Cuna del Mar appointed Donald Grant to spearhead the "next era of regenerative aquaculture."
Photo: Cuna del Mar.
When announcing his appointment as its new Managing Partner, Cuna del Mar said that Donald Grant was taking the helm at a crucial moment, when the impact investment fund is focusing its efforts on expanding its pioneering work and taking on a more active role as a global advocate for regenerative aquaculture. In conversation with WeAreAquaculture, Grant confirms this. "We're going to be much more present," he tells us.
After fifteen years as pioneers in warm-water regenerative aquaculture, figuring out how to do it well in an economically viable way, the time has come for the fund to start sharing its knowledge and experience to help others follow in its footsteps. "We want to be an enabler, and we want to be part of helping to transform aquaculture in a more environmentally and socially sustainable way," Donald Grant claims.
As Christy Walton, founder of Cuna del Mar and its parent company Innovaciones Alumbra (iAlumbra), stated last month, under Grant's leadership, the fund seeks to transition from a pioneer to a global catalyst, ready to democratize this knowledge and accelerate technology, practices, and models to support coastal economies.
Having previously held the position of Vice President of the impact investment fund, the new Managing Partner knows well why the time is now. "I think now we're at a place where we can speak with a level of knowledge and experience that is going to be very beneficial to others who are starting down similar roads to us," he says.
"I think the time being now is really also about the pressure that the sea is under from an environmental perspective, the pressure that our food systems are under globally. I think this relationship between the land and the ocean also makes now a time for us to be really engaging and talking more about what we have done and what we have learned over the years," Grant continues.
"That is the reason why we want to get out and really support others, because there's so much pressure in so many different places, environmentally, from a food security standpoint, and so we want to really seize this moment to help others and enable others to do some of the work that we've done over the years."
As Donald Grant explains, all the experiences across Cuna del Mar's production companies have enabled them to gain the knowledge, experience, and understanding of how aquaculture can be done in a way that is regenerative and environmentally and socially responsible.
A good example of this is Santomar. Based in La Paz, Baja California, Mexico, the company produces totoaba, a white-fleshed fish that is a staple of Mexican cuisine, part of its cultural heritage, and found nowhere else in the world.
Producing this endemic species, Santomar is not just doing things in a regenerative way but is also having a lot of success both on the commercial side and the revitalization side. "We have stocked back into the Gulf of California almost 300,000 totoaba over the last 10 years," Donald Grant recalls.
When asked if Santomar has become a kind of proof of concept for Cuna del Mar, he agrees that it is part of the concept that they are very proud of in terms of how you can be both a commercial enterprise but also an agent for social and environmental change, although he points out that it is not the only example.
"Cuna Del Mar is absolutely, extremely proud of Santomar and what it's been able to accomplish, and it is a proof of concept and a bit of a beacon for others in the sector as they start to think about whether or not they can replicate what we have done with Santomar," Grant tells us.
However, he also reminds us that other companies in their portfolio, such as Open Blue—farming cobia—and Blue Ocean Mariculture—dedicated to kampachi—, are doing things a little differently across the sector, due to the regions in which they are located, but also successfully. "We've been able to get a lot of learning from each of those places, and we are very proud of each of those companies," he claims.
"Blue Ocean Mariculture is really the first and only open ocean aquaculture firm in the United States," Grant highlights. "We have Open Blue, which is about 18 kilometers offshore in Panama, which makes it a very challenging environment to operate in, and we've learned a lot of lessons in that organization through that company and that experience as well," he adds.
Nevertheless, Cuna del Mar's portfolio is not limited to farming businesses. It also includes the Center for Aquaculture Technologies (CAT); Onda, the Canadian spin-out of CATC; Innovasea, an aquatech firm; and, even, SalmoGen, a national supplier of Atlantic salmon broodstock and eggs in the U.S.
"We think about it more holistically," Donald Grant explains. Thus, one of the key lessons learned over these fifteen years of pioneering work is that in order to have truly solid production, you also need the technology associated with it.
"It's this integration of a whole bunch of different companies and entities and technologies that make it all work together," he continues. "It's not just about the species, but it's also about all of the other elements that come to bear on it."
This holistic approach has taught them that both more species development and more technology development are needed. That is why Cuna Del Mar and iAlumbra—Christy Walton's family office—are also investing in a new organization, the Center for Applied Aquaculture Innovation (CAAI), based, like Santomar, in La Paz, Mexico.
"We are building an entire innovation center there, because we understand that there's this requirement for more solutions if we're going to be able to do regenerative aquaculture and democratize it and make it available globally," Grant says.
The Managing Partner of Cuna del Mar thinks that the CAAI, the first of its kind fully focused on warm-water aquaculture, can and will become the world's leading center for regenerative warm-water aquaculture and new species development.
Not only that, but as Donald Grant explains to WeAreAquaculture, another of the learnings they have come to understand through all these years is that collaboration in aquaculture is really important.
And that, he says, leads them to want to collaborate and talk much more about what they are doing with policymakers, investors, entrepreneurs, and industry partners, and the CAAI is set to be a big piece of that.
"We want to be part of these conversations, and we have some of the answers for how we're going to do that. We're going to be much more present. We're going to be much more vocal about what we're doing and trying to support others," Grant continues.
For Cuna del Mar, the new Center for Applied Aquaculture Innovation is a natural convening spot for all those interested in growing sustainable aquaculture, and in fact, that dialogue at the CAAI has already begun.
On November 24, the One Ocean Expedition, a 12-month circumnavigation aboard Norway's Statsraad Lehmkuhl—which serves as a floating ambassador for the UN Ocean Decade—arrived in La Paz for a two-day stay to promote ocean sustainability and highlight the need to accelerate transformative solutions.
Among the events included in the stopover program was the launch of the CAAI, which the program presented as "a global center driving applied research and technology breakthroughs that make regenerative aquaculture scalable and accessible."
Another important part of being more present, more vocal about their experience, and sharing the answers they already have is talking to those responsible for creating or changing policies that can take sustainable and regenerative aquaculture forward.
"We are also very interested in talking to policymakers and sharing some of what we know and some of what we learned, because policymakers and regulations are a really important component of aquaculture," Grant explains.
"I hope policymakers will be interested in hearing what we have to say about how you can do aquaculture in a sustainable way, both from an environmental and social perspective," he continues. "I think there's a lot of interest in aquaculture, and I do get outreach from policymakers from different jurisdictions from time to time, asking questions."
When we ask him if he feels that policies on ocean protection and restoration are usually one step behind ventures seeking solutions, Grant acknowledges that politics is really difficult, and especially so in this area.
"If we can be a small or a big part of influencing it and helping policymakers get to important and sustainable solutions, we are very keen on that. I don't know how quickly governments can move in order to do this quickly, I think, though, this is the right moment for us to try to support the aquaculture industry in speaking with policymakers."
That conversation with policymakers has already taken a step forward in the U.S. House of Representatives, where a new bill was introduced in October to strengthen offshore aquaculture in the United States and expand it in a sustainable, science-based, and environmentally responsible way.
The initiative was supported by a broad coalition of environmental organizations, aquaculture researchers, and industry stakeholders. These included Cuna del Mar itself, as well as some of its subsidiaries, such as Innovasea and Blue Ocean Mariculture.
As mentioned above, during the interview, Donald Grant insists on the idea that Cuna del Mar wants to be an enabler, to be part of helping to transform aquaculture in a more environmentally and socially sustainable way, so we ask him if that means that the fund's focus has changed, if from now on it will be more focused on this outreach work than on the investments themselves.
His response makes it clear that they are open to supporting from an experience and knowledge perspective, but also interested in looking at new investments if they fit the fund's thesis. That is, if they can fit into and complement the production, technology, and innovation ecosystem that Cuna del Mar has been building for fifteen years.
"We are absolutely open to continuing to invest, but it is about finding aligned opportunities for Cuna del Mar," he says. Part of this will be carried out through the CAAI, and another part will also contribute to strengthening the sector, for which time, energy, experience, and, in certain circumstances, funds will continue to be invested in new opportunities.
In his view, people are interested in understanding how you can do aquaculture in a sustainable way, and there is an openness to listening and learning and forming new opinions on this, and that is part of what Cuna del Mar wants to do, to share some of its knowledge and experience so that people can see aquaculture maybe in a different light than they've seen it in the past.
"That's part of what we're trying to do, to share some of our knowledge and experience and demonstrate that this can be done in a way that works for the ocean, works for the people and works for the planet," Donald Grant summarizes.
"We're really interested in becoming an enabler and somebody who democratizes their knowledge and experience in the space to help others. That's really what we are wanting to do."