Moving Forward

My quandary in going forward with my sustainable aquaculture system was many faceted.

First and foremost I simply did not have the money nor access to the funding that would allow me to build the next evolution as should be built given the success achieved in South Africa.

Second, I had both the American “partners” (and I use that word sarcastically) and the South African partner threatening me with litigation, harassment and further vilification if I did anything without including them.

Their position was whatever I did they owned. This was despite the fact that the Americans never put a single penny into the project while the South African (who did indeed provide the funding for the development in South Africa) simply ignored the fact that he broke every contractual agreement he made with me when we established the partnership.

During on every contentious discussion when I brought up the signed contracts and the promises he had made, I was told, “ Signed contracts for us are just the beginning of a negotiation”.

2008 and 2009 went by, as the rhetoric grew more acrimonious between the members of the original partnership. At the end of 2009 the South African simply pulled all funding and decided they would develop what I had built in South Africa. (Lesson to self, you build your house on another man’s property it is not your house).  I did not have the money to go into litigation against a multi millionaire despite knowing he was absolutely in breach of both written and verbal contracts. (Another note to self, “you” (me) should have learned this lesson during the HSUS debacle. Being right means little if you cannot afford the legal representation to go toe to toe with your adversary).

So, facing 2010 with no income, no ability to pay my management team and no clue of what to do next, I decided to take a step back and reassess my strengths and liabilities.

Strengths: I had successfully proven the commercially viability of a re-circulating, no discharge, sustainable, environmentally friendly aquaculture system that was a major evolution in fish farming. Taking disparate parts of a multitude of various research advancements I had cobbled together a “system” that worked.  Not unlike Henry Ford, I had not invented anything but I had taken a lot of ideas and integrated them into a successful process.

Weaknesses were numerous. I had no money to take the system into production. I was being hammered again over my HSUS experience being called a “crook” and worse. I was in danger of losing the core of talented individuals that had worked with me to get the system to this point. I was being threatened with litigation, for what I was not sure but I surely did not have the money to hire any lawyers to fight in court over whatever the allegations might be.

Never let anyone tell you that giving up is an option.

Thomas Edison supposedly said, “Genius was 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration”. If that is true then I have at least achieved the perspiration quota.

By early 2010 I had developed a strategy. It would be difficult and it was fraught with potential pitfalls of epic proportion but it was a plan.

First I would write a book telling my side of the HSUS bullshit. I had never had the opportunity to tell my story and refute my accusers. I had always been so disgusted and felt so betrayed by the politics behind my demise that I just wanted to leave it behind me forever but frankly, the Internet, the animal rights people and others would not let it fade into the past. Not content with the fact I had left the animal rights movement and a cause I loved, they wanted to make sure I never succeeded at any thing ever again. Failing that every time I had been successful the past 15 years they had tried to use the HSUS years to discredit me. It had never worked but now under pressure I past being tired of it and getting damn irritated.

Second, I would begin to develop a new corporate structure to oversee the development of the aquaculture system. I knew we could not use what we had accomplished in South Africa to tout our accomplishments so I would have to go back to the drawing board and figure out a new next step in our evolution.

The oceans were (and are) being depleted. Traditional aquaculture has a multitude of environmental and other problems. (Take a few trips to shrimp or salmon operations as I have in Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Chile and Canada and you will swear off seafood forever).

I and the core team around me possessed an answer to these problems. How to move it forward became the objective in 2010.

(Postscript:  I love Sub-Saharan Africa. As a kid reading Tarzan and Alan Quatermain stories by Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard I always wanted to work and live on the Dark Continent. It is a fascinating place and I have been privileged to work in Zambia, Angola, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Uganda, Namibia and South Africa, as well as Madagascar and Mauritius. The land and the animals that inhabit it are magnificent and awe inspiring. That said, each of these countries is plagued with corruption, crime, deceit, and dishonesty of epic proportions all perpetuated by the human beings, both black and white that live there. The human beings, (regardless of race), I have encountered there with rare exception operate in a moral vacuum. From 1988 to 2008 I traveled and worked in Africa taking no less then 35 trips and spending cumulatively over 2 years of my life there. I will probably never return but I will miss its animals and its wild places. They are truly the only noble beings that reside there).