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) 

UnderCover Available as a Kindle Edition

A little over a month ago I wrote that my book "UnderCover" was ready to be available on Amazon in a Kindle edition.


Well it was up on Amazon but it had formatting and other editing issues.


My editor has been diligently working toward a better understanding of E-books and what is involved in editing and layout of Kindle editions in contrast to an actual published paper book.


It seems he has mastered that process for today "UnderCover" is again up and available on Amazon (sans formatting issues) as an E-book Kindle edition.

I have put the cover up on this blog before so today am just going to run three pics in the book of me taken during that period of my life. 

                        Dehorning a white rhino in Zimbabwe

                                                           In Indonesia in 1993

        
    W/ the late Susan Butcher, Iditarod champion, and dear friend. 

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).

Eating the Elephant

I love sub-Saharan Africa. With all of its harshness and all of its sharp edges there is something very basic and honest about it.

I first went to Zambia in 1988. I was there to set up a partnership program between the Michigan Humane Society and the Kitwe Humane Society at the request of John Hoyt who was President of HSUS and at that time the World Society for The Protection of Animals (WSPA).

Since then I have traveled back many times to Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Tanzania. Each experience has enriched my life and expanded my world view.

During one of those trips I was told a story by a friend of mine, Greg Henrichsen.

It seems that an African village had invested everything they had into growing a large vegetable garden to assure everyone in the village that there would be enough food to get everyone through the hard winter and drought that was approaching.

Literally days before  the harvest was to begin a rogue elephant stampeded into the village and the hunters, in order to save the lives of the people killed the elephant that fell upon the garden destroying the groups.

Everyone bemoaned the loss  of the precious food that was supposed to stave off starvation through the harsh upcoming winter. "What will do we do? " the villagers wailed. "How will we survive?"

The fear and anguish grew to a panic stage when the old witch doctor appeared on the scene and declared, "We shall eat the elephant."

The villagers were aghast. "How can one eat an elephant?" they asked. "It is overwhelming. It is huge it is beyond our ability to accept."

The old witch doctor nodded sagely and replied, "We shall eat the elephant, one bite at a time."

Life is tough particularly harsh at times. I know first hand. Aside from my own lifetime of controversy and living outside of the norm, recently my lovely and wonderful wife was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer and now she is fighting through treatment and we are praying for her recovery and long term survival.

Each day brings a new hurdle and a new challenge to accompany the numerous stresses everyday life brings as rote.  She has to face each day with the awareness she has a long way to go to have this behind her. Sometimes just thinking about what is ahead breaks her down and she is not sure if she can do it as it is so overwhelming.

Then we both think of the villagers and eating the elephant, one bite at a time.