Aquaculture Renaissance: Hatch and NELHA's Synergy

Hawaii really cherishes the ocean and the environment here. There's a lot more we can do in building new technologies that can regenerate and get back what we've lost in terms of ocean health. My name is Wayne Murphy. I'm one of the co-founders of Hatch. We started off six years ago now with myself and my two co-founders, essentially to be the go-to place for aquaculture and build the world's first aquaculture accelerator to help support, invest in and, develop future technology firms that can help produce more seafood sustainably. Our mission really at the end of the day, is to enable new technologies through investment, through knowledge and ecosystem building. After this program, actually we'd invest in 47 companies around the world. Over the last five years, we've now built our team into 27 people from all around the world with bases in Hawaii, Ireland, Norway, and Singapore. And we have built a global network of experts and industry partners with a view to helping to support all these very important innovators that are gonna bring the technologies for future production in seafood. 

Hawaii is, is quite unique globally in terms of aquaculture. This location here at HOST Park is surrounded by the most pristine environmental conditions for growing fish and aquaculture generally. The pipes that go down deep into the ocean here are not far off the coast bringing up amazing nutrients from the depths of the ocean in addition to surface water. So whatever the species that you're growing, you can adapt the temperature to suit those species, and that's quite unique. We like working with people that we can trust and we, we partner with and they share our ambitions for aquaculture. And certainly the guys here at NELHA and the Hawaiian community here really do want to make a difference. And they really do want to drive Hawaii's position as a global center of excellence for aquaculture. Today, now we're quite a different beast. For us. What we've done is we've recognized that we need to drive more innovation in, in global aquaculture, and that means also encouraging and finding and developing those with even ideas, you know, and to try and get those ideas to light and hopefully get that technology into systems around the world. 

I would just finally like to thank the guys at NELHA, Laurence and, and Greg and the whole NELHA team. They really pioneered this kind of facility here in terms of attracting Hatch to Hawaii. They have done amazingly in supporting our endeavors in driving innovation and supporting entrepreneurs. They meet and match our ambitions and our passion for making this successful. We are now working with them for four years, and we hope, and I think they hope too, that this, you know, partnership into the future will continue to grow and that we can attract more technology firms here, create more jobs for Hawaii, but again, enhance the already amazing profile that it has globally. And we just want to make sure the world knows all about that.