Commercial Approches to Regenerating Marine Ecosystems

Sophia Tabibian (00:00): Welcome to the Climate Map podcast. The Climate Map, an initiative founded by Covalence Global, outlines the complexities of climate change on a streamlined, action-oriented mind map. This podcast is an archive for our research, highlighting conversations with entrepreneurs, scientists, policymakers, and designers. In this episode, we discussed how novel profitable and commercial entrepreneurial approaches can regenerate marine ecosystems with Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda, founder and former CEO of Urchinomics. Brian is a global citizen with roots in Japan, Canada, Chile, Norway, and the Netherlands. His diverse background informs his unique perspective on culture and innovation. With a business degree from Queen's University, Brian's entrepreneurial journey includes co-founding Muzi Tea and promoting Nordic seafoods in Asia. As Director of Innovation at Kaston, he developed ventures like Urchinomics. Brian believes for-profit enterprises can drive positive change, restoring ecosystems, and addressing climate change through blue-carbon sequestration while creating meaningful jobs.

Sophia Tabibian (01:02): Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from, and what is your educational background?

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (01:08): Hello, my name is Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda. I am the founder of Urchinomics. Born in Japan, raised in North America, did a little bit of my studies in South America, was supposed to go into investment banking, but it just didn't feel right after graduating from the Queen's University School of Business. I've pretty much been on an entrepreneurial path all my life. I started off in the food and beverage space, but after moving to Norway, I found opportunities to dabble in the ocean, and from there, it's kind of where everything started.

Sophia Tabibian (01:35): Awesome. So what inspired you to found Urchinomics, and what were some of the core problems you were trying to address?

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (01:42): The primary reason why I was inspired to start Urchinomics was actually the tsunami in 2011 in Eastern Japan. At the time, I was working with a family office that was involved in the oceans and fisheries, getting into that space and then learning that tsunami not only destroyed houses and livelihoods and lives, but the tsunami actually washed away a lot of the predatory species that kept that wonderful ecosystem in balance. And so we learned afterwards that the tsunami washed away the predators and allowed the sea urchin populations to explode. And when the populations of sea urchins explode, they typically overgrazed kelp forests and essentially destroy the foundation of what is a very, very healthy marine ecosystem.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (02:20): That's when I kind of look back at the technologies and the knowledge base that's here in Norway. And I thought, well, there's got to be a way that we can leverage the aquaculture competence that is here to try to take these urchins that are now littering the ocean floor and turn them into a commercially viable product. And essentially create an incentive to remove them from the ocean floor and allow the kelp forest to come back. That begs to clarify, OK, so what is the ecological challenge that I'm dealing with? And then what it comes down to is that when you overfish the ocean without thinking about the impact on the rest of the ecosystem, what typically happens is that certain species tend to flourish and others disappear. The ones that you overfish disappear, and the ones that typically are being eaten by the species that have now disappeared flourish. So in this case, sea urchin populations explode. And when they don't have any predators around them left, they're kind of bulldozers, and they just kind of mow down kelp forests and turn them into marine deserts. What we do know though, is that when you remove those urchins or that pressure, that grazing pressure, the kelp forests have an amazing resilience and can actually bounce back quite quickly. So you have to remove them, but once you remove them, you get this beautiful ecosystem back.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (03:26): The challenge though, is how do you incentivize people to actually remove them? Because urchins that are living in a marine desert, they're starving, and they're empty, and they have no commercial value. So what we do is we harvest those empty, valueless species that are littering the ocean floor. And we put them in our land-based aquaculture systems, and we use our aquaculture technologies to essentially fatten them up and turn them back into commercially valuable products and then sell them. So it's the commercial procurement and ranching and selling -- that for-profit business model is what drives or incentivizes the removal of the empty urchins. And so as a result of us pursuing our profits, we inevitably restore marine ecosystems. So we have a business model where the more we sell and the more we profit, the better the environment becomes.

Sophia Tabibian (04:11): That's very interesting. Can you speak a little bit to your various tech solutions for the aquaculture industry?

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (04:18): There's essentially three pieces of technology, and I won't go into the details of the IP, but essentially just broadly. There are essentially three pieces that I think give us a very unique advantage over everyone else. One is of course the feed technology. So Urchinomics has secured the global license from the State Research Institute, Nofima, which has developed essentially one of the most amazing feed technologies that allows us to pack a lot of that umami richness of kelp into a pellet that allows the sea urchins to eat it and essentially convert it into these beautiful golden row. And that's essentially 25, 30 years of state research that we have licensed. So we have that unique advantage. That's very difficult for others to catch up to.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (04:58): The others, of course, is the aquaculture systems themselves. So, urchin aquaculture has never really been done before, not at large scale, especially not on land. So what we've had to do was essentially build a whole suite of technologies throughout the entire value chain that fits with this unique species, as well as the feed technology that we're using. So essentially, if you come into our facility, steal a bunch of pictures and take it home and replicate it, it's not really going to help you because if you don't have the feed tech or the third piece, which is the biology, it's just going to be useless equipment.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (05:32): And so the third piece, as I mentioned, is the biology or understanding of how these animals behave in a closed recirculating aquaculture system. This has never really been done before. So all of the biological knowledge that we've been accumulating since inception is essentially giving us what I would say a comparable advantage over others simply because we've been at it much longer. So when you combine this 25 plus year tech advantage, plus an infrastructure and a technology that builds around it, and then also have the cumulative knowledge that comes from the biology, we get quite ahead of everyone else. I think that's kind of the reason why we're blazing ahead and others are still stumbling at the starting blocks just because we have all the pieces together.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (06:15): This is where the paradox of capitalism comes in. On one hand, as a private for-profit company, we want to maximize profits. But at the same time, when you know that you're sitting on all this good technology that could do so much good for the planet, is it right to simply hold it for yourselves and just keep it for ourselves, right? Because we can do so much more impact if we are more open to it. So this has been kind of one of the biggest dilemmas I've had with this venture. And so we've landed on a collaborative model where we co-invest with local investors and partners so that the technology can spread and accelerate faster and disseminate faster, but within the context of a capitalist structure. So essentially rather than trying to own everything ourselves, we're very much supportive of co-owning, jointly investing with local stakeholders, bring the community and bring the stakeholders in so that everyone is part of the solution. And it's a little bit of my kind of center left philosophy perhaps, and it looks like it's imprinted in the company now with new leadership in place. So I'm quite happy to see that.  

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (07:19): But essentially, Urchinomics is not about creative destruction, which is often prized in Western capitalism. I don't think, especially when you're working with primary industry, so farmers and fishers and foresters, you can't destroy that. If any, you're supposed to nurture and build that and support that. The whole business model is based on collaboration, aligning incentives, and making sure that everyone wins. And so it's very much a collaborative approach.

Sophia Tabibian (07:46): That's actually a fascinating model because with every startup that I've talked to, no founder has mentioned the whole aspect of creative destruction. And I think especially growing up on the west coast and surrounded by the VC culture, everyone's trying to be the best and shoot down their competitors. But I've never heard this new concept that you're discussing of co-investment, so I'm very excited to share that with the listeners.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (08:13): Yeah, absolutely. The co-investment, I think, is particularly important in our space because we are so close to the fisheries. That means that we are literally working with the fisheries cooperatives and communities on the ground. In today's day and age, primary industries, so farmers, fishers, they have it tough. There's big corporations that are putting a lot of price pressure on them, trying to find efficiencies in everything, and they wake up early in the morning, go to bed late at night working constantly, and they don't get paid commensurate to the amount of value that they generate. And that has to do with the entire value chain. We can't tackle all of that, but we are building a very different model that allows us to succeed with our primary producers, and essentially skip a lot of the unnecessary intermediaries as well. And so that essentially allows more money to be shared amongst all the stakeholders. So it is definitely a different approach.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (09:09): I'm a fan of capitalism with guardrails. Until the rules of law are in place where there's hard guardrails, we kind of have to build them ourselves. And I thought, it's one thing to build hard guardrails that tries to keep people within the line or the values of what we do. But it's another thing to incentivize stakeholders so that we want to stay within the guardrails and stay within the system that allows us to share and grow together. I don't mean to go too philosophical, but I'm trying to optimize capitalism so that we can leverage the inertia that capitalism can create, but do it in a way that is not destructive, but is collaborative and is supportive to both the environment as well as the communities.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (09:48): And I think the communities are also one of the pieces that are often forgotten because the environment is so critical, it's such a crisis. It gets a lot of attention, but you have to remember, it's also these local communities that make all this happen. So we're very much about, rather than building our facility in the big urban center, like we're purposely working, building our facilities in rural coastal communities that don't have that many opportunities and bring back life to rural communities that are, let's face it, kind of dying.

Sophia Tabibian (10:19): Absolutely, that was beautifully said. And I think importantly, you tied in the aspect of those communities because again, that's not something that most of our founders discuss. So this provides a new fresh perspective. I really appreciate hearing your philosophical approach to that.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (10:35): In all fairness though, most founders, are fighting every single moment just to survive, right? So I wouldn't put ourselves on a particular pedestal. When we were in survival mode and trying to just keep the lights on, it was hard to think this way. In that sense, I don't want this to come across as, oh, we're better than everyone else. It's not that, it's just that I started this venture from a very different position, right? I'm living here in Norway, right? Norway has a social safety net that allows entrepreneurs to make crazier gambles and not suffer the consequences of extreme failure. In America, we have flexible bankruptcy laws that allows us to stumble and fall and get up. And it's part of the reason why America is so successful. In Europe, we have a much more conservative culture. Failure is shamed upon. And so it's harder to take risks. But in the Nordics, there's an entire social welfare system that is there to kind of catch you. So even if an entrepreneur stumbles or fumbles, the system kind of catches you and gives you another chance. So it's like another way of approaching the restart, very different to the U.S. bankruptcy, but the same principle. And I think because I had that, I was able to take a bigger gamble because I didn't have to worry about the consequences of failure. It's one of the pros and cons of establishing ventures here in the Nordics. This is a very unique ecosystem that I'm living in that allows me to take greater risks without the negative consequences.

Sophia Tabibian (12:05): I'd be interested to learn more about the startup ecosystem in the Nordics. What are your key performance indicators?

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (12:13): Our key performance indicators are actually quite simple. Does the kelp come back or not? It's really simple. And the great thing with kelp is that unlike forests or terrestrial ecosystems where it takes 20, 30 years to be able to genuinely say that the ecosystem services are happening again or has come back to the level, you can prove it. Kelp grows in cycles of as short as three and a half months, maybe longer, six or seven months, but usually nothing takes more than a year. So you can directly see the impact of what you do, especially when you have controls right by it and you see that the areas that you don't harvest, nothing happens. And of course, mother nature is quite opportunistic. If you give her an ecosystem that is thriving, things will come and turn it into a home. So when we remove the urchins and the kelp comes back, it immediately gets populated by microscopic critters. And then they become the food for the slightly larger animals. So you get this trophic restoration that happens along with this three-dimensional habitat. So it's really encouraging because it gives a result in a very, very short period of time. And it's visual, it's easy to measure because it's binary, it's either there or it's not. And in today's Instagram, TikTok X generation, where we have the attention span of a... of a tsetse fly, to be able to have an ecosystem restoration happen in such a short period of time, it's encouraging and it shows that we can do it.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (13:46): And I think what really is the cherry on top about this whole thing is that while it is incredibly fast, the value of the ecosystem kelp forests is exponentially higher than terrestrial ecosystems as well. You get a greater outcome and it comes faster. So when I think of all that I can do in my lifetime to contribute to our planet and our society, as a business grad, I think, okay, how can I maximize it? What's the best bang for the buck for the least amount of time and effort and energy? And marine ecosystems are it, particularly coastal ones. There's so much value. It's like almost 30 times terrestrial rainforest, right? And it can come back in three to six months.

Sophia Tabibian (14:26): So clearly there's so much short-term high growth potential in this industry, what do you view as your future vision at Urchinomics and your future goals?

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (14:36): I'm going to try to answer this carefully, because I've now put in professional management to run the company. And so what my vision is and how the company is going to be run may or may not be perfectly aligned. I think what I share with fellow shareholders and management is that we want to continue expanding this collaborative model. Urchinomics has been, in many ways, a pioneer that has set examples, or has been the first in the world to do this and this and this and that, whether it's blue carbon, whether it's successfully ranching urchins in Japan, or getting market prices at five, six, seven dollars a kilo. We've achieved a lot of firsts. One of the other firsts that I would like to achieve here is to take this land-based aquaculture model, low trophic aquaculture model, I should highlight. So not the high trophic stuff that is really quite burdensome to the environment, but also show collaborative models with, for example, First Nations communities, Indigenous communities, to be able to show that we have a business model that is robust enough to be able to collaborate with all types of stakeholders, whether it's the local fisheries cooperative in Japan, whether it's the Iwi communities in New Zealand, it may morph, and it may change to suit the various conditions on the ground. But I definitely want to bring more Indigenous partnerships.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (15:50): I want capitalism to be understood to be a very effective tool if we do it right. I think capitalism gets a bad rap because we associate the bad type of capitalism, and we think that that is exclusionary, it's elitist, it concentrates wealth in a small number of people. And while that is true, if we do it in the right way, I think we can create value -- a lot more value -- and share it with a lot more people. So far, at least in today's economic ecosystem that we have today, I think a collaborative capitalist model that aligns us through profitability, but keeps in mind that environment and people are just as equally valuable as profits. I think that type of philosophy, and showing that we could create profits and value and support the environment with various partnerships, I think that's kind of my personal goal is to show that we can work with many and hopefully all stakeholders and help make the planet a better place.

Sophia Tabibian (16:44): I really like that term "collaborative capitalist model." And I'll be interested to see how Urchinomics aims to spread to Indigenous communities. Outside of Urchinomics, are there any particular emerging trends or technologies in climate tech that excite you?

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (17:00): Absolutely. I would say what drives me to get up early in the morning and do what I do is actually in the ocean space. It's this incredible convergence that I'm seeing. And I think Urchinomics is just one example of it. But historically, wild catch fisheries, so fishers going out to see catching fish, aquaculture, which is essentially taking proteins and converting it into marine proteins, and then marine restoration, so nature support, cleaning up rivers, and all that stuff. These three have historically been kind of divergent industries, they all work in the ocean, they all work in the water, but didn't seem to collaborate that much. Urchinomics being one example, I think what we're seeing is this convergence of wild catch fisheries, aquacultures and nature restoration kind of coming together. So we're doing it with urchins and kelp forests. I know friends that are in the oyster restoration space where they're filtering excess nutrients from agriculture to improve the water conditions while rebuilding oyster reefs that historically been completely pillaged. We also have predator restoration, aquaculture ventures. So taking wild juveniles that normally would just die because they don't have a habitat, rearing them up, and getting them bigger to be able to not only feed the market, but also put a genetically diverse set of lobsters back so that they can continue to grow and propagate with the convergence of wild catch fisheries, aquaculture, and restoration.

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (18:20): We're starting to see for-profit business models where the outcome of this is more proteins to feed the planet, profits to incentivize investors to come in, while at the same time contributing to coastal fisheries communities and the workforce there and supporting nature. So it's ticking all the boxes, and it's starting to form into the capitalism that I have always thought was kind of the more balanced version and not this imbalanced version where it's just shareholders, interests, and stuff like that. So yeah, I would say the trend, at least in the ocean space, what excite me the most is that convergence of wild fisheries, aquaculture, and nature restoration coming into a for-profit business model that makes profits, feeds people, restores the environment, and contributes to coastal rural communities.

Sophia Tabibian (19:06): Absolutely. Thank you for highlighting that growing convergence and intersection. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out the next five, 10 years. To close off, is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners?

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda (19:17): I want to leave on a message of hope that I know there's a lot of crap out there. I know the system is designed poorly, and we're still in an extractive economy, and we probably will be for a long time to come. But there are these flickers of hope where we can Aikido the momentum that capitalism has, and we can drive it in the direction that is what we all want. And we don't always have to be looking at our phone in despair and seeing all the destruction that's happening. And finally, speaking again on the word of destruction, while there are certain industries, I think destruction is helpful. I think there's a lot more collaborative business models out there. If we're willing to think a little bit more creatively and dare a bit more, I think there's ways that we can incorporate and collaborate, as opposed to bulldoze, destroy, and rebuild.

Sophia Tabibian (20:05): And that is it for the Climate Map today. You can learn more about the climate map at the-climate-map.org.