2023, a year filled with talent

At WeAreAquaculture we believe the most important thing about the seafood industry is not the fish but the people. Ours is an industry filled with talent and we are determined to show it to the world. That's why our TalentView series was born, to discover the people behind the numbers, the ones who make it possible for the whole industry to move forward.

We do this through exclusive interviews in which the important thing is not the headline but the story.  This year, twenty people in the industry gave us some of their valuable time to tell us theirs.

Oscar Hennig is a Brazilian who arrived in Hawaii in the late '90s following his passion for marine shrimp aquaculture. There, he found not just his home, but also a career that has led him to his current position as Operations Director of Benchmark Genetics Shrimp. Thirty years later, he still has this vision of the future, and the keyword is aquaculture.

Rajamanohar Somasundaram's journey into aquaculture started from a personal quest within the professional environment. He was looking for "some green passion" and he was "largely inspired by the food value chain." Discover the story behind this entrepreneur founder and CEO of Aquaconnect, a full-stack technology platform devoted to shrimp farming in India.

Under his leadership, Tropo Farms has been recognized for both its economic success and its corporate social responsibility activities. The tilapia champion and aquaculture veteran Francisco Murillo talked with WeAreAquaculture about his career and experiences, his work as CEO of Tropo Farms in Ghana, and why for him, "it’s all about the people."

Against all odds, against the disbelievers who thought he would fail, Bjørn Aspheim, founder of Noray Seafood - and at the time of the interview, also CEO - persisted and, in the end, proved to be right. He managed to make the impossible possible: creating a shrimp farming company in the middle of Spain, far away from the sea. He is no longer at the helm, but his legacy lives on.

Throughout his long career in aquaculture, Per-Roar Gjerde has built a solid reputation for results. After 18 years at Norwegian salmon giant Mowi, where he eventually became Director of Mowi's global farming operations, he moved to become the CEO of Pacifico Aquaculture in Mexico, a young company cultivating striped bass. WeAreAquaculture spoke to the globe-trotting Norwegian to learn more about his remarkable story. 

Newly appointed Thai Union's Assistant Director, Global Fisheries – Sustainability at the time of the interview, Tracy Murai told us she had "lots to do" in her new position. Her goal, like that of the company's global sustainability strategy - called SeaChange® - was to move from creating a policy that sounds good to producing something that has an impact.

At only 40 years of age, Salmon Evolution CEO Trond Håkon Schaug-Pettersen is one of the youngest CEOs in the Norwegian salmon industry, at the helm of one of its youngest companies. He talked to us about his professional transformation from investment banking to aquaculture, the company’s remarkable rise, and his aspirations for Salmon Evolution's global presence looking ahead.

For Dr Panos Kalatzis, Adisseo's European Regional Manager for Aquaculture, motivation comes from the chance to make an impact. We spoke with him to learn about his research background aquaculture, his work with Adisseo in supporting the industry in Europe and beyond, and how bringing together scientific knowledge and business acumen can make a positive impact.

Adriana Sánchez is the founder of Seafood Ninja, Inc, and she has a goal: democratizing access to sustainability for all seafood companies, whatever their size. She got involved in seafood sustainability to help in the family business. But meeting after meeting she soon discovered that there was a disparity in access to sustainability for seafood producers depending on their size. So, she decided to fill that gap.

WeAreAquaculture spoke to David Kelly, CEO and CTO of Innovasea, to learn about his professional evolution from electronics engineer to aquaculture technologist, his outlook on the future of the industry worldwide, and why he – and Innovasea – are "all-in on aquaculture." Their long-term focus: to enable efficient, scalable, and sustainable aquaculture.

When we first met Justin Haber last March, the Executive Director of Just Seafood Ltd. was strolling around the Seafood Expo North America show floor in Boston and stopped at the WeAreAquaculture booth. With a long football career at an international level, and having been the starting goalkeeper for Malta's national team for 12 years, he told us football was his job and seafood his passion. Owner of a fish farm, his ultimate goal is to make a big impact in the seafood industry of his country.

We spoke to Josh Neese, founder and CEO of The Florida Oyster Trading Company, to learn about his passion for oyster aquaculture, and his mission to bring back Florida oysters as a way of life. He founded the company in April 2020, determined to address one fundamental challenge: reliable access to local seed. Since then, he has built the business up to become the largest leaseholder in the State of Florida.

Co-founder of Aqua-Spark, the first fund in the world dedicated exclusively to sustainable aquaculture, Amy Novogratz is an enthusiastic driver of change committed to improving the health of the oceans using sustainable aquaculture as a tool. "To make something new happen, you have to think differently," she told WeAreAquaculture. She did, and the company she started more than ten years ago with her partner, Mike Velings, is now making waves.

Innovation and entrepreneurship are part of Olavur Gregersen's DNA. "My main driver is to make a difference, by putting creativity and business skills into an innovation process," he told us. As CEO of Ocean Rainforest, Gregersen is an advocate for the emerging seaweed industry, and is one of the industry's pioneers, investing in the company when it was still a tiny R&D project to cultivate seaweed off the shores of the Faroe Islands.

With a profound experience in the seafood sector and an impressive career track record as a senior executive for a variety of companies and brands in the 'blue food' space, Elena Petukhovskaya, co-founder and CEO of Swedish start-up Big Akwa wants to help land-based aquaculture become more competitive and sustainable through effective symbiosis with different industries depending on their location, or, as she defines it, "to close the loop."

A long and diverse career in the industry - including positions in senior management for the last few years, in some of the largest groups, in several countries, and now worldwide - has given him a holistic view of aquaculture available to only a few. WeAreAquaculture spoke with Antonio Coli, Global Sales Director of Planktonic, a provider of a ready-to-use live feed about his 27-year career and how he intends to help the future of the industry. 

At the time of the interview, Rune Mikalsen was already learning to call Boston home. The small-town Norwegian had just moved to the United States as CEO of Kvarøy Arctic, bringing Norwegian salmon from the Arctic circle to the dinner plates of sustainability-conscious U.S. consumers. WeAreAquaculture caught up with him to ask about his experience in the seafood industry, his aspirations for the company, and his priorities in the months ahead.

A renowned expert in sustainability and fish husbandry, with vast industry experience in both aquaculture and aquarium stewardship, Maryke Musson is a self-described "fish nerd" and passionate about ocean impact. We talked with Matorka's new COO to learn about her remarkable journey from South Africa to Iceland, and her experiences as she gets started on her latest adventure.

Pioneer, advocate, and almost evangelist of land-based aquaculture, this vocational entrepreneur has already demonstrated that it is possible to raise fish in a RAS facility, now, he says, it is time to mature the sector and, above all, make it scalable and profitable. Ohad Maiman wants to go further. We spoke with the co-founder and Managing Partner of AquaFounders Capital about his career and next steps and he told us he is having fun.

It is not easy to summarize more than 30 years of career in aquaculture. It is even less so when it comes to the path of David Ulloa Walker, General Manager of Imenco Aqua Chile, a biologist at the head of a technology company, someone who works with salmon but did his doctoral thesis on shrimp. He sees his career as a succession of points that make sense when you look back and are finally able to see the final shape. We were lucky enough to have him tell us what those points were and how he has been establishing the connections between them.