I started out as a canner with Connors Brothers back in 1970 and went from there to aquaculture in 1987 as the first trout farmer in New Brunswick. We started with about five cages off the wharf at one of our canneries in Deer Island, and as aquaculture evolved into being much more dominant and it started to work, we went into the feed business. This was all part of a Connors Brothers aquaculture division component, and we said to ourselves that this thing was starting to catch fire and we should start to expand it. Consequently, we set up a division within that particular company to explore our operations and build upon them.
We originally set into manufacturing moist feed to feed all of our particular fish, and then a number of individuals and independents got into the business, and we became the feed source for the rest of the industry at that point in time.
As the feed business evolved, other people got into it with dry feed and much more highly sophisticated feeds and things of that nature evolved. Then Connors Brothers said they would like that division to move forward, and we started hiring a number of candidates from around the world for the New Brunswick venture. We eventually hired Bill Robertson to run one of our new hatcheries of the day. He moved from there to become the director of our east coast operation. During that timeframe we had moved into the U.S. and set up some operations along the Maine coast. Then we took over British Columbia Packers operations on the west coast in Campbell River and around that area, and then we went to Chile and took over operations down in Chile and functioned from there.
At the end of my period there, I eventually moved from my canning background into an aquaculture component and ended up running this particular entity for six years as president of North America's largest aquaculture component in Atlantic salmon. We had operations in Chile, the east and west coasts, and in Maine. Consequently, the branded product of the day was Heritage Salmon, which you probably saw as a premium salmon product around all the major stores across Canada and deep into the U.S.
So we do have a fair amount of exposure, experience, and understanding about where the aquaculture business is and where it has to go.
I've retired from aquaculture and have gone on to become the chair of the Huntsman Marine Science Centre lab. The exercise here is to say there's been a lot of talk about closed containment in aquaculture. We're thinking that we understand what's happening here in the ocean and the waterfronts and all the bays and all the changes. We've looked at the economics, and today the economics are far outstripped in the traditional manners. But there are some issues and some faults, as obviously you people have heard over time.
The economics say it's marginal to go onshore, but no one has done it. We've all talked about it and its math on paper. To make a long story short, what we're saying is why don't we try it and measure it and put it to bed or make it work? If you have the facilities, you get to tweak a lot of this stuff. Right now there is a whole genetic program going on as to how we rid ourselves of sea lice, how we grow this particular product this fast. We were all part of that and we agree 100% with that.
If you were in tanks, all your criteria would be different. You wouldn't be out there fighting the sea lice component, because in theory it wouldn't exist. You might be able to cross your fish or develop your fish so they would grow better in confined and controlled containment. Those are the things that in this day and age we should look at and the government should think about. It isn't the final answer--at least not in our career--but it is a step that will take us through Andrew's exercise in the traditional fishery and into this particular exercise to see whether it works.
Do you buy that? We've argued for this a number of times.