And it all started with Tarzan

I turned on the TV this afternoon for some background noise while I was doing some boring household chores and found that Turner Classics's was showing the 1932 "Tarzan of the Apes" movie starring  Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan.

I was suddenly transported for a few moments back to my childhood as I remembered how voraciously I devoured every adventure novel or novella I could get my hands on in those days. 

"Tarzan of the Apes", by Edgar Rice Burroughs was my first adventure tale and my favorite, of that there is no dispute. 

Tarzan, was the standard by which every other hero and adventurer was judged. He was fierce but he protected the animals. He was kind to Jane but brutal to poachers and con artists and wildlife traffickers. 

But, I was also captivated by many others. 

The stories of Allen Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard and anything from Jules Verne or Rudyard Kipling. 

I loved Jack London's stories and those of Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells. 

In fact, "The Sea Raiders" by H.G.Wells, and "Off The Mangrove Coast" by Louis L'Amour were two stories that in retrospect, planted the original seed in by mind that despite the fact I was a poor farm boy growing up in rural Virginia, a life of travel and adventure and seeing firsthand the wild animals and remote civilizations of the world was the only life for me.

My greatest fear was that everything would be discovered before I was old enough to travel on my own. 

While I did not open up darkest Africa with Livingstone and Stanley and while indeed many of the great wild life populations of Africa were decimated by the time I began to travel there, looking back it is amazing where I went and what I did and how much of my life and my career grew out of my fascination and admiration of those heroes of pulp fiction adventure. 

A few of my adventures prior to 1996 are documented in my book, "Undercover", but my travels to remote regions over the past 17 years are not. 

Since 2000 I have observed wild sturgeon in northern Iran on the Caspian Sea, and later I went to Kazakhstan investigating sturgeon populations.  

I have been to Indonesia, observing the vast wild fisheries of that region. I went to Papua New Guinea and on the remote north side of the island saw my first "slipper lobster".

I traveled to the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) to study and try to understand the issues and find solutions so there could be a potential for better controlled and thus sustainable fisheries there. 

I traveled to Entebbe, Uganda and saw an amazing fish processing plant for Victoria Perch an invasive species that has plagued many indigenous species in the Lake Victoria.

I went to Fort Dauphin, Madagascar and saw four species of wild lemurs in their natural habitat. 

I traveled south into China and witnessed the incredible amount of destruction and pollution caused by the tens of thousands of open air shrimp and fish ponds wreaking havoc on the waterways of the region. 

I have been to Mexico, Venezuela, and Colombia, Panama, and Chile assessing and learning about aquaculture operations, as well as wild capture fishery industries in the region. 

All told I have had adventures in over 50 countries.

And it appears I am gearing up to set out again.

We have sent the past two months finalizing the engineering drawings for the aquaculture system that we are now building here in Texas. The site is now cleared and the new road built and this week we we should put out the bids to bulldoze and level the area, move 600,000 plus cubic yards of dirt for the first 40 acres and compact the area and sculpt and lay the pipe for the first eight ponds that go under the first module. 

Once the first module is completed we will start immediately on the second module and by early 2014 all infrastructure and supporting facilities will be in place for an annualized production of over 1 million pounds of jumbo shrimp.

And that footprint of 2 modules with supporting facilities will be the blueprint for all future production expansion as we go forward in Texas and "anywhere in the world". 

Our system has many of the elements countries are seeking as they try and bring new technology to their parts of the world. 

It produces copious amounts of marine protein in a sustainable and environmentally friendly matter. It produces an enormous number of sustainable jobs both skilled and unskilled. It offers a product that can be exported to wealthier nations for "FOR EX" ( read "cash").  

We are currently looking at three distinct countries where the investment and the political mindset appear to want us to set up operations. 

I believe many more will follow.

And to think, it all started with Tarzan. 

Yellow fin tuna Micronesia (above) 

Tuna boats Micronesia (below)