Sustainability

I am back. I took off much of the summer to decide my steps steps in developing both business and personal strategies for moving forward. I have decided on the pathway I wish to take in either but am mindful that as events arise the ability to adjust and evolve is crucial to success.

In other words nothing ever goes as I plan in any event so a strategy for me is just one possible way of achieving my objectives.

I am going to release my book "Undercover" this month. I have no doubt it will open the door for more criticism and slander but I feel I have no choice. (for more on this subject please refer to my earlier blog  "The Rest of the Story" published on this site on 6/25/11).  Lies and half-truths on the Internet continue to dog me and in some instances impact my life in a negative fashion. Even those the events of my 5 years with HSUS are now 16 years behind me the Internet has given such stories a new shelf life and those individuals who choose to pander in such waters can find decades old lies to try and make fresh.

Please do not mistake my comments as defensiveness. I am just occasionally frustrated with how a lie can live so long despite verifiable refutation. So, the book will be available this month. Then let the allegations begin anew.

I need to bring you up to date in more detail with what I have been doing the past 16 years since I left the animal protection movement as a pariah.

I have long been an advocate of sustainability. It makes good common sense to me. In the late 90's I began work developing a sustainable environmentally friendly recirculating non-discharge aquaculture system.

Having traveled the globe during and after my time with HSUS I had through my work with Darden Restaurants, the National Fisheries Association, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and others seen first hand the positives and the many negatives of traditional aquaculture systems. I vsisted and assessed shrimp farms in Indonesia, and Vietnam and Ecuador and Mexico to name but a few.

I traveled to The Federated States of Mirconesia and studied lobster and tuna fisheries there. (pictured above)

I even went to Iran and Kazakhstan and  developed a management plan for the Caspian Sea sturgeon fishery.

I saw salmon operations (net-pens) in Chile and Canada. I worked on a business development model for a Croatia carp farm. I studied small fisheries co-operatives in Uganda and Madagascar.

Everywhere I traveled I saw greed trump concern for sustainability and environmental concerns. Working as a consultant I was able to learn an enormous amount and became a bona fide expert on both wild and farmed fishery operations and systems.

In the late 90's and early 2000-2002 working with some very qualified fishery types, and looking at over 45 million dollars of federally funded USA research we established a biological protocol to develop a recirculating aquaculture system that initially would be designed to grow very large shrimp. My next step would be to find a way to secure the funding to see if my concept and my biological success could be translated into a successful business.

I would prove successfully the business merit of my system only to have my past be used against me in an attempt to high jack my system and discredit me to the extent that for me to continue on my own would be impossible.

More to follow........