What we talked about
Rob Terry is a serial entrepreneur and technologist with 25+ years of experience at the intersection of sustainability, technology, and real-world systems. He is the founder and CEO of SeafoodAI, which builds biometric scanners and digital tools to modernize seafood supply chains with real-time traceability and compliance. Previously, Rob founded SmartCatch, a pioneer in deep-sea monitoring for bycatch reduction, which was successfully acquired. His work has been featured in Business Insider, Crunchbase News, and National Fisherman. He’s held leadership roles at Whole Foods, PARC, UCSF, and Silicon Graphics, and is passionate about bringing scalable tech solutions to overlooked, impact-driven industries like ocean sustainability and food systems.
Show notes
Rob Terry is the founder & CEO of SeafoodAI, a Techstars-, NEC X- and BlueSwell-backed startup that’s bringing the ~$400 billion seafood industry into the digital age with AI-driven biometric scanners and cloud logbooks that automate sorting, slash waste and create tamper-proof “sea-to-table” traceability records.
Before launching SeafoodAI, Rob built and sold SmartCatch Inc.:an award-winning ocean-monitoring platform:and earlier spearheaded Whole Foods Market’s first national e-commerce rollout after senior engineering stops at PARC, SGI and other Silicon Valley icons.
Over three decades he’s earned five seafood-tech patents and multiple innovation prizes for sustainable fishing technology, making him a go-to voice on how advanced data and robotics can protect our oceans while boosting profitability.
Today we dive into Rob’s journey from deep-sea prototypes to scalable products, the realities of building hardware for harsh marine environments, and why transparent supply chains are becoming table-stakes for retailers and regulators alike.
Full transcript
Federico Ramallo (00:01.516) Welcome back to the Prevetted podcast where we spotlight extraordinary people and remarkable talent reshaping our world. Our guest today is Rob Terry. He’s the founder and CEO of Seafood AI. It’s a Techstars NexX Blue swell backed startup that brings the 400 billion seafood industry into the digital age with AI driven biometric scanners and cloud.
logbooks that automate sorting, slash waste and create tamper-proof C2 table traceability records. Hello Rob, how are you doing today?
Rob Terry (00:41.441) Doing great, how are you doing?
Federico Ramallo (00:43.63) I am doing great. Can you tell us a little bit more about what seafood AI is?
Rob Terry (00:52.629) Yeah, Seafood AI. Actually Seafood AI is my second startup. So I’ll tell you a little bit about my first startup because it was also in the same sort of sustainable seafood space. And that was called Smart Catch. And what we did was we created real-time video cameras, sensors, controllable lights for inside of industrial trawl net fishing boats so that they could see a mile and a half away and a thousand meters deep.
what was happening in their nets in real time. So this was primarily for these big industrial boats. And when they go out fishing, they tow their nets for anywhere from one to four hours and can catch anywhere from 10,000 to 40,000 pounds of fish in a single haul, which means being able to see in real time what was happening had great benefits to make sure that they were really getting the target species that they were after.
and not juveniles or some non-target species. And then also, they burn a lot of fuel oil, which is very acidic for the ocean. And so sometimes they’re dragging their nets and they’re gotten caught up with tree trunks or boulders and they’re not being productive, but they’re still burning all that fuel oil. So being able to see in real time is a real benefit for them.
We had some good traction, but pandemic unfortunately was a big problem for a young startup. So we ended up licensing that technology. And Seafood AI is essentially a reboot of this idea of being able to really look critically at the point of harvest and be able to provide feedback or information that makes that harvest more sustainable, that provides more information.
about the area that’s being harvested. And also then we’re digitizing at that point, creating these anchor points in the supply chain so then the seafood can be traced through with less waste and more accountability. so Seafood AI is we’re building these biometric seafood scanners, starting with crabs and…
Rob Terry (03:12.885) deploying them for for wild capture so that the way the portable device works you put a crab on it on the little scan plate it’s size of like a carry-on suitcase flashes a red or green light to let the harvester know whether it’s legal to keep or not and then behind the scenes it’s taking pictures of the bottom and top of the crab doing some analysis of the size the weight the gender
and collecting all that data, putting that into a data table, and then aggregating those data tables up in the cloud so then you could see the trends of how and what was being harvested, and then be able to do better prediction of the fishery, and then ultimately be able to create a better market price for the product.
Federico Ramallo (04:07.608) Right, interesting. Yeah, I saw on your LinkedIn the post of the table with the crab.
Rob Terry (04:19.401) Yeah, so that’s the beginning. We’re also creating an automated version that will go into factories so that when they’re on the factory line, they could basically scan each crab as it comes by and then sort according to the best market for that particular animal. So is it good for live market? Is it good for whole frozen to be butchered?
And being able to know that in real time and sort accordingly, the processor can get a better price for their effort and it creates less manual sorting also. And so that’s where we’re hoping to evolve the product.
Federico Ramallo (05:13.646) Is is that box the one that you call crab scan 360?
Rob Terry (05:19.681) Yeah, Crab Scan 360. That’s the portable one. But that portable box, turns out it works really well for aquaculture as well. So for aquaculture, they’ll maybe have a tank of like 20,000 fish and they’ll take 20 out, put them to sleep, weigh and measure each one. And they do that so that they could determine, well, do they have all the environmental parameters set up optimally for the…
for the fish, they feeding them enough, is everything optimal for high growth? And so they’ll do the sampling. we went in with the University of Southern Mississippi. They have a large aquaculture center. And we used our scanner. We adjusted it so that it would do the size and weight measurement for fin fish. And we were able to do that in.
like a quarter of the time. So you put the fish on, hit a button, snaps a picture, does the analysis, fills out a data table, puts that data table up into a data repository. And so, yeah, so we want to see about getting into that market with that product.
Federico Ramallo (06:37.902) Right, so you’re finding a new market for a product that you already developed. That’s interesting.
Rob Terry (06:43.933) Yeah, and it’s still along the same lines because ultimately you want your seafood to be traceable whether it’s farmed or whether it’s harvested from the ocean. You still need to have that. Where did it come from? know, where is it and how old is it? Where is it going? All that sort of information. So with that scanner, we create, we can create those anchor points.
Federico Ramallo (07:11.724) And then you’re building the software to do the traceability up until the table, right?
Rob Terry (07:17.353) Yeah, so ultimately what we are creating is like a digital manifest. So imagine you pull the crab out of your warehouse, the ocean, and then you essentially create a fingerprint for it. And then you start accumulating information as it goes through the supply chain. So to start with where it was harvested, what time, what weight, know, pictures of it. And then it moves to the processor, how it moved there, what was the dates, once it’s in the processor, it’s…
rechecked in, so now we have a chain of custody for it. We know where it came from, and then the harvester can do its processing and then print the label, that then the label can be traced back. And so you can better inform the whole supply chain in this way. You can do a better job of managing the fisheries, because you got more information. You can do a better job of moving the product through, which is a perishable commodity.
without it spoiling or wasting because now you’re tracking it and then you could do a better job of processing it because you’re able to look at it case by case and in each one of these instances you’re collecting more and more information that could then be aggregated with other information to better inform of managing the fishery, of setting the market price, setting up your equipment and the processor to be able to do that with more efficiency.
And ultimately, at the end of all this, the idea is to have a system where when you go into a grocery store and you’re paying a premium because it’s like sustainably caught, so therefore it’s a better product and you’re going to pay a little bit more. Well, what happens now is it goes into the pockets of the final seller. So if you’re going to Whole Foods, you buy the premium piece of filet that was sustainably caught.
Whole Foods pockets that premium. Whereas all the way down the supply chain, the producer, the harvester, the processor, they’ve all had to comply to certain rules and regulations. But since there’s no real chain of custody, a real strong connection, they’re not able to benefit from that premium. And so with this system, everybody in this value chain would be able to benefit from exposing their data.
Rob Terry (09:42.721) and essentially creating value for that data.
Federico Ramallo (09:50.798) You mentioned Seafood AI is using AI, right? Where it’s actually running? On the boat or in the cloud?
Rob Terry (10:04.085) Well, the AI is still up and coming. there’s basically machine vision and learning for doing the discrimination of the size and the gender and species. And then we’re hoping to, and then in terms of the whole integration with the backend to be able to do more predictive analysis and be able to provide.
the sort of oka inside into what’s happening in the fisheries and then also in the supply chain itself and then tosses better inform on the case of growers how to how to better optimize their tanks and feed ratios all this all this kind of information is where you know is where that’s too
Federico Ramallo (10:58.542) How does the scanner, know, the CraftScan360 work? And how does it tell if it meets the legal requirements?
Rob Terry (11:09.317) so it does an analysis of the size, weight, and the gender. So whether it’s female, a lot of times means it’s not legal to keep. If it’s under a certain size, the size of the carapace, the shell, under a certain size, then it’s not legal to keep. If it’s under a certain weight in some states, it’s not legal to keep. And so it’ll scan for all these parameters.
And then do a match, you know, based upon the legality of that particular region.
Federico Ramallo (11:45.08) Right, interesting,
Rob Terry (11:46.707) Yeah. it’s all about behind the scenes, it’s just a red or green light, keep or not keep. So the idea is to make it very streamlined for the operator.
Federico Ramallo (11:56.856) Right, because the operation on the boat must be very complicated,
Rob Terry (12:03.829) Well, it’s very aggressive. Fishing is one of the most dangerous professions in the world. So they’re very risk averse. They don’t want new things, particularly, because if it’s worked before and they’ve been safe doing it, they want to sort of continue with that.
Federico Ramallo (12:23.81) Right. Right.
Rob Terry (12:25.025) So it makes it kind of challenging.
Federico Ramallo (12:28.93) Yeah, so you can understand the simple interface.
Rob Terry (12:34.251) simple interface. It’s a, you know, what we want to build or what we’re building our appliances. You know, you turn them on and that’s just what they do. They tell you whether your crab’s, you know, legal to keep and provide an accurate count of, you know, what’s being sampled.
Federico Ramallo (12:53.634) Right, right. So for the company, they have more insights than what they have right now because right now it’s more of a guesswork, right?
Rob Terry (13:05.665) Yeah, there’s a lot of this industry is run on paper and pencil and log books. Even on the commercial fishing boats, they have to keep a paper log book. And all that information, is really ground truth information, is really locked up in filing cabinets because it’s not really collected to be connected.
And so, you know, so that’s the missing thing is that it’s worked that way for thousands of years, hundreds of years, but there’s just been more and more people and more and more demand and interest in seafood. with the pressures of climate change, what’s happened, you know, is we’re creating a perfect storm. So boats have gotten bigger, nets have gotten bigger, but
the discrimination hasn’t really evolved. It’s like you wouldn’t expect cows or chickens to go extinct because we’re over-harvesting them. But in the ocean, that’s not true for lot of the species that we are dependent on, you know, are going extinct because of this lack of, well, of the industry to really support
an evolved state of wild capture.
Federico Ramallo (14:36.994) Right. Right. So the…
Having more, a more fine accountability of what is being harvested would not only be beneficial for the industry, but also would allow us to preserve the fish for longer.
Rob Terry (14:58.955) Yeah, absolutely. You know, the analogy is like, imagine we have this large Amazon warehouse, no lights, no windows, right? And it’s like we’ve got a demand for a certain amount of fish. We know we could kind of go in there. We could feel our way around it and find it, bring it back. But we’re really not doing that accounting, that inventory control system. We’re not really…
accounting well for what we’re taking out, where we’re taking it out. So the fishing, you know, the real ground terrain, the types of species, you know, to find detail enough that fisheries can be really proactively managed in a sustainable way.
Federico Ramallo (15:51.468) Right, right. And the
Rob Terry (15:53.089) So that’s a missing layer.
Federico Ramallo (15:59.288) Yeah, and the storage is finite, right? So eventually we’re going to run out of stock.
Rob Terry (16:07.839) Yeah. mean, that’s, you know, that’s the sad truth is, that we’re, already doing a bad job of, of placing too much demand on it. And, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a commodity that, you know, we’ve, it’s been very abundant for a very long time, you know, and there, there really hasn’t been, you know, lots and lots of problems. There’s been problems, but it’s basically, it’s a
It’s a $400 billion industry that loses somewhere between 50 and 80 billion a year just straight up loss from inefficiency, fragmented data, manual processes, old technology. And so it’s a…
It’s, you know, the industry itself is on this cycle of losing more more value out of it without, know, by staying in this sort of analog sort of age.
Rob Terry (17:11.809) And so, yeah, so we think that there’s great growth, great business opportunity, great growth opportunity, but it’s a very entrenched industry. So it’s very, it’s challenging in a lot of ways.
Federico Ramallo (17:27.778) Yes, yes, I see what you’re talking about.
Rob Terry (17:31.617) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (17:36.366) How much do you think that seafood AI could help the harvesting companies on the economic side? What do you think will be the impact for them?
Rob Terry (17:53.961) Yeah, we, you know, we hope to reduce the amount of labor, the amount of effort it takes in order to get what your target species is in your net and, you know, land it on the dock. So we want to build a, basically, a tireless deckhand. So it’s a sorting machine on a boat, on an industrial crab boat that would be able to sort with precision.
Rob Terry (18:32.072) And so, lot you are, are, that are, know, are, that are, that are, that are, know,
That’s a missing data gap. And so the value we could bring to the industry starts there. If we’re able to better inform fishery managers so that they could close off those spawning areas and open up other areas that have older mature males that are what we’re after harvesting, then that creates a more sustainable fishery.
The help on the boat is first in terms of this labor. Second, you know, we could do a gentler with less mortality discards from the boat. So not an angry crewman throwing crabs overboard, a, you know, you know, being pushed out of a shoot, you know, a discard shoot. And then we could document that. And then we could tell the fishermen, the captain, how many boats are, how many crabs are actually going into their tanks so that they could optimize.
their quota. could do a better job of knowing whether they should move on to the next pot or go back to port. Less waste, waste less fuel, less work per effort to get those crabs in. And then the fishermen could be reporting to the processor, you know, how many crabs they have coming in. So the processor could, you know, do a better job of setting up their equipment. Should these be, you know, frozen or sent to a live market or…
you know, should we be setting up our butchering? And all these things add value because they’re removing waste and they’re removing inefficiency. So the value that we could add to the industry, I think could be profound as it moves into a digital age. So not only are we doing all this record keeping and data collection, we’re actually able to optimize all these different processes.
Federico Ramallo (20:51.374) Not only are you adding value to the individual harvesting companies, but also the industry as a whole and the government that could have more information and more insights on how to regulate the industry so it’s more sustainable overall.
Rob Terry (21:13.503) Yeah, more sustainable and more profitable. So instead of the government taking away, it’s actually contributing to the value of the industry.
Federico Ramallo (21:27.467) interesting.
Rob Terry (21:28.767) Yeah, that’s the bigger, you know, the bigger mission for what we’re after.
Federico Ramallo (21:35.458) Right.
And what milestones are you aiming to hit in the next 12 months with Seafood AI? In which part of the journey are you right now?
Rob Terry (21:50.497) Yeah, so we’re at the point where we’re, you know, filed for some patents, built out the business model, know what we’re after, built working prototypes. And now we’re at that stage where we’re raising capital so that we could productize. In other words, create commercial products of these scanners and start selling them to the aquaculture fish farms and regulators that are doing, know, field sampling like
of Fish and Wildlife and then be building out our first prototype for the factory scanner.
Federico Ramallo (22:28.898) Right. You mentioned earlier before we start recording that you are looking for funds, right? Yes. So what target funding are you looking for and how are you planning to invest it?
Rob Terry (22:36.789) Beyond Dude.
Rob Terry (22:45.537) Yeah, so we’re looking for around 200,000 to basically take the field scanners and turn them into products that we could sell into the aquaculture farms and nurseries and hatcheries in particular.
Rob Terry (23:02.091) Yeah, so we’ve got a lot of the software, the analysis, the cloud repository, all that. And it’s just now putting it all together into a package that we could sell in support.
Federico Ramallo (23:17.101) Right.
Federico Ramallo (23:20.814) Also, I noticed you have experience working with Whole Foods, the e-commerce, right? How does that experience shape your view of supply chains?
Rob Terry (23:30.677) Yep. Yep.
Rob Terry (23:38.089) Yeah. Well, so my experience with Whole Foods was right around Y2K. I was part of a small team that we built out their first major e-commerce offering with a whole backend fulfillment. So it was back in the day, they had guys with Palm Pilots that would get the orders, pack them, ship them, report back up to the website. So, and it really, it showed, it taught me a lot about
how much waste there was in the supply chain and how little we really know about that. And what I also saw was how the organic industry grew from what was very loosely regulated back in the 90s where it’s like you can get certified to be organic even if you’re right next to a major highway with all the lead from the exhaust coming down onto your plants.
Whereas today it’s a multi-billion dollar industry and it’s really built by consumer demand, by consumer drive. I mean, it’s really incredible. And so I see a type of model that could also work for seafood in this way, where people really want their seafood to be sustainable. They really want to know where it came from. They really want that certification.
And this is one of the big problems with the industry. So now, less than maybe 12 % of seafood in the world has been certified as sustainable. I think less than 3 or 4 % of crabs have been. Because the whole system for certification is so old school. It’s very expensive. It’s inspectors going outside looking at log books.
you know, setting up a plan, coming back six months, looking at log books and records and stuff. And so, you know, this is something else. We feel like we’re really missing this digital layer where you could have this almost instant verification that yes, this was harvested here at this time and this way in a very sustainable manner, get that, you know, that extra value for the, for your product and get rewarded for that. And that’s, that’s something that, you know, with the whole foods experience, I, I,
Rob Terry (25:58.379) you know, really believe is there’s a day to come where that’s a reality.
Federico Ramallo (26:05.036) Interesting, right? Because just by just being able to install the machine, then they will be able to have a sustainability certification, right?
Rob Terry (26:19.723) Well, they could subscribe to a program that will issue them that certificate certification, but yeah, but they’d be able to prove it right away. And that’s and it’s just like the whole system becomes supercharged. It’s then there’s the flywheel effect. Everybody benefits the consumer who ultimately wants their seafood is fresh and, you know, it’s produced as cleanly as possible. They don’t want slave labor involved. They don’t want, you know,
pirating of seafood they want to know exactly what their seafood is. I fraud is just a huge a huge factor. mean it’s almost like one in every third fish you don’t really know even what kind of fish it is. mean it’s very it’s a very disconnected industry and this is this is trying to flip that whole thing around.
Federico Ramallo (27:14.734) Right.
Rob Terry (27:15.819) but it’s been done in other industries,
Federico Ramallo (27:30.641) I lost you, but I’m back.
Rob Terry (27:31.835) That was a quick reboot. It’s like, he’s sitting there, he’s contemplating. I must have said something very profound. But it was the screen that froze.
Federico Ramallo (27:43.837) Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah, what I was saying is that the…
Rob Terry (27:45.812) No worries.
Federico Ramallo (27:52.989) When I buy tuna, I buy the tuna that shows that it’s not chopped tuna. They have the sliced tuna, I guess is the word. So you can kind of see that it’s from a real fish to reduce the possibility of buying other animals. But at the end of the day, you don’t know. As a consumer, it’s hard to know.
Rob Terry (28:18.635) Well, when you go to a restaurant, you’re getting that nice piece of filet and whitefish. They’re going to give you what you ordered, right? And whether it’s really whether they really know where that came from and what it what it is, because they were sold something. They’re buying seafood is a chain of custody commodity, which means that I own it when it’s in my boat. I’m selling it to the processor or the next guy in the chain. They own it while it’s in their processing plan.
He’s selling it to a wholesale. They own it when it’s in their cold storage. And there’s the, changes hands so many times that you can’t, you can’t really trace it. It’s really difficult to it. You know, it’s, it’s very uneasy. Some, some you can’t like, you know, maybe you’re getting it right, right from the guy who fished it, you know, off of his boat. You know, you know exactly where it came from, but sometimes you’re buying it, you know, in a restaurant or, know, in a market where it’s just a
you it’s labeled and it’s called XYZ it looks like you know whitefish and so it’s it’s got to be you know some whitefish, right? but you don’t
Federico Ramallo (29:23.493) Right, right, at that point it’s impossible to know, well, it’s difficult to know
Rob Terry (29:28.553) It’s very difficult. And even when they’re buying quote unquote “sustainable”, they don’t really know for sure. You know, they’re trusting what their wholesaler is telling them, who’s trusting what the processor is telling them, who’s trusting what the, you know, the fisherman is telling them. And so it’s kind of like that old phone, you know, that old game telephone, you know, the story, you know, ultimately there’s just a lot of, there’s a lot of mislabeling.
There’s a lot of fraud. There’s a lot of piracy. And ultimately, as a consumer, you don’t want to pay for that. You’d rather pay, or at least I’d rather pay a little bit more and know it came from a clean source, that it was ethically produced, that that fishery is going to still be here next week, that it’s not going to be poorly managed. so that’s the consumer movement that I’m talking about. That’s what drove organics. And I think that’s
Federico Ramallo (30:11.943) Right.
Rob Terry (30:26.465) could drive sustainable seafood.
Federico Ramallo (30:29.639) Right, right. There are restaurants in Mexico where…
Rob Terry (30:33.021) It has to be more connected. I’m sorry, go ahead.
Federico Ramallo (30:36.177) Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I find there’s a delay with the internet. There is in Mexico there are restaurants where they grow river fish on the same lot where they fry and sell you the fish, right? So it’s very fresh, but at the end of the day, you’re still trusting the people there that they’re selling you the fish that it’s there and they’re not bringing somebody.
Rob Terry (30:52.161) Yeah, see you.
Rob Terry (31:03.039) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (31:05.487) as fish, right? So even if in that small thing, you know, you still work by trust, right?
Rob Terry (31:07.007) Yeah, I mean.
Rob Terry (31:14.053) do, you work by trust. So there was a major, so I was doing some work in the golf region, golf of, golf of Mexico, golf of America, whatever you want to call it now, the golf, right? And there’s a major restaurant chain, Molly Mahoney’s, and they pride themselves on golf seafood. You know, this is, you know, and there’s a lot of pride for, you know, in the, in the, in the coast for, you know, locally produced seafood, right?
Federico Ramallo (31:25.815) Hahaha!
Rob Terry (31:44.383) And so, know, it’s just, that was cheaper. know, who knows the difference? You know, it tastes good, right? And so that’s what I mean. It’s just, and they’re, consequently, they’re passing new labeling laws. They want to know, you know, was it really produced in the Gulf or not, where it is. But it’s very challenging because until there’s more and more demand like that,
Federico Ramallo (31:49.98) Wow.
Rob Terry (32:13.855) Most people don’t realize. They think it’s well regulated, like chicken and beef and terrestrial produce. But it’s really, it’s the Wild West still. And that’s interesting because most people don’t realize that.
Federico Ramallo (32:33.841) Right, right. know that in, I’m from Argentina and there’s been issues with Chinese boats getting into the, you know, you have a line, you know, it’s international waters and then it’s, you know, you know, national fishing area, right? And they will just cross, harvest quickly. And then by the time the,
airplanes come in and see they switch out, right? So they play that game, know, their chicken game kind of, you know, where they keep going back and forth and it’s very difficult for the government to enforce the limits, right?
Rob Terry (33:12.746) Yeah.
Rob Terry (33:25.825) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (33:28.251) Yeah. So, and then that’s the fish that they sell everywhere else,
Rob Terry (33:34.603) Yeah. Well, China’s the, it’s like, you have the whole world right of seafood. You divide it in half, half goes to China. And then the rest is pretty much, I mean, they have a huge fleet of fishing boats and just, they just harvest a massive amount. Just a massive amount. I mean, it’s a very populous country and,
Federico Ramallo (33:54.118) Right.
Rob Terry (34:03.921) seafoods know prime on their diet but it’s just yeah when you look at it all it’s just they’re a huge producer of seafood
Federico Ramallo (34:17.575) Right, right. Yeah, and they have the factory inside the boat. So they catch, you know, the package, everything inside the boat, and then they throw away everything they discard. So it’s very, for them, it’s very efficient to keep fishing and fishing, right?
Rob Terry (34:35.701) Yeah. Yeah. We have one of our cameras in a boat like that. They’re amazing. It’s a, you know, it’s a factory trawler. So they, they harvest, process and they’re out there 10 months out of the year. They got a 40 man crew. You know, they’re running 24 seven. It’s just, it’s just that it’s a factory. I’m, you know, it’s a floating factory and yeah, Chinese have a lot of those boats.
Federico Ramallo (34:57.521) Right.
Federico Ramallo (35:02.933) It’s amazing what they can do, yes. But, you know, with unethical practices, you know, that’s not good. Yeah.
Rob Terry (35:14.485) Yeah, well, the ethics are, you know, it’s the wild ocean. lots of people make their living from that. it can only be, as you point out, it’s very difficult to regulate.
Rob Terry (35:37.045) Yeah. So that’s the other side of the equation. If you have the consumer demand you want it verified, you’ll pay a little bit more for that. We’re in that day and age where that makes sense to still happen.
Federico Ramallo (35:39.302) Federico Ramallo (35:55.707) Right, right. Similar to what happened with the white horns in Africa. There’s a company building simulated horns. So they flood the market and then there is no longer demand and the animals are not killed anymore.
Rob Terry (36:14.257) Yeah. Yeah, that’s a whole travesty in itself, the way they harvest ivy. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (36:18.439) Yes, yes. Interesting.
And what are your thoughts on farmed fish?
Rob Terry (36:30.561) Well, I think, you know, more and more of the world’s depending on that. And it’s the same thing. You want to know, was it farmed in a way that, you know, is going to be really fresh and, you know, wholesome? Or was it farmed in a swamp somewhere in some back alley, you know?
You need other fish to feed your farm fish, and that’s going to come from the ocean. So we still need to maintain the fish stocks in the ocean. But yeah, think farm seafood is still, it hasn’t fully reached its maturity. There’s a lot of problems for really farming at scale, like these big terrestrial farms. They haven’t really evolved to that scale yet.
for fish farming. Too much problems with waste coming from the animals. How do you manage that? Too much with keeping them healthy with hormones and other kinds of drugs and stuff. And then just the populations being able to scale. How many could you fit in a pond before they become unhealthy?
You know, there’s still a lot of science left to be done. And just the number of species that you could farm is very few, you know, compared to the number of species out in the wild. So there’s still a lot of science. And, you know, when you asked about the AI, I mean, this is where we see our portable scanners being able to really, you know, contribute to that sampling and science, you know, for growing new species or optimizing, you know, growth of the current species.
Federico Ramallo (38:04.53) Right.
Federico Ramallo (38:28.231) Right, right, because you can simplify the metrics, measuring a lot of metrics from each sample very quickly and on the field without complications.
Rob Terry (38:41.909) Yeah, you can start seeing the trends. It’s like, well, we’re overfeeding these guys. We’re underfeeding those guys. We need to more, you know, we need to clean this water better, whatever. I mean, it’s just more revealing because you could sample more with more detail quicker.
Federico Ramallo (39:04.079) Interesting, interesting.
Rob Terry (39:05.013) Yeah, that’s the kind of idea behind it.
Federico Ramallo (39:09.309) Yeah, I think that what you guys are doing is very interesting because, you know, it’s going to help us have higher quality food for everybody, right?
Rob Terry (39:21.185) That’s the goal. And it’s just remarkable. mean, it’s an industry that we can’t afford to let go away. you know, I think, I don’t know how much cell phones are these days. It’s probably three times the value, probably, than seafood. But we could survive without cell phones. But we couldn’t survive without seafood in the ocean. And it’s just remarkable how little
how for a startup how much of an uphill battle it is to get funding for for something so fundamental to us it just it just always surprises me.
Federico Ramallo (40:03.901) Right, right because it has so many moving parts compared to a tech startup or you know other other software startup, right?
Rob Terry (40:13.503) It’s an unknown industry. There’s not a lot of exits coming from seafood. It’s very analog. So by virtue of its nature, makes it less attractive for funders. But the whole thing is that the less we put into it, the worse it’s out of hand against, until the point of it becoming just that, perfect storm, just a big disaster.
Federico Ramallo (40:44.977) Right, right. And the challenge of cultural shift that you’re trying to do. That’s the other part that you’re finding a lot of resistance in the industry,
Rob Terry (41:00.555) This for what?
Federico Ramallo (41:02.013) What I’m saying is that you find a lot of resistance in the industry when you’re trying to do a cultural shift. I think that the angle of going with increased profitability for the harvesters, I think it’s great because then they have a clear motivation to implement the technology.
Rob Terry (41:11.195) yeah.
Rob Terry (41:25.127) Yeah. Yeah, no, there’s, it’s, I believe it’s got to be done from the ground up. There’s got to be, you know, productivity gains from, from the technology. Even though the real, real milestone is the data, but there’s not a data market, you know, and if you think about it, so like with, with agriculture. So back in the seventies,
early eighties, GPS was first coming on. There wasn’t a data market, an ag data market, right? Even though ag was still, you know, was a traded commodity. You know, there was value to it, but not like what they’re saying now within the next five years that ag data is going to be worth, you know, over $30 billion, just information about agriculture. And then you think about seafood, what the data market is for seafood. mean,
Federico Ramallo (42:19.09) Right.
Rob Terry (42:23.617) It’s the same thing. There’s not a value for it. I can’t collect data and say, I could sell it to this guy. I could sell it to this organization. I could leverage it. I could aggregate it. There’s not a real market for that. I don’t have a business plan that shows how we could really create huge value from it. But with these data collectors, verifiable data collectors, and a network of demand for
know certification and traceability and transparency you know that’s what that’s what’s going to build. There’ll be there’ll be a seafood data market to come and that’ll be you know major driver for change I believe.
Federico Ramallo (43:04.967) Right, right. Because that’s going to be a great aggregated data that is going to be very valuable and that’s going to drive more innovation towards this industry.
Rob Terry (43:15.167) Yeah, I believe so. You start aggregating climate data with market demand data, with harvest data, with processing data, with ground maps of the ocean, and it starts to come together. And that’s the AI part. It’s really being able to look at these macro data sets and be able to determine micro changes, how to manage this fishery in a huge ocean.
Federico Ramallo (43:47.215) Interesting. I wanted to ask you, well, I mentioned that you’re partnered with NECX and Techstars, I wanted to understand a bit more what role do they play in the growth of seafood AI?
Rob Terry (44:00.075) Yeah.
Rob Terry (44:09.255) Yeah, Techstars was an accelerator type program where they made a capital investment and then we went through a program. And then NEC is that large Japanese company, the electronics scanner company. They have a venture studio called NECX. And so we went through that. They made a capital investment into seafood AI. And we hope to continue to partner with them.
as we get more more traction. that’s basically the relationship.
Federico Ramallo (44:48.335) interesting. Great.
Rob Terry (44:49.493) Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (44:52.509) So one last question about, you know, what advice would you give to a young engineer or entrepreneur that would like to get involved in the sea industry, in the fishing industry?
Rob Terry (45:13.493) yeah, give me call. Yeah, I’ve done a lot of tech development that was really high-end, cutting edge. Worked for Xerox PARC, who’s the director of e-commerce for Whole Foods, as we talked about. Was at UCSF Medical doing big data, doing some projects for breast cancer surgeons.
Federico Ramallo (45:15.569) Hahaha!
Rob Terry (45:43.425) that I think you’ll find a lot of fulfillment from. It’s tough if you’re looking at it like, am I going to find a great job that’s going to pay really well in this industry? I think you’ve got to have to make that for yourself. But the reward of looking at a critical food system, something so intrinsic for humans, and being able to change that in a big way, I think that there’s a lot of opportunity for that.
So I say welcome on board and be inspired by what you could change in this world.
Federico Ramallo (46:22.557) Great, great. And they can reach out to you if they have more questions.
Rob Terry (46:27.143) Yeah, no, no, they can reach out to me if they want to help me move this, you know, this rock forward.
Federico Ramallo (46:34.087) Right, Awesome. So we’ll share the information on the notes of the podcast so people can connect with you and learn more about seafood AI. And hopefully in the audience we have an investor that will be interested in the project and is willing to invest. That would be great, yes.
Rob Terry (46:52.609) And, actually, so, I, I, are we kind of, we’re off, we’re just chatting now.
Federico Ramallo (47:03.741) Yeah, yeah, I mean, I can stop recording.
Rob Terry (47:08.697) no, I was just going to mention that I might show up in Guadalajara. My wife is Mexican, and so we’re due for some travel at some point. her sister, her brother-in-law, just recently came back from Guadalajara and some other places and had a great time.
Federico Ramallo (47:34.821) Nice, nice, very nice. Yeah. Ping me if you plan to come, let me know. I live here. I live in Guadalajara. Next to Guadalajara there is a town called Tequila, where all the tequila comes from. So I’m looking for partners in crime, you know, because I want to…
Rob Terry (47:50.651) Federico Ramallo (48:03.783) do on the adventure. There’s a train that goes, leaves from Guadalajara and goes to the tequila plantation, through the tequila plantations and then to the factories. And I always wanted to take that train, but you know, being a local, never do those touristic stuff. So I need the excuse to say, know, Rob is coming to town, so I gotta take him there, you know.
Rob Terry (48:17.707) Yeah.
Rob Terry (48:25.465) there you go.
Federico Ramallo (48:31.121) It’s not that I want to go, you know, it’s I gotta take him.
Rob Terry (48:31.202) yeah.
Rob Terry (48:35.221) Yeah, last time I in Puerto Vallarta, I to some tequila factories. Man, I got so blitzed. Yeah, try this one. She’s, now you got to try this one. No, no, now the gold, you know, because that’s been aged more. Yeah.
Federico Ramallo (48:47.313) Yeah, yeah, it’s so much fun. Yeah.
Rob Terry (48:51.009) What’s the weather like now? Are you guys getting hotter?
Federico Ramallo (48:55.099) Yeah, now it’s hot but it’s getting a little bit of rain. it’s a… There are seasonal rains throughout this year, yeah. There’s one part of the town that got flooded near Laguna de Chapala, Chapala Lake. Some of those towns got flooded with a lot of water. So there’s been a lot of people helping that. But yeah, most of the time it’s…
it’s good weather, right? Yeah. And the winter is not as cold as it here in the Bay Area. So there’s also that.
Rob Terry (49:36.457) Yeah, now lately it’s been cold up here. For some reason, we’ve had a very cool summer. so why, why do you come, you said you come up about once a month?
Federico Ramallo (49:48.526) Yeah, every other month I come here. I’m staying until 25th and then I’ll be back in August.
Federico Ramallo (49:59.589) Yeah. So if you ever want to meet for lunch, happy to do that.
Rob Terry (50:04.575) Yeah, we should do that. actually very near the airport.
Federico Ramallo (50:10.234) nice. Nice. Yeah. Right.
Rob Terry (50:10.933) the San Francisco airport. So, you know, we can meet up for a coffee or something if you’ve got some time to kill on your way in or out or something.
Federico Ramallo (50:19.505) Yeah, that would be great. Today flying back from San Francisco, sometimes I take San Jose. Yeah, but I take the boat and a car train and then the city.
Rob Terry (50:26.241) yeah.
Rob Terry (50:34.133) Yeah, San Francisco, mean, San Jose could be a quicker airport for sure.
Federico Ramallo (50:39.899) Yeah, I prefer it, but it’s a longer commute.
Rob Terry (50:44.427) longer commute, yeah.
Rob Terry (50:49.643) Great, so
Federico Ramallo (50:50.351) Awesome, yeah.
Rob Terry (50:53.064) so what happens next? You put these out as like once a month or something?
Federico Ramallo (50:59.581) Yeah, so I edit the video. I share it with you as a preview before we publish it so you can review it. We take shorts from the video. So we share those on social networks, LinkedIn and all that stuff to, know, people have a short attention span. So they can see that and then they can see everything else, right?
Rob Terry (51:07.627) So.
Rob Terry (51:24.193) very short.
Federico Ramallo (51:29.159) So yeah, we try to give you as much of coverage as possible. Yeah, and I’ll let you know as soon as I have a date, publishing date, I’ll let you know. Yeah, it probably is going to go in August, but I’ll let you know. Yeah.
Rob Terry (51:45.025) Okay, cool. Yeah, no, I was just curious. I mean, I was just, you know, just interested in doing these things just to kind of get the word out these days, so.
Federico Ramallo (51:57.009) Yeah, I mean, for me, it’s a great way to help other people connect and know more about interesting projects like yours.
Rob Terry (52:06.965) I appreciate that. Appreciate that.
Federico Ramallo (52:11.483) Yeah, great. So I’m looking forward to to see you again, whether in Guadalajara or in the Bay Area. That’ll be fun.
Rob Terry (52:13.185) Cool, all right.
Rob Terry (52:19.243) Yeah, for sure. That’d be fun. That’d be fun. Look me up for sure. All right. Well, thank you so much for a nice conversation. And I look forward to continuing it sometime soon.
Federico Ramallo (52:34.587) Yes, yes, me too, me too. Thank you. Thank you for joining us.
Rob Terry (52:40.007) You bet. Take care. Have a great afternoon. Or, yeah.
Federico Ramallo (52:42.619) You too. Bye bye.
Federico Ramallo (52:51.494) know how to.