raising animals from eggs, really, literally creating a hatchery, and salmon is one of salmon, Ranzeno, Talapia, fish that are heartier and have a history of living in varying environmental conditions started first. So if we talk about salmon in the 1970s in Norway, for example, because salmon go from fresh water to salt water back and forth, they're a little bit heartier. And because when they're born or when they exit late, there's so much fats and nutrients in that row. It's literally designed to feed that fingerling for multiple days.

James Arthur Smith - 00:14:43
It's gonna live just on the fat of that. It's it's doesn't need to be fed. It doesn't need to immediately go out and eat those were sort of the 1st commercially, scaled carnivorous farms. And What they did when they first started raising these salmon is they said, well, what did the salmon eat in the wild? And let's grind up, bait fish, which is what they're eating in the wild, and bring those fish, ground up into the farm so that they can literally just eat the same exact nutrient. And so Right.

James Arthur Smith - 00:15:26
Ground up sardines and anchovies turned into feed for these let's call it fish 1.0, aquaculture 1.0, aquaculture 2.0, we realized that some of the challenges of scalability in aquaculture was that because in the wild, only 1% of those 100 of 1000 of eggs would survive. And then in in a hatchery, you had, you know, let's just call it 90% survival rate. All of a sudden, you have this imbalance. Right?

James Arthur Smith - 00:15:51
You have Instead of 1% surviving, you have 90% surviving, but you're still taking from the wild to feed them. So you have an influx of farm salmon eating a finite supply of wild bait fish, and this imbalance scaling into the 19 eighties nineties was alerted to the industry and and and governments in general said, hey, let's change the feed so that we actually can build aquaculture as a sustainable component. And what they did in order to relieve pressure on Baitfish was they said, let's find alternatives and industry solved it in a very sort of, patriarch, patriarch role manner. And we said, well, we've done it already on land. We've figured it out. We feed our cows, corn and soy, and corn and soy allows them to grow fat and it doesn't cost a lot, and it's all subsidized.

James Arthur Smith - 00:16:44
And for the next 10 to 15 years, of most of yahoo culture followed that model, and most of aqua culture said, let's feed her carnivorous, salmon, corn, and soy, and they had mixed results. They continue to grow at moderate rates, but just like me and you, increased levels of those seed oils causes inflammation. Those omega sixes cause inflammation in our gut, and it cause inflammation to Sam's gut, and allows and increases the likelihood of susceptibility to disease. And we had a lot of salmon die offs, and we had a lot of problems in the aquaculture industry. And you saw also a lot of of in an increased use of preventative antibiotics being put into the feed and this now proliferated. So if you have, you have if you look at the studies that were done on Farm Sam, you'd see, like, in the early phases, like, the omega 3 levels are really high or even higher than the wild because we are biomagnifying everything into, like, grinding up and feed it to them and learn it in close environments, but they're using less energy, and they're just these, like, sort of, like, in cattle, we have, like, cobay beef and things of that nature.

James Arthur Smith - 00:17:41
You know, you have these really fatty animals, and we were producing these, like, super fatty, delicious, high omega 3, farm salmon, but also anything else that was in the environment was also bio accumulated. So things like microplastics. PCBs, mercury levels were also bioaccumulating. And that kind of got resolved when we switched to corn and soy, but that's supplemented for and those problems are like glyphosate and omega sixes and the need for antibiotics because you're not giving them what they actually need. They're not, you're not focusing on their nutritional, like, density. You're focused on just growing them cheaply. Were today in sort of aquaculture 3.0, thankfully.

James Arthur Smith - 00:18:40
3.0 was this evolution in the thinking of, well, how do we just optimize for the healthiest fish so that they don't need the antibiotics to begin with. What can we feed fish that will give them the strongest immune system to begin with? And produce the best outcome. And if you go back to the beginning, it's interesting to note that salmon in the wild eating those sardines and anchovies, those sardines and anchovies ate something smaller. And if you go down to the very base level, the base trophic level, the microalgis are what's actually giving the salmon the omega threes that make it delicious, healthy, and nutritious.

James Arthur Smith - 00:19:25
The traditional health benefits of eating seafood really come down to there's a lot of things, but the thing that most studies focus on is EPA and DHA. And those heart healthy omega threes are not biologically produced in salmon. They're bioaccumulated through what it eats and the omega 3 of EP and DHA get into that salmon because further down the food chain, it the microalgies converted sunlight into these oils, and it is the same the same process of getting omega threes into salmon can be bypassed if we just feed them the omega 3 fatty acid oils directly. So aquaculture 3.0 is utilizing farmed microalgae oils to feed directly to these salmon and then and then supplementing or replacing the use of fish oil now for microbiologies and replacing the need for a fish meal with things like soldierfly proteins or other insect proteins or mycelium proteins. And this is where we're at today, which is how do we develop truly scalable and nutritious feed for aquaculture.

James Arthur Smith - 00:20:52
And that is sort of a long winded way of saying commodity salmon, commodity aquaculture is sort of phase 1, phase 2, and there's a lot of that still happened in day, but there are a handful of farms that are innovating on using alternative feeds. And it's also worth noting that there's farmers that have evolved away from monoculture to poly culture.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:21:25
Yes.

James Arthur Smith - 00:21:26
And that's also really exciting because that's where we get into the into catalyzing the ecosystem services of multiple organisms in this ecological environment. So to paint a picture, a monoculture, you just have salmon growing in pens, and you're optimizing to keep that environment as clean and sterile possible, sometimes using chemicals, using antibiotics, and just trying to pretend like this is a laboratory. We control the environment we can when we are gods, you know, and this this traditional approach, moderate success, you know, agriculture today is producing more seafood than wild caught. Granted wild caught has a lot of problems. It's, you know, over fish, pollution, you know, finite resource. Pressure pressure pressure, but at least agriculture's producing a lot of the seafood. That said, we've seen the downsides of industrial agriculture on land and applying those same principles to aquaculture is is is foolish.

James Arthur Smith - 00:22:18
We need to be a lot more humble and and approach aquaculture, in my opinion, in the same way that we're that we're approaching land based agriculture that we are stewards of the land and that, like, cattle farms done right. They're not growing cattle. What they're doing is they're growing the soil and they're growing the microbes and they're growing the mycelium network and they're growing variety of grasses and they're trying to create an environment that's attractive for all these different organisms from birds to badgers, you know, and when done right, they create this healthy environment and that one of the end products is beef that nutrientdensive rich, but it's all these other organisms. We're doing that in aquaculture today in what we call integrated multi trophic aquaculture or polyculture or mixed species aquaculture. It's really just who are the players And as you mentioned earlier, Kelp has gotten a lot of, press Over the last few years, which is amazing. We need more press for for Kelp. It provides ecosystem services in the form of absorbing dissolved particulate out of the environment. It creates habitat for other species.

James Arthur Smith - 00:23:39
It's a nursery. If you leave it there, you're around instead of harvest, you know, it actually helps create biodiversity. But that is one ecosystem player. Some of the other ecosystem players in a multi truck got culture with Sam and use it as the example. Salmon are carnivorous, so they need to be fed. And if you're gonna feed them a clean feed like the algebraic feeds with the soldier fly larvae proteins, their poop is not waste. It is not a toxic environment.

James Arthur Smith - 00:24:08
It becomes a super food, a fertilizer that is healthy for the environment as long as you have partners there. If they're in a monoculture and they're in a high density environment and there's not the right siding and there's not the right circulation. Granted all that poop becomes toxic. You know, it's it's it's all about having the right partnership and the right concentration, but there are organisms like shellfish, like deposit feeders, bacteria microorganisms that all thrive on an environment that has the right balance of nutrients. In in the ocean, we have, environments that are either like utrophic or oleutrophic, like too much nutrients or not enough nutrients, and dead zones in the ocean that don't have enough nutrients can be brought back to life when you introduce structure, when you introduce nutrients. So creating environments that previously didn't have enough nutrients, for example, to even grow kelp or even in order to grow, let alone something like shellfish, like oyster muscle scallops.

James Arthur Smith - 00:25:15
Pair those with a fish farm, all of a sudden, you have those nutrients and you have the upcycling and you have the filter feeders that are cleaning the the water. And when done right, you create structures that can actually act as fish of tracking devices as habitat structure that builds biodiversity environment. And I'm not, by any means, saying that we have it completely figured out, but I'm saying that by following nature's model, and fostering the ecosystem services that some of these different orgs systems do symbotically work together. We are learning that we can farm in a much different way, and we can start to see the potential of abundance that can be created in the oceans because the oceans are massive over 70% of the of the world. On this planet that we call Earth, which is, in my opinion, a misnomer, it should be oceans, is water. We do not have a lack of land to grow fish. We have a lack of vision to grow ecosystems in a truly beautiful regenerative scale away in the oceans.

James Arthur Smith - 00:26:27
And So that's kind of where we're at today is learning how to evolve away from the model that was scaled initially in off culture and the crazy story behind the scenes is that those big farms oftentimes were scaled with the exact same dollars and holding companies that scale big ag on land. They put the exact same business model into the ocean, but ties are changing. You know, there are there are a handful of pilot projects. There's a growing awareness for, for aquaculture done right for artists and projects that are good stewards of the environment. There are people that are asking deeper questions that are applying that same line of thinking that they apply to their beef and their chicken. How is it grown?

James Arthur Smith - 00:27:28
What did it eat? What did it eat? And what is the nutritional value? You know, how was it? When was it harvested? Ask just more questions about seafood, apply the same line of thinking that you do to your chicken and your beef and your tomatoes to your seafood.

James Arthur Smith - 00:27:44
And you'll be able to say no to commodity farmed and yes to farms that are doing it right. And that's that's the exciting work that I'm I'm a part of today, and what is and I'm excited because there are farms reaching out to us now proactive saying, Hey. You guys are the only outlet that we found that is willing to pay for what we're doing and at how we're doing it. And every other importer and distributor and retailer has told us, dear, the system's not broke. Don't try to fix it. Just the keep producing more volume.

James Arthur Smith - 00:28:24
And if you can lower the price, we'll buy it, then that is not an incentive to it. Evolution is not incentive to innovation. We need consumers. We need a group of consumers willing to pay for healthy seafood, the healthiest seafood quantifiably nutrient rich, quantifiably clean, and hopefully voting also for specific practices that are part of the solution because the writings on the wall, like, we can't feed the world with industrials come with industrial wild caught seafood. Like, we have to I'm not saying like, don't support artists and local fisheries, but the need to develop solutions that are truly scalable are paramount. Right?

James Arthur Smith - 00:29:14
Like, there's a finite supply of wild seafood that number actually plateaued in 2002. We have not increased the quantity of seafood harvested from the ocean since 2002. There's just a finite supply. Right? Like, since world war 2, we've been using Sonar and we've been using spotter plans, and we've just been using all this technology developed for war for it. Warfare to very efficiently mine the oceans for seafood. But there's a plateau there's diminishing returns that we put too much pressure on it. We're seeing the collapse of species.

James Arthur Smith - 00:29:52
I mean, I mean, we're we're kind of in, like, the 6 great extinction error. Right? Like, things are there's species are going extinct every 20 minutes during this podcast. How many species are gonna go extinct? Wow. If we do things right, if we have more regenerative practices, if we optimize for ecosystem services, we can actually produce food systems that are scalable and having that positive impact.

James Arthur Smith - 00:30:18
And that that gets me excited. That's that's beautiful. You know, that is that is the legacy that I'm I'm endeavoring to build. You know, I I I have 2 little girls. One is due. 1 is still in the oven. She's due in a month.

James Arthur Smith - 00:30:41
One is old enough that, you know, we go to the tide pools, and we're having a good time at playing. And I want her to see some of the things that I got to see when I was a kid, and I I got to see abundant environments. You know, my earliest memories are traveling down the Baja Peninsula with my father and free diving in the city of Cortez and him going down and cutting up shellfish and just masses of fish coming around and we were catching fish after another without even bait on our hooks. We literally had soda canoes with a string and a hook and you just drop it off the side of our inflatable boat and you pull up a fish after fish after fish, and then we would get scallops and we just ate cooked on the beach and felt like I was just in this Wonderland, you know, and to have those experiences and the experiences that I've had traveling, I've had the opportunity to sail to the Galapagos and I've explored the whole Pacific coast, well, not the whole Pacific coast, the Eastern Pacific from from California to to Chile. And there are things are changing rapidly. And if we can create more marine protected areas and allow nature to rebuild her resilience and do this in, like, pragmatic impactful today. We're making these investments.

James Arthur Smith - 00:32:02
Like, One of the cool things about Seatopia is we're actually planting kelp with every single order, which is really exciting. We planted over 7000 kelp last season. These things are measurable. And it might be small, but relatively, like, we've built Kelt Forest, right, and I want my kids to go diving in a kelp forest in a repurchase area that we created and see abundance. So we can do it right. We can build extensive farms and integrated multi trophic aquaculture farms and feed fish a healthy nutrients that are creating this that are fostering that this abundance, it just requires, a little bit more thought on, you know, where we wanna vote with our dollars, but each of us are voting three times a day.

James Arthur Smith - 00:32:46
I mean, you guys are speaking this every single day with the with these other brands. Right? Like, I'm excited to think about the the potential for more regenerative seafood brands because on this blue planet that we all live on, even though we are, you know, on land and we feel comfortable on land, we are tied to the ocean as intrinsically connected to every second breath that we take is is oxygen produced from the ocean. You know, it controls the climate it is the largest potential lever for climate mitigation, right? Like, I truly appreciate the work that a lot of these farmers are doing on land and but every time they say that carbon storage in in the soil is the largest ecosystem service that you can do. I it it is omitting the fact that we live on a blue planet.

James Arthur Smith - 00:34:06
And if we can catalyze ecosystem services in the ocean, man, we have potential to really rapidly change our relationship to on this, to to the ocean, to to to climb to on this planet. I mean, the ocean has the power to change climate, period.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:34
Yeah. I totally agree with that. It almost feels like, I'd be curious if there's a stat, like the number of people who have actually gone on the ocean on the planet. You know, is that is that 25 percent of people humans on the planet? Is that 10%? Like, what is that member? And when you start thinking about the whole planet as a potential resource and or catalysts for positive change. Like, it's it's almost like you're unlocking a map that didn't exist because to your point, like, we're all land based animals. Right? Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 00:34:53
Or at least today, for the most part. So yeah, thinking about the ocean as a an avenue to create positive change and mitigate climate change. Is it, I think, something that most people just don't go there because that's not where they spend their time.

James Arthur Smith - 00:35:12
Now No. No. This disconnection from nature is is is that the crux of our our of our problem. Right? It's like

Kyle Krull - 00:35:23
Yeah. Yeah. No. We moved ourselves

James Arthur Smith - 00:35:26
in the ecosystem.

Kyle Krull - 00:35:28
Yeah. So we no longer understand the impact the decisions we make, especially with what we Yes. How that affects the rest of everything else around us and those systems.

James Arthur Smith - 00:35:36
Yeah. And I

Anthony Corsaro - 00:35:36
think we also can't be perfectionist about it because I've the unlock to me when researching Ethiopia and, like, getting ready for the episode was If I'm only gonna eat wild caught seafood, then I shouldn't eat regenerative beef anymore. I should just eat venison. You know, I should hunt elk. I should, you know, go to young stone and try and give myself a bison. Like, it's it's the same thing. So you can't you can't say, hey, we can have rich stewarded polyculture environments that produce abundant food and business services on land, but say like, oh, we shouldn't do that in in aquaculture either. Which was really the big unlock for me was the multi trofin aquaculture, you know, being related to poly culture or even permaculture, like, oh, shit. Okay.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:36:08
That's Like, when I think of agriculture or seafood right now, I basically think of wild caught or farm raised and farm raised is just being a monoculture. And that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about. Doing it in a totally different way, that's circular, that's regenerative, that the human being is still involved in that process, you know, as the as the caretaker, as the person kind of moving it forward.

James Arthur Smith - 00:36:38
Involved, but not on the top. Right? Involved. Like, we are part of it. We're learning how it works. We are stewards. We're not the owners. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad that you brought up that analogy of being hunter. Right? Like, I I've been a hunter since I was a teenager and I appreciate it. It's with with the intimate experience of taking the life of an animal, you have this humility and this this sense of of remorse and guilt and connection and responsibility, it's important. And people should have that experience if you're gonna choose to eat beef or chicken or any animal, right, having that connection is really important, but to also say that you're gonna eat farmed animals that you don't you haven't asked deeper questions Right? And you're gonna say only, I'm only gonna eat, wild caught medicine is not scalable, right?

James Arthur Smith - 00:37:34
We can't all Jessie Wild Bison, for example, that that proved to be detrimental to the entire population of Bison, right? Like there used to be a respected, job called a market hunter. They would go into the wild and hunt animals often buff buffalo and bring them back into the cities. That collapsed because it wasn't scalable. Right? Like, farming done right has the ability to scale food systems. Done right is is the important question.

James Arthur Smith - 00:38:11
And if we apply those same principles, should we all continue to only eat wild caught seafood? Well, we can't. Right? If you want to eat salmon, if everybody continued to just eat wild salmon, we would deplete the entire relation of Wild Salmon in less than a season. Right? Some of these these runs like copper river salmon, sometimes they don't even open up the the the whole run for a year, like, they'll just the quotas are so small because the resource is is finite and they're under threat.

James Arthur Smith - 00:38:36
So Thank you for for painting that analogy. And I'm glad that, we are creating these analogies that people can shift the way they think about seafood because we have this extra layer of confusion and misinformation in the aquaculture industry that you don't have in land based. So there's one challenge, which is like farmed, commodity factory farm versus artists and regenerative integrated multi trophic polyculture. That's that's Okay. We have to understand that there's optionality that there's different types of army practices.

Kyle Krull - 00:39:29
But

James Arthur Smith - 00:39:29
in the seafood world, we have this additional layer of confusion misinformation that stems from the fact that there's still a very rich and robust wild caught fishery that feels threatened from farmed fish. And it's this in fighting and this sort of tribalism between wild fisheries that are trying to say, hey. What we're doing is sustainable, and we're doing our best to sustain it and our entire communities are dependent on this, and this is part of our culture and our history. And then you have farmers who are saying, well, Cool. But we also are trying to build something that is scalable and sustainable, and we think that this is the future And they're both competing for the same buyers, and there's all this in fighting and miscommunication. And that makes it very confusing And there's data from from grocery stores that say people come into the fish market, section, and they're overwhelmed by the the messaging and they opt for something else. They go and get beef or chicken or pork, and that confusion is a big challenge because seafood is healthy.

James Arthur Smith - 00:40:29
It's one of the healthiest proteins you can get when done to write. It can also be a scalable food system, but this confusion of, like, should I eat wild caught versus should I eat farmed? And what farms are good versus bad just adds this complexity. So as a business Seatopia does not sell any wild cut seafood, not because I'm gonna say that any wild cut is bad. It's that there's enough demand already for wild cut seafood. What is missing, in my opinion, in my system, we exist, is a source of what are the best farms in order to the best form to practice and how do I choose those and how do I vote for those?

James Arthur Smith - 00:41:05
Because if we can educate consumers on how to buy seafood better from the best farms that are scalable food systems that are feeding them nutritious ingredients that are doing integrated multi trip got closer, then we can help create a healthier relationship with with seafood. So

Kyle Krull - 00:41:41
Yes. I mean, I am emblematic of the exact problem that you're talking about. You know, I I moved to Thailand for a while, became a dive master, learned about what commercial fishing was like in 3rd world countries and decided I'm not gonna eat any seafood. I'm not gonna eat anything that comes out of the ocean because I can't support these this is. And at the same time, I knew that, I guess you called it, aqua aqua culture 2.0, is not necessarily the best from an nutritional density perspective and or environmental perspective. So I was like, I'm just I'm just done with seafood for now. And then in my own consumer education journey, I started to understand that there are certain companies and organizations who are doing it right, especially in, like, the buy valves in the shellfish world, and now continuing to learn more about these integrative.

Kyle Krull - 00:42:09
I I can't even say that the term, right, integrative, polyculture, multi culture, farm systems. Multitropic. There you go. And this this this can affect my point. Like, in this world where there's these 2 binaries that are against each other, neither of which are really poised as heroes. How do you educate consumers about like, hey, we're sort of walking the line in between these two things.

Kyle Krull - 00:42:38
We're we're we're farmed, but we're farmed, you know, 3.0 were better how do you get consumers to buy into that? And what sort of messaging has really resonated so far? Why is it? Why do you feel like it's successful?

James Arthur Smith - 00:43:00
What's working for us is is is what we're learning through this journey is that talking about sustainability and regenerative practices we get a lot of like, you know, that's nice. You know, good. Cool. You know, I'm like, oh, maybe we'll write an article about it, you know? But it doesn't drive dollars. You know, and this is the challenge that a lot of my friends that are building regenerative ag brands face is like, how do we get dollars, not just, like, pat on the backs. Like, oh, good for you. You know, this is good for the planet.

James Arthur Smith - 00:43:32
You know, talking to, like, impact investors and and people who are, like, saying that they wanna do good for the the the planet. It's cool at all. But you have to build a financially sustainable business and who is really gonna pay for these better farming practices? You know, carnivorous fish the feed is the single most expensive part of the farming operation. Right? So if you're gonna increase the the cost of the feed by going from, you know, subsidized corn and soy to something like algae based oils and insect proteins you have a significant increase in costs.

James Arthur Smith - 00:44:02
You know? What about, you know, the astaxanthin that's in there? Like, sam ed, for example, get their color from what they eat. Right? There's this they're astaxanthin is a red algae that that gives the color to things like shrimp and crabs and salmon eventually as they get consumed by them, and you can feed astaxanthin to salmon while natural versus synthetic antigen. These are really inch or, you know, this is important questions to ask, like, our consumer is gonna pay for natural acids in them to get a beautiful rich color that is natural and actually has the natural and antioxidants that actually take astaxanthin personally as a as a supplement.

James Arthur Smith - 00:44:40
It's a healthy thing. A lot of people do. It's a nutrient analysis that people drink.

Kyle Krull - 00:45:06
Just just for the listeners at home, James does not have a reddish hue about his his skin. The same way it affects the shellfish.

James Arthur Smith - 00:45:16
It does have some interesting benefits at least some studies and why it was originally introduced to us. Pressey is that it also helps build up your tolerance to, the sun and helps with Melanin. So it, like, your less likely to get sunburn when you're on, you know, when you're taking a staffing with, I'm not a doctor, but this is this is this is there are some studies that have that have shown this, and this is why why how I was first introduced to it. But that said, the feed inputs are very expensive, and to get people to pay for better quality farming just on a basis of environmental or social impact that doesn't affect their lives is tricky. So one of the things that we learned over time was that the nutrient density of these animals the cleanliness of these animals can also be quantified. And so what we've been doing is really focusing on quantifying the cleanliness of seafood and nutritional value of seafood and providing the certificate analysis on our website and providing this source of seafood that is all certified clean results in people wanting to pay for fish that is gonna be healthier and cleaner for their household. Right? Like, if you can if you had 2 options and one was, potentially infected with glyphosate.

James Arthur Smith - 00:46:34
And the other one that you know was grown without glyphosate, are you gonna pay more for the clean one? The same thing we're doing with It's like one has mercury and TCBs and microplastics, and the other one here is a certain certificate analysis. Quantifiably, no microplastics at detectable levels, you know, quantifiable levels of mercury that are magnitudes lower than FDA. Guidelines, you know, the right ratio of omega threes to omega sixes. That's what we're doing with Sidopia, and that's actually working. So The funny thing is that we've evolved from even talking about regenerative sustainable to just like, this is certified clean.

James Arthur Smith - 00:47:13
And this is what consumers are willing to pay for is what we found. People are actually willing to pay for at least in a very niche audience. There are some people who are willing to pay for quantifiably, cleaner, more nutrient rich foods, and that is, at this point in our journey, enough to catalyze farms to make these investments and building our little supply chain of farms that want to be part of this movement. And, hey, if we keep doing this over time, it will scale the potential is there to be bigger, but it's a, it's an early, chapter in a very long, journey.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:06
Yeah. I feel like just harvesting some themes that are very clearly tied in, whether it's Sutopia or really all the brands we've talked about. It's like, this need to break out of the commodity system because you're doing something different. The fact that the regenerative story and the altruistic benefits of the environmental outcomes doesn't drive purchase, and then the need to translate that into something else that consumer cares more about. That's more of a personal self interest. And it's it's very clear like that. That is the way we're gonna have commercial success, at least in the short term, for these businesses, which if they don't have commercial success, they can't continue to do the good altruistic So, you know, it's that that's all very clear. I think an interesting thing that's coming to mind for me, and I was happy you kind of prompted the glyphosate comparison is I almost think what you're doing in seafood right now, James, is more compared to what organic did in farming than what we're doing in regenerative farming.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:48:44
Like to me, land based ag regenerative is 4.0. Organic was 3.0. And so you're almost trying to differentiate with consumers that there's multiple types of farming, which we've already accomplished in land based ag with organic with that seal of, like, toxicity free, which I'm not surprised that's how it's translated for you with consumers. Right? And so Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 00:49:16
You're actually trying to do both, which I think is is very challenging because like organic kind of pave the way already for regenerative in a way and you're doing what think organic and return if I both tried to do online based ags. So I don't know. Hope that hope that made sense. It made sense in my brain before I said it, but

James Arthur Smith - 00:49:32
Yeah. No. It's it's it's definitely important to have that optionality, right, and just starting with, like, what's not in it is really important. Right? Like, there's if there's not antibiotics, if there's not hormones, if there's not mercury, if there's not microplastics, whew. That's a That's a much better option. Right? Like, and I and absolutely the USDA organic, protocols are just like, what's not in it? And that's kinda what we're doing with Seatopia. Also, if we can quantify, like, this is more nutrient dense.

James Arthur Smith - 00:50:03
How do we say that this is, you know, has more omega threes than other leading brands or than the FDA studies on you know, wild caught comparatives, same species. That is something that we're we're tiptoeing into and exploring. But it is very difficult to sell people is what I found on regenerative practices. You know, people are are it it's at this point, you know, environmentally friendly, sustainable, like, these these terms, they're sort of like table stakes for our audience. If it's like, if it's not that, I'm not gonna buy it, but I expect Seatopia to at least be that. But why I keep coming back to Seatopia, why I keep coming back is the certified cleanliness and the nutrient value, and that is something that we're still trying to work on.

James Arthur Smith - 00:50:54
Right? Like, how do we literally, like, it's comes again back to, like, to build a market for better farming practices, it has to impact the consumer in a way that they're willing to make investments with their dollars. And health is the only thing that we've we've found thus far that really drives purchase. Yep. So what are the super foods in seafood? Right?

James Arthur Smith - 00:51:29
What is the super feed how do we produce the most nutrient dense seafood on the planet, right? How do we create these ecosystems that Cool. They have ecosystem benefits. They're sequestering carbon. They're they're offsetting ocean acidification. They're creating biodiversity.

James Arthur Smith - 00:51:53
Fish and tracking devices, all these things, but how do we produce fish that are better than other fish that people will actually pay for because, oh, that's cool. Doesn't pay the bills. Totally. A lot of our customers are paying a lot of money for their biohacking and for their, you know, their their their longevity. And if you can produce seafood that has the traditional historical benefits of a of the sort of blue zone Mediterranean diet that has more mic more omega threes and EPA and the selenium and the lysine and the vitamin a and vitamin d that is going to be more bioavailable than a pill form. That's interesting because there's a very big difference in, like, the trophosate versus, you know, a shelf stable form of of, omega 3 capsule or oil.

James Arthur Smith - 00:52:56
You know, the some of these omega threes are very fragile, you know, and the the long chain omega threes oxidize relatively easily. So what if you just super freeze this with nitrogen and serve it as a sushi grade piece of fish and you actually get all the nutrients in this bioavailable form? And could quantify it. And that's kinda where we're at today. It's like, how do you produce super foods through creating the best environment and quantify it because that's what I want, at least. Right?

James Arthur Smith - 00:53:29
And maybe it's, at this point, sort of an niche audience, and it's is more expensive, but these systems with economies of scale are very, very interesting, and they can scale. So Yeah. That's kinda that's what

Kyle Krull - 00:53:53
we're working. I think you're spot on, and it's a really interesting kind of thought exercise or thought experiment where, like, if you think about the supplement industry and how massive that industry is and how big it has been, you know, maybe to your point today's audiences, like, people who are looking for true, like nutrition and food might be small. If you can build the bridge against that audience to the people who spend 100 of 1000 of dollars a year on supplements and get people to understand like, Hey, if you're consuming real food, that's actually nutrient dense. Maybe you don't need to spend that much money on your supplements. Like, that changes the equation for people. And if you think about, like, pantry share if you were. How much money people spend on food and or supplements?

Kyle Krull - 00:54:27
You know, if you could reallocate those dollars to pay the premium on something like seafood or regenerative beef or, you know, those those really nutrient dense foods, you're then supporting those systems that have the positive ecological benefit as well. Right? So I think it's really interesting to go down that that rabbit hole, and I think there's a some technology coming out in the future where it's like nutrient density test team is gonna become what's more like widely available, and you are well poised for that world. You're giving me like a big thumbs up. So, like, how are you thinking about that future? And what you're doing. Yeah.

James Arthur Smith - 00:55:01
I mean, like, I'm I'm thinking about the world where you take out your phone and you can just take a photo and you can see, you know, like, with an app that Nutrien Densing and bioavailable is something that that is gonna be a game changer, right, when labels or one thing and you're, like, kind of trusting a third party, you know, lab, whatever, but to actually have real time data and see that, that is gonna be a game changer. And people are gonna vote for what's actually healthiest mostly treat debts, right?

Kyle Krull - 00:55:26
Like I'm both super stoked for that future and also annoyed because I'm gonna be sitting there, like, in the prototype scanning to every single apple. Like, I wanna make sure that I pick the most nutrient in this one. You know what I mean? It's great. But I I mean, we should because then then we're incentivizing the producer food to focus on nutrient density rather than yield. And that changes the way we we think about our environment and our food in the whole mind. So, yeah, I agree that this is gonna be a huge unlock for the health of our our species and our planet in every some plan.

James Arthur Smith - 00:55:56
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it it also paints some really interesting things for us like practicality. Like, The distribution logistics of fresh seafood are part of what has created this sort of commodity seafood distribution thing because fresh seafood is really difficult to distribute. It's almost impossible to do it well because it's such a fragile protein. Right? So we've opted just to do super frozen seafood frozen seafood traditionally has the stigma associated with it. Because if you put a piece of fish in your home freezer and you freeze it, it's gonna be very different than what happens when we put in an oxygen freezer, a blast freezer, an IQF freezer freezing it with this this technology that brings it down to negative 70 degrees or, Wow. Delivering it with dry ice, and it never fluctuates. I mean, the the challenges of communicating that frozen seafood can be sushi graded are also significant.

James Arthur Smith - 00:56:47
And it's partially because there's this perception that at the fish market, the fish that's fresh is fresh, but like, if it was caught on any sort of industrial commercial boat that was out at sea for more than one day. I guarantee they froze it. Right? A lot of these folks go out to see for, you know, a month, multiple months at a time. They didn't leave that fresh. The it was frozen. And Then it was refreshed, but the question that you don't have visibility to is how long ago was it refreshed?

James Arthur Smith - 00:57:24
And was it refreshed more than once? Like, did they not sell it and then refreeze it and then put it out fresh again? And that has created this perception that fresh best. And it's also created this terrible miss miss, association of fishy fish being normal. Great. Fish don't smell fishy in the ocean, right? This, like, fishy smell means that it started to oxidize, right? If fish is smelly and stinky, It's not good.

James Arthur Smith - 00:57:51
Like, that is not sushi grade delicious seafood. Right? Like, don't let your friends eat fishy fish. There's so many people who say, oh, my wife doesn't like fish. You're I don't like fish and Mhmm. You just they just haven't had good fish. Right? You don't go to the ocean.

James Arthur Smith - 00:58:10
They're like, oh, it smells fishy unless there's, like, some sort of like dye off happening at the shoreline in the ocean. It smells like the ocean. And with vicious harvested and handled correctly and frozen, and you defrost it correctly and you wick the moisture and you put it out, it should smell like the marijuana of the ocean. Right? It shouldn't smell fishy. You know, the the tarwar is like what we get in wine, right?

James Arthur Smith - 00:58:35
The mayor is this this character of the minerality in the in that water and fish hold a lot of water in them compared to beef islamar water. So the water and how we freeze that water is very important. We could also go down like a weird rabbit hole of how nerdy we get about, like, the structure of water and the energy and water, but I don't know how much time we have to get all on those tangents.

Kyle Krull - 00:59:07
That sounds like an awesome rabbit hole for a different podcast, but I would love to go down there. That'd be really cool.

James Arthur Smith - 00:59:14
So

Kyle Krull - 00:59:16
So what's next for Seatopia in terms of, you know, how do you see your business growing? Is it getting more of the fisheries to do it the right way? Sorry. Not fisheries, but the the pull through operations to do it the right way? Are you looking to, like, specifically get a specific new type of fish into your system? How do you think about growth? And what what are your what's your path to to getting where you want to be?

James Arthur Smith - 00:59:39
Right now, we're just aggregating this sort of niche audience of of of buyers who are willing to pay for these, better practices and focusing that on the handful of farms that are willing to make these investments. You know, there's a handful of these farms that have these pilot projects or these small commercial projects that are not financially scalable yet. Right? They need more scale. They need economies of scale. They need buyers who are willing to pay. So what we're doing right now is, in some cases, like, providing purchase orders in advance to help farms transition to better farming practices. Right?

James Arthur Smith - 01:00:09
It can't turn the huge ship right away. You have to come to a farm that already has concessions in this and already is profitably selling, you know, to you know, their commodity, Costco, distribution, and food service stuff, but they're willing to make a bet with you know, let's call it, like, a percentage of their of their land, their territory, their their concessions and say, hey, on this, these lots, we're willing to make these investments in doing integrated multi trophic aquaculture using algae based feeds and soldier fly larvae, but it's gonna increase our our production costs X Y Z. At least initially, right? They and until we can prove that a handful of these farms are wildly successful and financially, you know, on on all levels, then it's it's gonna be a slow transition. So we're just trying to support these handful of farms that are making those investments prove that it is economically viable. And Yeah.

James Arthur Smith - 01:01:14
That's so, you know, our our kinda internal goal is to, like, convert 1% of the US seafood consumption to regenerative aquaculture products. And that's kind of ambitious at this at this stage, but, Yeah. Over time, I do believe that we will that we will demonstrate that these farms doing it right get tremendous value in not only the ecosystem services that the buy valves and the kelp and proximity that a thin fish provide, but to their brand. And to the actual products, like selling through commodity distribution, doesn't really it's your you give away all your power. Right? If if it how do we bring the power back? How do we allow with farms to set the price.

James Arthur Smith - 01:02:11
How do we allow them to build great farm stories, great farm brands, and make these loan investments so we're We're right now at aggregating demand, supporting the handful of farms, growing awareness, and, Yeah. That that's kinda the the journey that we're at. It's it's still pretty early stages. Our hope that is in a couple of years, there'll be you know, a 10x increase in in farms, you know, using these practices and, you know, just growing methodically, but, sort of aggressively, but it is is a small, niche in in a huge, wheel of seafood, you know, consumption at this stage.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:04
James is product development or product innovation or, like, packaged or process items a part of that when you're focused on the the proper seafood term is, but, like, the prime cuts or the fillets or whatever. But, like, to get there? Do we need people to eat fish broth? Or, like, I I don't even know.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:20
I don't know

Anthony Corsaro - 01:03:20
if about the space to even throw some some examples.

Kyle Krull - 01:03:23
Tara, what does he? Yeah.

James Arthur Smith - 01:03:25
Everything. Yeah. I'm glad that you appreciate that. I mean, we have to We don't have to. But from a operations perspective, if you take a whole fish and you just take the center cut fillet's off fee. You know, you're getting that's like 40% of the the animals. So 60% rents to have another outlet and just sending it to cat dog food. Cool. I love my dog, but I how do you get a premium market for those things? And and there isn't there's a lot of innovation in there happening.

James Arthur Smith - 01:03:50
You know, I'm glad that you brought up the the broth thing. Like, it's interesting to note that there's more collagen than fish bones than there is in chicken bones even. Like, it's double when you break when you when you do a froth from a clean fish, you actually can produce a lot of collagen and fish broth is really delicious and cooking with fish broth and making dashi from a clean fish is is is an incredible product. So how do we get more awareness and demand for products like that? How about livers Right? Like, the the liver of a clean fed sandwich or kumpachi is absolutely delicious and nutrient dense.

James Arthur Smith - 01:04:30
I mean, there's a reason why in the wild, you know, whether that's like killer whales or or sharks, like eating the liver first, like, they know they know that's where the nutrients are. Right? So clean liver incorporated into hot dogs and things of that nature. Like, let's do that in hearts as well. Like, I we've been eating these things, for years, but how do we create a packaged product that consumers want to appreciate and want and would appreciate really interesting opportunity there. Yeah, the the nose tail utilization is is innovating with some interesting things on utilizing skin for making leathers.

James Arthur Smith - 01:05:13
There are some companies making beautiful leathers out of the the fish skins. Personally, I like to eat the fish skins, but there's yeah, there's a lot of innovation there. Yeah, there's the it's ripe for for growth. And, we're just scratching the surface on the diversity of products and doing that if, you know, if we can increase utilization and yield, efficiency. It it helps the the company tremendously. There's also a lot of innovation that needs to be done on valuing ecosystem services. Right?

James Arthur Smith - 01:05:50
Like, I was just talking to a muscle farmer that has the largest concession in North America in federal waters to do this huge muscle farm and they're not able to get to market right now because regulatory challenges of quantifying whether or not it's it's safe for human consumption at this at this point, but, like, in the interim, they could have these these muscles in the water just providing the ecosystem services of cleaning the environment and creating habitat. But until we start valuing those things as the society, it's sitting fallow. This this this is just like open. You know, they have this concession. They have 1,000,000 of dollars invested, but they're not growing these muscle and every time you grow mussels, that shell is being formed through the process of calcification that's pulling carbon out of the ocean, offsetting ocean acidification. They're filtering that water and they're creating habitat that is attractive to other species.

James Arthur Smith - 01:06:53
When we do these things, we are benefiting the environment, but tell we have other structures that really value that. A lot of these projects are just sitting there dormant. So there's there's R and D side on the product development and also, like, sort of societal governmental policy things that need to evolve as well.

Kyle Krull - 01:07:19
It's

James Arthur Smith - 01:07:19
also worth noting on that on that subject. There's no, thin fish farms in North America that have been permitted permitted, and that is a a a a challenge that is gonna take a long time to resolve because there's so much, stigma against it that, you know, like, the coastal california coastal commission, for example, I had the opportunity to present to them our vision for aquaculture. And the same vision that I shared with, no other national oceanic and apospherical decision, and they were like, this is beautiful. We you get it in a great multi trip. Aquaculture, done right, sort of creating, food for the local, communities, and a net positive impact on the environment. If we, you know, define permitting that way that requires these sort of, you know, any thin fish permit should be required to have a equal or greater bioremediative, you know, nutrient uptake of shellfish and kelp, you know, on that same permitted site to have a net positive impact. When I shared the same presentation to Casa California Colson Commission, they just, like, shot arrows at me.

James Arthur Smith - 01:08:24
Like, I was the devil or something because they are of this age that believes that all agriculture is bad We're in this really cool, sort of, campus for blue Economy, businesses here in in LA and in San pedro or out on the water called Alta C. And we have the the portion of having a lot of, school school elementary, middle school, high school, and and college students come and visit and tour the facility, and it is incredible to see the next generation knows about aquaculture and appreciates the nuances of aquaculture in a way that our generation and older generations just don't. So I'm a I'm very optimistic that this next generation that's in elementary school right now and is learning about aquaculture with modern textbooks that are talking about the importance of raising fish in healthy systems and we're teaching or they're getting a chance to, like, see, this is algae based oil. These are kelp and these are shellfish, and they're seeing these things and understanding, appreciating how they work together. That generation is gonna be a different voter. And when those voters come into the positions of Coastal Commission permitting and whatnot, I think we'll have up to to evolve our relationship to producing seafood in North America in a healthier way.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:10:00
I mean, I think you just answered the last question. But I feel like I gotta ask it now, but I feel like you just answered it.

Kyle Krull - 01:10:07
Well, hold on. Before we go there, I can't help but think from a product innovation perspective. And maybe this is because our last episode was now a new Evinocin. But it's feeling like an an insistent ancestral blend fish stick Yeah. With fish organs you know, could be could be a way to get, like, more nutrients for the masses. Right? So just throwing it out there. You know? 100%.

James Arthur Smith - 01:10:29
It's it's in R and D. It is

Kyle Krull - 01:10:32
it's

James Arthur Smith - 01:10:32
such a good product. You know, do we make it shelf stable, or is it a a hot dog? Is it frozen? All of those things are really interesting. And And, I can tell you we've made some sausages in house that are just delicious using hard flavors and and and the head meet, you know, it culturally, if you go to, there's this, like, this is a cool story of, like, in China when they would like when they're trying to find, like, a a caravan was being was going across the land and these robbers came up and they they wanted to find who was the leader, the king, you know, the the rich and and he had He had, clothed himself like the commoner, so they didn't know who he was. And they they shared a meal and they just watched who ate and how they ate. And they the wealthy, nobleman knew that the most delicate, rich part of a fish with the head, and they aim the head first. And just watching that, they were able to identify, hey. This is the the educated nobleman And the other people who ate, you know, the other portion portion first were less educated. Wow. The head meat on fish is divine.

James Arthur Smith - 01:11:35
It has all these little structural and the anatomy of the bones creates these little pockets of meat that that holds the fat and the nutrients. So when you cook it, it's just always moist and delicious. So when you cut ahead off and just throw it away or give it to dog food, you're oftentimes giving away the parts. Right? So I have a friend, who's the chef at this restaurant in LA called Holbosch, which he takes the whole carcass and he, after takes the flavor, he then smokes it. And then it's a labor intensive process, but then picks all the meat off the head and off the carcass and in between the bones and that meat that's in between bones just like your your your bone is steaks, that meat is the most delicious.

James Arthur Smith - 01:12:16
And then you take that and you can make patets. There's so many things that you can do with that. You just it's just a matter of of will, really. Like, yeah, and labor costs.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:12:45
The beer law, I'm I'm I'm gonna use that so so much now, like, the the marine version.

Kyle Krull - 01:12:52
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:12:53
And it seems like the culinary, applications are pretty endless and still underdeveloped. Super, super fun conversation, James. Just to take us home, I feel like you did kind of already answer it, but but curious what else you have to add to it. Your question that we kind of close and and ask everyone is do we get regen brands to have 50% market share by 2050?

Kyle Krull - 01:13:14
Feels ambitious because James is aiming for 1% of the North American, seafood industry, but still wanna hear the answer.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:13:22
Hey. That's that's a part of it getting to that 50 dog.

James Arthur Smith - 01:13:25
Hey. 25 years is is it's a blink, but it's also gonna happen quickly. I mean, look what happened with COVID. You have 1 virus change culture, right, We'd have one bacterial, change people's perceptions to eating anything that has antibiotics in it. Right? Like, it could change overnight. Like, the earth earth is gonna do what she's gonna do. Right? We are trying to predict what's gonna happen in the future, but, I mean, how would how would we chain how would culture change if all of a sudden our perception of antibiotics shifted to, like, oh, if you have anything that has antibiotics and it's, you know, you're gonna lower your immune system.

James Arthur Smith - 01:13:48
Just some of us know that, but that knowest that that knowing and feeling and firsthand experience spreading through an entire society through culture, you know, like, what are the things that nature is gonna do? And how do we respond to it? I don't know. That's sort of a dark, potentially, answer. Let's let's be more optimistic. I mean, pragmatic approach that we can affect change because on the other parallel track, like, yeah, ecology and earth's gonna do what she's gonna do, but, but it is an education piece.

James Arthur Smith - 01:14:34
It's a long game, but, you know, I'm I'm optimistic that that it's a combination of policy changes. And education and and also technology, right, having that technology to be able to quantify the the clearly, it's the nutrient density, the bioavailability, those 3 sort of, levers, if we can continue to push a problematically. And and those, I think it's it's very possible. My my vision for 1% is not that 25 years from now. I think we're gonna we can get there much faster than that, but But, yeah, we as we continue to talk to Noah and talk to you know, policy makers, there is some there is an an US aquaculture act that is in Congress you know, and we'll see what happens with the changing administration. But there is a desire. It's all From a policy perspective, the the funny thing that that shifts, the powers that be is usually this subject of food sovereignty.

James Arthur Smith - 01:15:46
And being able to produce our own food and seafood is primarily imported in the US and being able produce it ourselves and not be dependent onto that sovereignty thing gets documents assigned. On a consumer side of the demand, it's, I think, education about health and then technology to actually quantify that and make that, like, really evident, but those are areas that I think we can we can have some control and action in. And trusting that, doing things right by the earth that there is some sort of karmic symbiotic catalytic response, right, if as we support other players in this ecosystem and we continue to create this culture, it has this flywheel effect. And and I'm I'm optimistic in that regard.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:16:57
Yeah. I love the positive call out to the tech. The nutrient density time because we've talked about it at nausea and all the episodes, but I don't know if anyone's ever put it in there, answer to that final question. We've we've talked about policy and education a lot and they're mandatory for us to to to hit that goal, but it seems like, you know, that the nutrient density and the missing technology to kind of help it proliferate. Is also a very notable kind of intervention point. So I love that you you included that one.

Kyle Krull - 01:17:23
Yeah. I also think it's really interesting. The, COVID parallel, right? I'm not at all advocating that this should happen. I do not want it to happen, but to your point, the power of something outside of our control, changing the way consumers perceive health, food, nutrition, whatever, could be like the catalyst we need to rethink our food system. Right? So interesting as we haven't heard before, but, you know, in out of the case, we super appreciate the time, James. Like, for those who want to learn more, Seatopia dot fish, I can't wait to buy some of my first cuts. And thank you so much for the time, and we really appreciate it.

James Arthur Smith - 01:17:57
My pleasure. Thank you guys for helping shift consumer demand awareness and helping other brands and farmers, like, learn and and work together because this is gonna take all of us working together. Right? It's it's we are we're still a minority of of consumer power and buying power, but as we can need to educate and support these other brands, you know, their farms. We are we're making waves. So thank you guys.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:18:23
Hey, man, brother. Thanks for joining us.

James Arthur Smith - 01:18:26
Much much appreciated, much love.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:18:32
For show notes, episode transcript and more information on our guests and what we discuss in the show, check out our website regen-brands.com. That is regen-brands.com. You can also find our regen recaps on the website. Regen recaps take less than 5 minutes to read and cover all the key points of the full hour long cover patience. You can check out our YouTube channel, ReGen Brands Podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform, subscribe to future episodes, and share the show with your friends. Thanks for tuning in to The ReGen Brands Podcast brought to you by the Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learned something new in this episode.

Anthony Corsaro - 01:19:09
And empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars to help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys.