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. My company, back in 1987, actually commissioned the first study, with Dr. David Wildish, at the St. Andrews Biological Station on benthic productivity around the site.
This is part of where we're going with the iCage and smart farming systems and the things we're doing. We appreciate that when a cage of fish goes in the water it becomes part of the ecosystem. The ecosystem impacts the fish themselves, and you also have to make sure that the ecology within the cage has a low interaction, shall we say, in staying within the ecological boundaries.
At the end of the day, Mother Nature gives us all these wonderful gifts, and it's kind of corny, but it's our job, as fish farmers, as regulators, as government, to make sure we are converting the protein as efficiently, sustainably, and respectfully as we possibly can.