Takeda will combine his work at Restorae with this new position at the Japan Blue Economy Association.
Photo: Urchinomics.
As we reported yesterday, Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda - founder of Urchinomics and co-founder of Restorae - is the new Secretary of International Affairs of the Japan Blue Economy Association (JBE). In his new position, he will facilitate knowledge sharing on Japan's successful market for blue natural capital credits, but, as he sees it, his new role is actually "a real big opportunity" to help the planet.
WeAreAquaculture has spoken with him to learn more about his new position and, at one point in the interview, we asked him to explain, in layman's terms, what J-Blue Credits are. "This is essentially a market mechanism that allows companies and stakeholders to work together to do good, quantify the good, and then essentially get paid for it," he answers.
The potential behind that desire "to do good" is what has brought Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda to be JBE's new Secretary of International Affairs. "What this role and what this engagement means, not just for me but for the wider world, is that I firmly believe that there are corporates invested interests in others that actually do want to do good; that the world is not made-up of just evildoers that are trying to find ways to purely extract from the planet. I really do think that."
Takeda's career in recent years has been marked by the conviction that it is possible to do good without giving up being a profitable business. This idea led him to first found Urchinomics, a company in which restoration is part of the business model, and then Restorae, a venture that, integrating science, technology, and market-based solutions, aims to drive systemic change that restores biodiversity, strengthens climate resilience, and creates sustainable economic opportunities.
In the case of Urchinomics - which continues its successful expansion, now invested by Cadman Capital Group - the business model is based on collecting barren sea urchins from the seafloor and converting them into premium 'uni' (sea urchin roe) while helping kelp forests to recover. Precisely, it was this model that led the restorative aquaculture company to become the first in the world to earn JBE blue carbon credits from wild seaweed restoration.
Months after Cadman Capital's arrival at the company two years ago, Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda relinquished his CEO position to Perry Bevin so he could continue "working his magic." Shareholders approved a resolution allowing him to have a "60/40 engagement," where 60% of his time would be dedicated to supporting Urchinomics during the transition, and 40% "to do whatever I thought would best help save the planet," while receiving full compensation.
This allowed him to support many initiatives, like the NGO Kelp Forest Foundation, as well as set up Restorae in 2024 to house his non-Urchinomics-related, ecologically restorative for-profit and non-profit initiatives that supported seagrass, mangrove, and kelp restoration. Thus, by 2025, under the new leadership, Urchinomics was doing very well without him, while his new venture was gaining a lot more traction than he had originally anticipated.
"It seemed time for me to walk away from the sweetheart deal I had, and dedicate 100% of my time to Restorae, and make the greatest impact I could," he tells us now. So, in January 2025, he formally said goodbye to Urchinomics. "It's a bit scary to let go of such a sweet deal, but, for me, the mission is bigger," he acknowledges.
Saying goodbye to his "sweetheart deal" is what has allowed him to accept the position of Secretary of International Affairs at JBE. "Instead of spending 60% of my time on Urchinomics, I can now dedicate that amount to other initiatives that I think are meaningful, including the JBE project."
The Japan Blue Economy Association initiative is one of many projects in Takeda's "basket of other stuff that I want to do to help," but it's not just any one. "I feel very privileged to have the opportunity to essentially take the knowledge that the Japanese have and formulate it in a way that it's easy for bureaucrats and governments and others to understand how it's done and learn what they can from it."
As he explains, JBE is a private research cooperative authorized by Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, dedicated to fostering the country's transition to a sustainable blue economy by developing and implementing blue natural capital markets and supporting marine ecosystem restoration and creation. "In other words, JBE is the state-appointed institution that is responsible for designing and administering Japan's Blue Natural Capital Credit market."
J-Blue Credits are the ocean equivalent of the J-credits - originally developed by the Japanese state to facilitate decarbonization in the energy sector, as well as carbon sequestration through terrestrial nature-based solutions - and are designed to facilitate ocean restoration.
JBE´s J-Blue Credit is also the world's first Blue Natural Capital credit, where the value of the credit is not just based on scientifically validated carbon sequestration but also other co-benefits like biodiversity improvements and community benefits.
By creating this market, publicly traded companies that have disclosure and ethical performance obligations, as well as climate and biodiversity objectives, find a legitimate mechanism that allows them to invest their time and resources in projects that have the desired outcome of restoring ecosystems, in this case, marine ecosystems.
In terms of blue natural capital credits, Japan is the first and only state-backed market. There are other private initiatives, NGOs, community groups, and others that are doing things like this on very localized scales, but none are state-sponsored.
"What I think Japan has done is it has set a precedent, an example of how you do it in the ocean," JBE's new Secretary of International Affairs continues. "It is really good, and it's part of the reason why the carbon credits or the J-Blue credits are being transacted for USD 400 a tonne, which is exponentially higher than all other credits out there. That's because of really good market design."
Thus, although they were designed to be a national solution for Japanese national stakeholders, as Takeda adds, they can be a good example to share with other countries that are currently working to write their laws to manage natural capital credit in the oceans.
"I'm not saying it's the perfect one, it may not work for all different countries but I think there are a lot of lessons that can be learned because the outcome of their work is achieving."
Appointed yesterday, he is still very new to the role, so he says the first thing he needs to do is get through the onboarding process. "My knowledge about JBE and the J-Blue Credits were very much from the context of a project developer that secured J-Blue Credits with wild kelp, so there is a lot more I need to learn about in the seagrass and mangrove J-Blue Credit space, as this is completely new to me."
After onboarding, it will be time to focus on sharing knowledge and disseminating the mechanics of how Japan successfully launched this market and how it managed to get so many important industry players aligned, transacting and financing important restoration initiatives across the country through this credit mechanism.
The first priority audiences are state institutions that are currently working to develop their blue natural capital markets to drive private funding to restoration initiatives.
"But government knowledge-sharing alone is not enough, as the success of many of these projects are due to wider collaboration between industry, communities, municipalities, NGOs and other members of civil society, working together to make these initiatives stick. So, a close second priority would be knowledge-sharing with industry, civil society, academia and others that interact with the government to localize the knowledge and create the 'right' kind of blue natural capital market for each, respective country," he explains.
"If those experiences and knowledge sharing can help countries like Norway or Chile or Spain or France or other ocean faring countries that have large blue economies already, that brings all of that capital that wants to deploy in restoration, that wants to contribute to carbon sequestration, that wants to contribute to biodiversity, we're giving them a way to make that happen," JBE's Secretary of International Affairs claims.
"That ability to unlock this pent-up capacity and resources is going to be, from my perspective, just as impactful as what I'm doing with Restorae as a private company. So that's why I want to dedicate more of my time to this because I realised that this is a real big opportunity for me to help the planet."
Despite the current challenging outlook, with the United States leaving the Paris Treaty in January 2026, Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda is optimistic about the future in the restoration space beyond Japan, at least in Europe.
"I feel like we might be at a really interesting turning point where Europe has an opportunity to reinvest and realign itself as a leader in this space, not just because Europe is moving ahead but also because others are falling behind," he says. "I think we have a unique opportunity for Europe to re-invent itself as a sustainable, and over time, restorative economy that helps lead the world in this space, while others hesitate."
"The EU superpower is regulations," he jokes. "The EU is a big tanker that gets slow sometimes, but when it's moving, good luck trying to stop it." In that sense, he says, Europe can become more predictable, but "once the course is set, it's really hard to change." As he explains, beyond the global agreements, the EU restoration law is in the books and is institutionally very challenging to repeal even if many European governments change over the next few years.
"Combine this with young, ambitious and innovative entrepreneurs who find greater meaning in developing restorative business models rather than the latest flashy app, and you have the ingredients to make a really exciting, dynamic space where economic activity does not have to be zero-sum game with nature," Restorae co-founder unfolds his theory.
Other countries, he says, are going through their decarbonization strategy for many other reasons, such as being less dependent on oil and having their own industry driving their energy, and he gives the example of China.
"We all have different motivations as to how we want to get better, but at the end of the day, I think what it's come down to, it's going to be a talent competition," and it's in that context that he believes those young entrepreneurs who want to make money but also want to contribute to the environment to leave a better planet will emerge.
In his view, as Blue Natural Capital markets spread beyond Japan, more mission-aligned funding should also become available, unlocking many more opportunities in the restorative ocean space. "That's also why, to me, this whole JBE thing is attractive because I can help unlock important funding that would not be there if the market didn't exist," Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda concludes.
