SPEAKERS
Lourdes Gant, Dr. Abayomi Alabi
Lourdes Gant 0:05
As a business owner of an aquaculture company, how can you take the first step to be profitable and sustainable at the same time? That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode. Hello, and welcome to the Business of Aquaculture podcast. This is the podcast for the Sustainable Business movement in the aquafarming and ocean ranching industries. This podcast aims to amplify the voices of entrepreneurs addressing the United Nations global goals, aka Sustainable Development Goals. Number 14, to conserve and sustainably use the oceans and the seas, listen in to fellow business aquaculturists in their journey in this new model of food production, of making their business sustainable, and help the ecology of the ocean, while also making a profit all at the same time. Get inspired to learn how even small to medium businesses can make an impact, save the seas, leave a legacy, and have a better quality of life. One of our goals is to take away a nugget of wisdom that will help your business move from the industrial revolution to business 5.0. Our vision is that of collaboration in the aquaculture industry. I’m Lourdes Gant, your host.
Lourdes Gant 1:25
As an agriculture business owner, just like all of the episodes in our season one of the shows you hear me say, how do you tackle the balance in being able to run a sustainable business and being profitable at the same time? That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode. So listen in and I hope you enjoy this episode. If you listen to our last episode, I interviewed Diane Morrison, who is the managing director of MOWI Canada West. They are gearing towards the trends on transparency, using technology to reduce the payback period of the species they specialize in and creating healthy management in the ecosystem of aquaculture.
Lourdes Gant 2:07
Welcome to Episode 12 of the Business of Aquaculture. In this episode, I’m delighted to have one of our joint venture partners, Dr. Abayomi Alabi. Dr. Abayomi Alabi is marine biotechnology his experience in the biochemical, microbiological, and nutritional requirements for successful aquaculture seed production. Here in British Columbia, he pioneered commercial-scale production techniques for despite prawn, Pacific sea urchins, Northern Abalone and Caicos. In addition to this, he spearheaded the development of probiotics effective against cold water bacterial diseases for agricultural use in BC. He was the founding head of the Shellfish Health and Husbandry research program at Vancouver islands University Centre for shellfish research.
Lourdes Gant 2:57
Welcome, Yomi. Thanks for being here.
Lourdes Gant 3:00
Thank you very much, Lourdes. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Lourdes Gant 3:03
I’m so excited about this interview. And as you know, I always mentioned that I have the same questions for all my guests. It’s amazing how they all have different answers. So I’m looking forward to these. So my first question is, how did you get started in the aquaculture industry.
Abayomi Alabi 3:19
My journey in the agricultural industry started with me in school. I arrived in DC in 1996 97, after my Ph.D., and I worked for two companies, when I arrived here on developing new species in BC, those were the support from the green and red urchins as well as another abalone. Those were very exciting times for me as we know, we were able to successfully develop and produce commercial quantities of all these species. In 2001, there was an opportunity to produce geoducks on that contract for the two biggest geoduck buyers in DC at the time, and I took up this opportunity. I encountered some problems related to securing a site with an existing hatchery at the time and ended up designing or retrofitting a barge to develop to convert it into a floating hatchery. This was the first commercial floating hatchery in North America at that time. I successfully ran this batch for about 12 years. And then in about 2012, there was a shortage of oyster seed in BC, which led us to build a recirculating shellfish hatchery, which is located far from the sea and in which we currently use artificial seawater. And we have been running this since that time to produce juveniles of oysters, clams with geoducks, and mussels.
Lourdes Gant 4:44
That’s amazing. It’s rare that I have someone who’s kind of born to do this and you’re almost like sound like that. It does sound like that, doesn’t it? Do you know what they say when you love what you do? You don’t have to work for a day and it sounded like you I really enjoy dealing with this animal. So that’s awesome. So my second question is, in this span of time that you’ve been working in the agriculture industry, what have you seen are the pros and cons, or do others want to call it challenges in the industry.
Abayomi Alabi 5:15
For me for what we do the pros and the cons are sort of in many cases, there are two sides of the same coin. And I’m speaking from a heartrate perspective here because that’s only what we do. From a pure hatchery perspective, one of the pros is that it is a seasonal business, it can be quite demanding what we do. But because the farmers require the seed at only certain times of the year, we have to meet that window. Pro there is that this gives us downtime because it’s quite a demanding process. But we can have like two or three months in a year when the stress is not as high. And we can take time to rest, recover fix of the hatchery. So that’s a major pro for us. The other one is food security, we’re just getting out of the Coronavirus-induced period for all of us. And one of the things that it has shown us is how quickly the supply chains can be disrupted. So the aquacultural industry is one of the few unique industries where the supply chains can be localized. And we can actually have food security for our people for the local people produce like high-quality protein for people without having to go abroad or wait to encounter possible supply disruptions. Again, one of the cons is it’s a seasonal business. So that means of course that you only make income for a certain period of a year. And also from a hatchery perspective, when we have a crash, you have a limited time in which you can correct the crash. Otherwise, you run out of time before the season ends. So that’s a major con, in many instances, I believe aquacultural seems to be to me is still an industry in its infancy, especially shellfish aquaculture, one of the major pros there is that there’s a lot of room for improvement. There’s a lot of productivity improvements, which we have yet to do. And so it’s exciting, it’s actually quite exciting when we actually make something better in our own country to improve our productivity. And that is a major pro for us as well.
Lourdes Gant 7:26
I really like that you said that it’s the same coin with two different sides, I never really looked at it that way when you were talking like because it’s a seasonal business, people who own the businesses will have the quality of life because they will have downtime. But at the same time, the challenge with that is just that season, you have revenue for the rest of the year, you have to find another way to actually generate revenue. And that’s fantastic. My last question is, what do you think the agriculture industry is in store for the next I was gonna say 10 years, but maybe we’ll just do three years.
Abayomi Alabi 8:02
Every conservative I think the aquaculture industry, specifically focusing on shellfish aquaculture, I would say that we’re looking at a period of increased productivity caused by increasing adoption of technology into what we do. For instance, I’ll give you an instance, I was reading a study the other day where they have actually found that some blue mussels on the east coast can alter their genes to adapt to the effects of warmer waters and acid oceans. So these are obviously going to be more suited for aquaculture to increase in aquaculture going on. We are doing something similar in BC, where they’re researching the rootstock genomics of the local Pacific oyster here so that we can have a more hardy species to tolerate our local conditions. We’re also going to be in our own hydra, we already started to do this, where we also integrating automated water quality management and control with our management procedures. So automatically, the sensors detect when the water quality is out of work. And then they initiate control remediation processes without us even intervening. They’ll send those messages that this is wrong. This is what it’s doing. All of these things are going to lead to an increase in productivity, which of course will lower prices, which is a good thing because the increased productivity will still making more profit and will attract more people into the industry, which actually helps build up the industry. I see that happening in shellfish aquaculture in the near future.
Lourdes Gant 9:42
Fantastic. All of my guests mentioned this in terms of technology, and I’m glad that you shared with us about this gene technology that you mentioned is happening in the muscles and also being able to do this genomics in the broodstock that you about and just for our audience information, I actually visited some hatchery and I’m actually really quite impressed how he’s able to create systems around his hatchery. I am very impressed with your hatchery. To me, it’s small but it’s very, very methodical and structured and with the processes that you’ve created over the years, I am blown away when I actually visited your site. So if you guys have the chance to actually visit us in Nanaimo, British Columbia, give us a heads up and I’m sure you’ll be would be more than welcome to give a tour of his hatchery. So are there any last words that you wanted to share with our audience in terms of what you’ve been working on recently?
Abayomi Alabi 10:45
There are a few more things that we have been doing not all specific personalities or not all by ourselves. There’s this exciting new, algae production technology that came out of Victoria, which we’ve included into systems, it’s actually improved our productivity a great deal. And jumping off of that one, we are actually expanding our nursery so that we can also increase productivity. And we are looking at other ways of also increasing, algae food for the juveniles, as you know, from your hydrilla that is the greatest source of the greatest with specific biomass in an in the hatchery, the nursery. And that is where most of us face the bottleneck is how to feed all these animals and grow them big enough so the farmers will get bigger animals from us. And that’s what we’re sort of focusing efforts on right now to find ways around these bottlenecks so that we can produce even more.
Lourdes Gant 11:39
Thank you so much, Yomi. And I know that you’ve been very, very busy so I’m really grateful that you spend time with us today. My biggest takeaway from this episode is really when you mentioned about the industry being one coin with two sides is almost like the price is the same as the challenge. Yes. Thank you once again. Remember, you helped build the home in the Philippines every time you listen to the podcast by B1G1.com. the initiative, share the podcast with your friends and family who you think may benefit thanks again. Yomi. Really appreciate your time.
Abayomi Alabi 12:13
Thank you very much. My pleasure.
Lourdes Gant 12:16
Our next guest is Terry Brooks of Golden Eagle Sable Fish. They are the pioneer of Sable Fish aquaculture and exist as the only source of pharmacy sablefish available on the global commercial marketplace. I’ll see you all in the next episode. Thanks again. Yomi.
Abayomi Alabi 12:29
Thank you. Bye bye.
Lourdes Gant 12:34
Thank you for listening, and I hope you’re inspired by this episode. Do take a moment and share this with your friends and colleagues and rate and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I’d love to know what your biggest takeaway from this conversation has been? What are you going to do differently? Please share thoughts across social media and tag us for links and Show Notes for this episode, visit our website www.sustainableaquaculture.ca/podcast. Thank you again. I hope you will join me on the next episode and together we can help create a better business in aquaculture.