Mike Velings, co-founder of Aqua-Spark — the first investment fund focused exclusively on sustainable aquaculture — has given a TED talk on the same topic.
The video of his talk was released on Feb. 11, and can be seen here. In it he makes the case for the future of fish “farmed well, and farmed healthy”.
The talk took place aboard Mission Blue II, a research voyage conceived by TED Prize winner Sylvia Earle to be a TED-at-sea focused on the challenges plaguing the oceans.
“We’re headed towards a global food crisis: nearly 3 billion people depend on the ocean for food, and at our current rate we already take more fish from the ocean than it can naturally replace,” reads the TED talk description.
“In this fact-packed, eye-opening talk, entrepreneur and conservationist Mike Velings proposes a solution: Aquaculture, or fish farming.”
“We must start using the ocean as farmers instead of hunters,” said Velings. “The day will come where people will demand farmed fish on their plates that’s farmed well and farmed healthy — and refuse anything less.”
Aqua-Spark recently announced its two final – and complementary – investments of 2015.
Aqua-Spark first invested in US-based biotechnology company Calysta in January 2015 because of its potential to transform fish feed – making it healthier and more environmentally sound.
Now Aqua-Spark has invested an additional $4.1 million – a key part of Calysta’s series C financing totaling $30m — to develop FeedKind, a new and sustainable feed ingredient, which is a single cell protein that could be used as a replacement for fishmeal.
Calysta intends to use the series C investment for new product development, commercial manufacturing and continued advances in its proprietary state-of- the-art gas fermentation platform.
This comes on the heels of Calysta receiving a major conditional UK grant to help develop a market introduction facility in northern England.
In addition, Aqua-Spark has invested in the “game-changing” Norwegian halibut farm Sogn Aqua, currently producing about 50 metric tons of halibut annually, which is being delivered to restaurants throughout Europe.
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