When I got out of the Navy in 1993, I got lost everywhere I went for the first three months. I was home, in Orange County (California), but so many new buildings and streets were constructed since I had been gone that the place wasn’t recognizable to me anymore.
Neither was the beach, it was nasty. My old dive spots were now dry. I had a thought back then: “at the rate we are going the only fish in the ocean (that we can eat) will come from ‘fish farms'”. I saw all the farm land in Orange County go away in my lifetime. I saw all the beauty of the beaches go away in my lifetime. I saw all the spots I use to fish when I was a kid, dry up, in my lifetime. Scary thing about it was, at the time, I was only 24 years old.
So I went to school to be a fish farmer. I figured it was the next evolution of the market. How many cows do you see in the world? How many of those cows are free (meaning anyone can go up to them and shoot them, clean them, cook them, and eat them). Not one I’ll bet. Every cow in the world is owned by someone.
Chickens…almost the same thing.
Pretty soon (within my lifetime), the only fish (that we can eat) will come from fish farms. I wanted to get a jump start on the market, while it was still pretty inexpensive to get in…
I got an A.A. in Oceanography, and then transferred to C.S.U.M.B. to get my Bachelors degree. They started out with a decent program. Many of the relevant computer and science classes. The first year was fine.
The second year, they dropped the program because they couldn’t find anyone to teach the upper classes (it was a new college). Bummed, but not beaten, most of us just decided to stick it out and get our degree in Computer Science (since we had already been going in that direction anyway)…
Anyway, that lead to all sorts of “sidetracks”, but my heart (and my head) are still headed in the direction of Aqua Farming. Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do – addicted to it actually – but I want to leave something for my children and grandchildren to make a living off of. I will have to learn the business (Aquaculture) the hard way, they will grow up with it, and know it before it is their turn to take it over…
My idea is to buy an old oil drilling facility (one that looks like a startfish from over head and has at least 10 decks below the water line), put netting all around it (from arm to arm – each section can be a different type of fish), get the permits to put it out as far off land (but within U.S. waters) as possible, and “go for it”…
There’s a lot more to it than that, but that is the short version of it…
One of the drawbacks of the “sidetracks” mentioned above, is that, I have no education or experience in the field. So, I’m gonna have to earn the money to do this myself (no one is going to give me money for this venture). I will, of course, hire experienced people once I have the money and the gear, but just getting to that point will take a long-long time…
