Fisheries committee  You can tell by the youth of our faces here that we're all pioneers in our own way in the industry. For a point of reference, in 1986 the company I worked with at the time put 30,000 fish in ten cages, and I was wondering, okay, what do we do now? It was very interesting. I have a biology degree and a chemistry and math background, and I learned about the business of the seafood side of things as we came up.

Fisheries committee  Waste, yes. Again, it's really how you characterize it. I wouldn't characterize it as waste; I would characterize it as nutrients.

Fisheries committee  We're implying that we can exist within, as we defined it, the balanced ecosystem aquaculture approach. Well, I guess at the end of the day, maybe it doesn't have the impact, so you're right.

Fisheries committee  We're in the process of doing that.

Fisheries committee  They'll be ongoing. We've done our first experiments with the St. Andrews Biological Station. There will be more carried on in this coming year, and in more locations as well.

Fisheries committee  There are two parts to the answer here. Part of it is, again, like smart phones—who would have guessed how we all use them today? Five or six years ago, a few people were using them, but not very many people. It represents a new way of looking at things; technology does that. As the science emerges—again, with all of the great work Dr.

Fisheries committee  Okay. Can you repeat your question, then?

Fisheries committee  No, I don't think so. That's not what we're implying.

Fisheries committee  I'm sorry, what kinds of permits?

Fisheries committee  I don't think so, but I'm not sure I'm the one qualified to answer that one.

Fisheries committee  Pardon me?

Fisheries committee  You're asking what the differences are?

Fisheries committee  The difference is that we have this fixed framework, as shown here. Then we're able to utilize—you're getting the full sales pitch here—some pretty advanced netting technology. We work with our partner, DSM Dyneema, a Netherlands-based company. This material is like Kevlar. They hate it when I say that, but everybody knows what Kevlar is.

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. It would be.... Well, we're still in the process of developing models, but every day adds a little bit more evidence. The offset in costs comes from reduced net management costs as well as the reduced infrastructure investments required. This is why the lobstermen are of so much interest to me: because they have 90% of what we need to run a small iFarm.

Fisheries committee  It comes down to how they're operated, and there are a lot of good operators. I think one of the reasons that we've gone after our technology is because there are limitations with the existing net-pen systems relative to things like geography, and such. The name of our company is Open Ocean Systems, so we see ultimately moving into more open-ocean types of environments, and such.