SPEAKERS
Lourdes Gant, Tony Chen
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 Nation global goals, aka Sustainable Development Goals number 14, to conserve and sustainably use the oceans and the seas. Listen 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 to 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.
Lourdes Gant 1:17
I’m Lourdes Gant your host. As an aquaculture business, how do you become innovative in the aquaculture industry so you can be eligible to investors’ criteria? This episode is dedicated to answering that question. So listen in and I hope you enjoy this episode. If you listen to episode 11, we had Rishita Changede from Teora dot life. They have a mission to build a sustainable future by scaling the science behind bio manufacturing into an expandable, impactful business in the shrimp aquaculture industry. Welcome to Episode 12 Season Two of the business of agriculture. This episode I’m proud to interview Tony Chen. Welcome to the show, Tony.
Tony Chen 2:05
Thanks for having me.
Lourdes Gant 2:06
Welcome. Tony is passionate about software and aquaculture. He is the co founder of Manolinaqua.com. Its enterprise promise is to solve aquaculture disease, healthy farms by healthy seas. They use industry leading fish health prediction tools. Their platform helps aquaculture farmers combine human and artificial intelligence to tackle the industry’s biggest hurdle, which is disease. At present. They are helping farmers from offices in Norway. Welcome again to the show, Tony. Thank you. I like seeing you on Twitter. And then here you are now on the podcast about your passion both on software and aquaculture. So maybe you can give us a background in terms of how did you get into this, I guess sustainable green technology in the aquaculture industry.
Tony Chen 3:08
My background, I studied computer science at MIT after college I ended up doing but was working primarily for government firms. So I was working at the FDA and DOD a lot of national infrastructure projects on data. We discovered aquaculture really through oyster farms in the Chesapeake Bay. So visiting oyster farms just thought they were running the coolest businesses and then hearing about problems, we saw an opportunity to combine kind of my team’s computer science expertise with our public kind of experience. With big datasets, we recognize that in the ocean, there’s a lot of questions that needed to be answered. And it really stemmed kind of this balance between what the public data is available and what you see in the ocean, and then what the farms operational data looked like. But that’s how we really saw came into this industry saw the opportunity saw the need for sustainable food production. And then a lot of things clicked where you understood that aquaculture farming in the ocean was really the future and had the opportunity to solve many kind of larger challenges from a sustainability point of view. That’s how we ended up here.
Lourdes Gant 4:13
That’s so cool to hear. It’s amazing that the theme that seems to be popping up from my season two interviews is this very emphasis: solving a problem in the aquaculture industry. And the tool that you guys are using are amazing. I went through your website and did a little bit of tinkering in there. So I am really excited about what you guys are bringing to the industry. And I hope that they can come to Canada soon. So I’m going to have to talk to you after. So tell us how can small businesses in the aquaculture industry get to embark into a sustainable technology?
Tony Chen 4:51
The perspective we have is that it’s definitely going to be the future this industry is not going to grow without a sustainable or green component. But the optimal mistake and kind of advantageous part is where such a young industry and small players can make a huge amount of actual noise, you know, with the way how tech has kind of really scaled over the last 10 years, you know, you can create a Twitter profile, you can get a message out very, very clearly. And this is something that wasn’t achievable in the past. And as an industry, I think it’s something that we can leverage, you know, that just the scale and accessibility of these platforms are extremely helpful. You know, from our side, we see it from a tech point of view, data science tools, machine learning, a lot of complex technical stacks are much more accessible. One person sitting in a dorm room can stand up 100 servers on the other side of the world. And that power really enables you to answer a lot of really complex questions, right? I think some of the examples we’ve seen, one person in a dorm room can build a COVID tracker and predict when outbreaks are going to happen. And that’s kind of the mantra that we’ve gone after. So I think as a small business, the opportunities are endless. And for an industry like aquaculture that’s so new and has so much potential to growth. It gives those small businesses a ton of opportunity.
Lourdes Gant 6:08
It’s so exciting, like you just mentioned, because I think most of the farmers in the aquaculture industry, it’s not derogatory, but I’d like to call it before like, all boys club. And so when the pandemic happen, it’s amazing how all these tools that literally we have them on our hands, even before the pandemic, but it has just got escalated because of the technology, what technology brings to the table in the industry, right? Absolutely. Right. Like I contacted you through Twitter, any company can actually create a Twitter account. But more importantly, I love what you said about leveraging these small players and to make an actual noise. I call it the sustainable collaboration, sustainable partnership. Without that having one voice in the industry, it may be less doable. But thank you for bringing that onto the table. So my second question is, you’re both in Norway and the United States. Have you seen any bureaucracy challenge that regulates the industry? So the business is not hampered by rulings? Or maybe even supportive programs for that matter?
Tony Chen 7:13
No, absolutely. I think that’s one of the advantages we’ve had in kind of operating in the States and Norway, you really see kind of both extremes, where in the States, we saw a lot of regulatory challenges, you go to any aquaculture conference, and people talk about how regulation is not moving quick enough. That’s not enabling these farmers to grow. You almost see the complete opposite side in Norway, where you know, salmon is such a large industry, and they’ve had regulations in place for the last 30 to 40 years. That was one of the stark contrasts we saw you go to Bergen, you go to a bar, anyone can talk to you about salmon politics, because it’s in the actual news, everybody knows what the Hot Topic items are. Whereas in the US, I talked to folks who don’t even know what aquaculture is. So you see a big extremes there. And I mean, there’s obviously both challenges and support. And you can see it from both sides, from our perspective. And again, my background comes from a little bit of government. And we’re aware that aquaculture doesn’t grow without regulation, that’s going to be default, no matter where in the world you want to operate. So regulation is a huge part of it. But you see both sides. And it’s not to say, you know, Norway doesn’t have its own regulatory challenges. It’s a hot topic item, people discuss it just as much. But you do see kind of differences in how each geography has kind of approached it so far.
Lourdes Gant 8:27
I love that you’re able to see the contrast between the two geographic locations, because I remember I was interviewing Urchinomics from Norway. And they were talking about, I forgot the concept that Brian use, but it’s not forgiveness after you’ve done something, but it’s a trust basis, we’re in a trust, that you actually do the right thing before they get a little bit more strict on regulations as compared to in North America. I’m specifically talking about United States and Canada, we have to have these regulations, because people may not be following what’s supposedly right for the environment. So it’s good to see that contrast. But I think there’s also some changes that are happening in the industry wherein now, aquaculture is gaining more traction. So there are more people coming in from the government that has more say, in terms of how it can be more supportive. So that’s good news as well. So my next question is, you kind of alluded into this one, what’s one thing that you think will still be here, a decade from now?
Tony Chen 9:28
I want to answer this question, I guess, in a couple of different ways. You know, from our perspective, I think the passion for the ocean is still going to be there. We have a long way to go as far as challenges and problems to solve. And I don’t think that passion and the desire to solve them will be done in the next 10 years. So for one that’s going to continue, and the other one is I believe, the oceans will be still there to produce food that’s going to play a big role in what happens in the next 10 years and what’s possible. And then lastly, that farmers are always going to play a role that people that have worked there careers and understanding how to farm the oceans, they’re still gonna play a large role in this business for as much as tech and data is going to be there to support it. Those folks who have been on the water who understand, you know, the ecosystem, who put their eyes on it, I believe are still going to be a big part of both the oceans and how we produce food in 10 years.
Lourdes Gant 10:19
So good. It’s so good. So my last question to you is, maybe you can give us a little bit of rundown how your technology is solving the disease challenge in the industry, maybe give us a picture and a visual how this works.
Tony Chen 10:33
No matter what aquaculture industry, you start to look at disease is always going to be a problem, right? When you’re talking algae blooms, and Vibrio and oysters and salmon, we’re dealing with sea lice, PD Iisa. And each geography has got their own different challenges. And the way that we’re applying a higher tech towards solving it is we bring in datasets from both the public and the private space. So we integrate data from the farm. So we bring in inventory, mortalities, feeding data, camera data, we combine that with satellite imagery, ocean sensors, what’s happening out in the ocean, and we try to make predictions on when these outbreaks are going to happen. We know for example, you know, lice is traveled through currents, PD and other diseases are monitored or can be transmitted through well boats or human activity, being able to monitor all those gives us an understanding of how it’s going to spread. So being able to give farmers a little bit more heads up, then when they start to see sick fish, giving them that warning enables them to take preventative actions a little bit sooner. And that’s the core of our platform is helping farmers get that early warning signal for any issues that are happening across their sites and the region.
Lourdes Gant 11:39
You know, when you just said that, it reminded me of somebody who has like a crystal ball, I forgot what he’s what his name was, but you know, this very famous person who just look at the ball, and then they can predict. And so this is like the modern day in technology of fortune telling in the aquaculture industry, if I’d like to call it that, and it’s not just and it’s so cool. It’s so cool to hear that. So how can they get in touch with you?
Tony Chen 12:04
Yeah, you can visit us at our website, manolinaqua.com, or through any kind of social media channels, we’re active on pretty much every single platform. So either one of those works. And I think on your kind of thought of fortune telling, you know, one of the the analogies that we’ve always made is when you think about what Facebook and Google have been able to do as far as predicting human behavior. We want to apply that technology basically towards health issues, and specifically within aquaculture, because I think, you know, 15 years ago, if you told people what people are feeding you through your ad platforms, people would have thought those were kind of fortunes and magical as well, but it’s definitely possible.
Lourdes Gant 12:41
Amazing. Just amazing. Thanks again, Tony for gracing the show. My biggest takeaway from this interview in this podcast is when you mentioned about leveraging small players so that we can make actual noise that really resonated and landed with me because as a group, we can make a lot of traction if we move in one direction. So thanks again, Tony, to our subscribers do leave a review of the podcast so we can get more people to be aware of the value our guests are providing in these conversations. If you’re new to the podcast, I’d like to hear from you. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Tony. It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for listening, and I hope you are inspired from 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 your thoughts across social media and tag us for links and show notes for this episode, visit our website www sustainable aquaculture.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.
