Upsetting news indeed. Hopefully things will get worked out soon.

booooooooo

they need our support now as much as ever .. the principals and foundation the SeaSmart program is built on have not changed, nor should our faith in their progress. the circumstances surrounding them are indeed an unfortunate setback, but i firmly believe it will be overcome.

sad news…i hope the program will survive and the issues will be settled in near future.

They were my favorite people at MACNA last year.

They 2-3 years more time!

booo.

Will collecting funds for them help?

According to the press release – “Recovering funds will allow the Program to resume operations and move forward with supplying sustainably-collected marine aquarium life to hobbyists in North America.”

Am I the only one who thinks the business itself needs to be sustainable before we worry about losing a business that “supplies sustainable collected….”

Getting government funding is nice and all to get their feet planted but they need to get them planted quickly. If the market isn’t there to keep them afloat its kind of silly to expected a government funded business just because the business makes us feel all warm inside

Indeed Mike, you are 100% correct on the surface of it. But as you know, businesses don’t usually start up profitable from day 1; no, they often go well into the red making investments and ramping up. It can take quite a while to be profitable, let alone in the net black over the entire lifespan of the business. My personal problem here is that SEASMART seems to have spent about 2 years learning PNG, establishing a system that worked, and maybe only got a year or two of actual production under their belts? If you read back on earlier stories, that brought it’s own set of issues to be worked out in opening up a new market. Flash forward to 2010, and SEASMART has finally overcome these obstacles and is starting to deliver what people want, but doesn’t have the client base there to drive the volume needed to be profitable. But people take note and start “spreading the word” and by fall, SEASMART has would could be called a “coming out party” at MACNA. Arguably the publicity and exposure needed to finally break through. The type of advertising money can’t buy.

And that’s right around when the PNG government pulled the rug out? From my viewpoint, the time between MACNA and end of the year was the time for SEASMART to see the benefits of that exposure, and to demonstrate that it could meeting the larger demand and have a much clearer picture of when and how the operation could be self sustaining.

It’d be presumptive of me to say that SEASMART would’ve been profitable in Q4, but who’s to say? The people who invested all this time and energy to create the end result were never given the opportunity to finish. Think of it like this – your home team is on the 20 yard line, down by 10, at the 2 minute warning, and the ref decides to just “call it” and end the game there, let alone declare the season over. I’m not even a football fan, but I know that your team could very well lose by 10, 7, 4, 3, tie, or win by 1,3,4,5 etc.

And truthfully, to take your question quite literally – the sustainability of the collection practices is a separate issue from the sustainability of the business itself. I know that SEASMART believes it will be profitable, it just needs to get the right volume level going.

Hopefully, hindisight will show that this is just a “speedbump”.

What a bummer. They really should have given the program 5 years instead of 3. It was only within the last year that people really became aware of it and large scale exporting of fish and corals hadn’t really even begun!

I’m very interested in hearing why the PNG government pulled the plug. I hope it was purely financial and not some political move.

@Mike, actually, there’s one other point I probably should clarify. We’re all looking at SEASMART as a “business”, but we’re kindof thinking of it as a private entity when in reality, that’s not the case. SEASMART was more of a joint venture, and as such, the Government of PNG was a partner in that venture. Profitability was not the only item and goal at stake here…truly, it was developing a fishery from the ground up in a sustainable fashion that worked for the people of PNG.

From my viewpoint, profitability was the last item on a very long checklist of goals, and again, I’m beyond stumped as to why the people who achieved everything else on their list were not afforded the opportunity to succeed at the last goal.

When profitability is the last item on a very long checklist of goals for a project that from the outset was meant to be profitable and privatized then you are bound to fail. When working in a capitalist society profitability needs to be near the top of the list.

Millions were spent, the operation could become profitable if emphasis was put on profitability rather than grant money. Many private, sustainable, profitable, marinelife collection stations exist that have been funded privatly when profitability was a necessity rather than a lofty goal.

Again Dave, I’m only sharing my opinions based on what I see as an outsider. I don’t get the impression that profitability was an “afterthought”…my apologies if my commentary suggested that. I just see the efforts as being a well thought out series of goals, and in my readings, I get the impression that this all started as a “proof of concept” exercise from the PNG government’s standpoint. I.e. My very loose intepretation of how this all worked – Step 1, assses situation. Step 2, devise sustainable strategy. Step 3, test stragey. Step 4, revise strategy. Step 5, start trail runs of exporation. Step 6. Revise exportaiton practices based on experiences. Step 7. ramp up to profitable levels. And thus, I see that Step 7 was never allowed to happen.

Certainly more will come to light in the coming days/weeks/months/years.

I think this business has a lot of potential. Access to salt water wells, tropical sun and little intervention from regulatory compliance from effluent could be profitable if they got a few supply contracts. They got the word out and keep staff low.

I would only guess what expenses are other than start up equipment.

I think it could be run part time help mostly during development of livestock.

Headline shoudl read:

Vosseler kills fails another program, puts another nail in the coffin for sustainable marine fish.

Hum, First MAC now SEASMART. How many times can David V blunder in this quest. The problem is the people running the show not the idea of the show. SEASMART at MACNA was a sells pitch, nothing more nothing less. Very unimpressive. I felt like I was at a time share office during the banquet talk, well except for the awards and dessert

Just another thing to put out there, something we can’t do as an industry, fair and equable fisheries. His disaster in MAC and now this are just more nails…..

They should never have gotten rid of Steve Robinson. He was dreamy.

To say it is a sales pitch is ignorant. Of course they got a booth and meet the industry contacts to get presence known. Who paid all those expenses for nothing.

This venture is much more difficult on scale of ORA type outfit than an acrylics manufacturer. I would think using funds from limited export of wild caught to build base for sustainable aquaculture may be better solution.

It may turn out they are too far from intended market or do not have adequate access to supplies and resources to be effective. I am still dissapointed.

What people seem to miss in the sustainable conversation is that a Sustainable and EQUITABLE marine livestock trade will put village people in third world countries to work, not build a large aquaculture facility which will cut out the involvment of villagers. Village people over a fairly large area need to be involved to give their reefs value to them and to give value to the biodiversity they control. Reefs are saved by increasing their value to the local owners, not by mass producing a product far removed from its origin.

Dave, very important points that are not lost me. I do tend to have a different view given the long term forecasts for reef health, which I’ve outlined in other articles – the short of it being there can’t be sustainable harvest if the coral reefs are all gone, and I don’t think sustainable harvest can generate enough value to stop the forecasted global changes. So, to me, supporting sustainability is about buying everyone more time, so that aquaculture, namely captive sexual propagation, can develop sufficiently to ark as much as possible. I worry whenever sustainable wild harvest is juxtaposed against aquaculture – these are not mutually exclusive endeavors. We can have both, and we desperately need both, to address both short term, and long term problems. But that’s just my opinion given the facts and forecasts.

I would think that with the positive direction of their program and the progress already made they should be able to obtain private funding (loans, etc.) to continue operations. I know that might not be the preferred way to secure funds but its what most startup businesses must do.