 Welcome to Think Tech on Spectrum OC16, Hawaii's weekly newscast on things that matter to tech and to Hawaii. I'm Lise Anderson. And I'm Helen Dora Hayden. In our show this time, we'll visit Nelha, the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority at Keahole Point near Kona on Hawaii Island. We'll watch a business plan competition, we'll talk to Neil Sims, a leader in aquaculture, we'll meet with Greg Barber, the executive director of Nelha, and we'll make friends with some friendly octopi. You probably want to know what Nelha is. Well, the first thing is that Nelha stands for the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority, a state tech, aquaculture, and energy park of about 900 acres, along the ocean at Keahole Point. It's an attached agency under the State Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism, D-Bed, and was established in the 1980s under Governor George Arioshi. Nelha's mission is to support the development and diversification of Hawaii's economy. Hawaii providing space, facilities, and natural resources, including deep sea water and solar energy, so plentiful at Kona, for ocean and energy-related research, education, and commercial activities. When we arrived from Kona Airport, which is five minutes south of Nelha, we found ourselves in a beautiful new building Nelha has built, and in the middle of an impressive business plan competition. This is Jim Wyban, he's in charge of everything. He put this together a couple of years ago. He's one of the first Syria entrepreneurs at Nelha, made his fortune here, and he wanted to give back the community, so he's doing this out of his own heart. I'm here to try to promote an entrepreneurial ecosystem on the Big Island, where the entrepreneurs have a network of folks that can help them out, advise them, mentor them, invest in them, and that's what we're trying to create. We're doing this on both sides of the island, and we really see huge potential for the Big Island to develop all these entrepreneurial businesses, and we just want to connect people together. So the next step in the process is the pulping. This is the pulper that we use right now. It's basically a hand crank loaded in the top. Not very efficient, but I've gotten pretty fast on it. This is what we're looking at, implementing our vertical integration. It'll save a lot of time and way more efficient. At this point, the cherry gets taken off by pretty much like a cheese grater, and shot into a bucket, and then you have the bean covered in the muesli, which is that slimy substance that you ever opened up a cherry for. My name is Noah Eads, and I was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaii, and I've been fascinated with mushrooms my whole life. I believe that mushrooms can help save the world. About six years ago, I read a book by Paul Stamets called Mycelium Running, and I had to reassess everything I knew and thought I knew about mushrooms. A lot of people are pretty confused when I bring up mushrooms, so I want to share some facts. Mushrooms were the first living organisms to come off of land, or come onto land, and use oxalic acids to start breaking down rocks, and allowing plants to come on the land and use those available nutrients. About 65 million years ago, there was an asteroid impact, and it jettisoned a bunch of debris into the atmosphere, and the earth was dark, and mushrooms inherited the earth. My dad, I would like to compare him to these guys, because I feel he's someone of an accidental inventor. He created something called Island Crete. The samples that's going on right now is actually concrete that I make, and it's a La Hala print. And so you're not going to see that any other place, because I'm the only guy that makes this, and there's quite a big process to do this type of print. And so how did we get from this to tiny homes? Well, like Corey said, we're looking for a house, we're looking to see, you know, to own a home. On this island, especially, you have some affordable places, but still the labor, excuse me, the income to the affordability of a house is a big discrepancy. Green coconuts in the shell, I've been marketing to resorts for two years up and down along the Kona coast, and we sell them in the green raw for $7 per coconut, and I sell over 200 a week. We are so excited to be the forefront of the coconut industry here in Hawaii. At present, there is no commercial coconut farming or production, and it is the most incredible opportunity here. I think so many people haven't realized the potential that coconut production will have here in Hawaii. Coal farms is a 150-acre restorative farm in Ninole, Hawaii. We specialize in native reforestation, invasive species production, and hardwood salvage. We've been in business for three years, and we're profitable. Our mission is this. Through restorative forestry, we will propagate endemic low-elevation coalforists and reduce invasive plants and trees in an economically stable model. That last part is the key. Reforestation forestry means going beyond the idea of sustainability, as that term doesn't go far enough. Sustainable implies maintaining status quo. Restorative implies and means, of course, that we're improving the land. I want to bring Chef Paul up here to say a little bit about his program, the Kaua Manui. That's Hawaii Community College at the new campus. So at Kaua Manui, the culinary department, next semester we're actually doing a buffet class. So these students are learning by far, experiences their greatest teacher. And I brought Taylor up here. Taylor prepared the ahi dish today. So today I made a local seared ahi dish with a hamakua, ali'i mushroom, and wasabi sauce. Are you all hungry? Yeah! Everybody's ready for lunch. Okay. We took a few minutes to interview Neil Sims, a recognized expert in Hawaii Open Ocean Aquaculture, who's been involved in many aquaculture projects at NELA over the years. I can't say enough good things about Neil. He's been here for, I don't know, several years, and he is, you know, he's, you know, the thing is we have an aquaculture initiative that we want to start. I think we're a great place for global aquaculture. We've had a lot of success. And Neil is one of the global mentors, you know, that's one of the things we have here. We have the facilities at NELA, we can pump the water to people, but we have the mentors. And Neil is one of those key resources for Hawaii, and there's many here, and he's just one of them. So Neil, how much of what Greg said you agree with? Yeah, I agree. Thank you very much. That's very flattering. I think that I would like to think of myself as being a great advocate for the Natural Energy Lab. I have been here now in Kona for 27 years, and I've worked here at the Natural Energy Lab all of that time for various companies. Initially came and worked for a Japanese perloyster company that was chaired by Governor George Ariyoshi and worked for them for two years and then launched out on my own with a business partner that I had met here at the Natural Energy Lab. We founded our own business doing Black Pearls, Incorporated. We worked that business for about eight years here in a number of different stages here at the Natural Energy Lab because it has both the laboratory facilities, but then also the potential to be able to grow outside. We had tanks of oysters and algae outside, but then we also have the laboratory facilities and the hatchery inside under more controlled conditions. The whole breadth of the facilities that are here that you can start with, the original Black Pearls Inc. facility that we had was in their old wet lab building here where Dale and I, we had started this company with $4,800. That was the only spare change that we had that we could pull together for this company. We started out just renting a 10 foot by 10 foot square corner of the wet lab that had one sink and one saltwater faucet. We started running aquariums with pearl oysters and the business grew from there. The pearl oysters were very good to us, but by the end of the 1990s, I'm trained as a fisheries biologist and by the end of the 1990s, I could see that in global food fish production that there was a real looming crisis, that a number of fisheries had been very badly managed. Things such as the North Atlantic cod had, that fishery had crashed in 1992 and people kept waiting for it to come back and it never came back. It still hasn't come back to this day. And after lunch, we also took some time to meet with our host, Greg Barber, Executive Director of NELHA, to get a handle on what NELHA has been doing and what it hopes to do going forward. So basically, we're probably halfway through our life cycle. We're 40 years old, started in 1976, believe it or not, and we're probably halfway through our life cycle. We've probably got about half of the land left to develop. And so to some extent, we're starting to run out of land, which is a bit of a problem. What is the end of the life cycle like? It's full build out of the 900 acres where there's maybe not end of the life cycle, but end of vacant land when it's fully developed. But certainly those businesses will be going on and on and on. But the amount of build out will plateau in terms of development, I think. There's only so much density that there can be at 900 acres. So that's the concept. And then so in the past, when we started with OTEC, and then OTEC failed for various reasons, mainly because the price of oil went down into the teens, right? And nobody wanted to invest in that technology any longer. And so we had this infrastructure. The state has invested over $100 million here. It's the biggest economic development project in the state. Nobody really talks about that. I think CoqAqO is bigger because the amount of CIP money into CoqAqO is probably $200 million. Of course, the convention center is $300 million, but non-terrorism related were probably the biggest, especially alternative economic development, diversified economic development project in the state. And we're marine science and advanced energy. And we're on a neighbor island. A lot of people talk about all legislature, administration, governor are a walk-in centric. But in reality, the biggest economic development project in the state is here in CoqAqO. And it's here because of the natural resources that are here. So we weren't trying to develop OTEC in the 80s and the 90s because of the price of oil was so low. And so we had all these pipeline systems that the state and federal government built. And so we used the secondary water for aquaculture purposes, desalination. We are a hatchery, basically. Land is expensive in Hawaii compared to Asia. Labor is expensive in Hawaii compared to Asia. So the companies here, shrimp root stock, like I said, 60% of the world's shrimp roots are hard to believe, comes from Hawaii. Most of that comes from Nelha, a large majority. Large companies are here, oysters. Large amount of the oysters planted in the Pacific Northwest come from Nelha. The clams planted in the Pacific Northwest and the ocean, they come from here. Kona Kampachi. The hatchery is here on shore. So it's cheaper to grow the shrimp in Asia because land and labor costs are much lower, but the disease is rampant. We're here because of, for biosecurity purposes, we have a huge biosecurity program. It's really important to aquaculture, global aquaculture future. So we, Keith, in charge of that, we were very particular on how we allow new animals to come in here because anybody will take any animals from Nelha because they know there's no diseases here. We have the most pristine water in the world. Maybe not, I guess Galapagos Islands is more pristine, somebody told us from Woods Hole, but we're pretty close and we're very isolated. So it's a perfect biosecurity. We turn the disadvantage of remoteness into an advantage for aquaculture. People before me did that, we didn't do that, but it's amazing how this place has developed over the years. And so we have to focus on biosecurity and that will be very important for us in the future. But so we're marine science orientation, we still want to, and I'll talk about it in a minute, we still want to try to reboot Otec, we've tried twice in the past five years since I've been here. We went out to bid to try to find a private company to develop it. We tried to negotiate with the Japanese government to do a joint venture with them. And now yesterday we just released an RFP, we've switched our strategy I guess a little bit. So we are trying to just offer our facility, our land and our pipeline system, which is by far the biggest in the world, for free to a Otec developer. And we're into a power purchase agreement and by power from that developer. And of course we did our regular walk and talk interviews among the people who were there at Nelha that day. I'm Dr. Rick Navarro, CEO of Renewable Ocean Energy. And you're speaking here today. I sure am, yes. I'll be talking about a new way to produce electricity on the ocean. We just bring the water up off of the ocean, drop it down to some specially constructed hydroelectric turbines and return the water back to the ocean. What our plan is to build a prototype here and a one megawatt power plant here at Nelha next year. Jason Nowecki, one of the judges, how do you like being a judge? I actually think it's quite an honor. I mean $25,000 cash prize is quite a bit of seed money for a small company. I'm actually quite impressed by Chef Paul and his culinary students at Palamanui. The fish is cooked expertly and so is the shrimp. You know a lot of times it's overcooked but this is perfect and the seasoning on everything is superb. Jesse you're one of the judges here and I always envy the judges because they get really to focus in on things and come up with actual suggestions and I noticed that's what this board of judges is doing. It's tough to be a judge sometimes trying to tell and give suggestions to entrepreneurs who are very smart individuals. Nelha is a great spot to have a business plan competition just because of all the interesting businesses here. You've got big island abalone, shrimp improvement systems, you've got a bunch of other algae opportunities here. So this is really a really good home for any type of new type of business and so having a business plan competition here fits great. So how do you like being a judge on this kind of program? Oh I enjoy very much and I thank them for giving the opportunity to be the judge because I see so wonderful ideas very valuable to the community. What do you think of the presenters so far? They are great and they make a lot of good points. They try to look at the market and find the difference, differentiate the products and make good service to the community. Sean tell us what you do and how you like this program. Well it's great. I'm a retired guy and so this came along and I love that the bulk of it is mentoring. Yes I represent the HCD services like Innovate-O-Y and so on but really it's working with startup or merging companies, growing companies. I have a lot of business background so you know I have successes and failures and so on and working with people going through these growth phases to maybe understand what they're doing and how to deal with the problems as they arise and this sort of thing. It's really fun to do. Okay Valerie how much do I eat of your of your spiralina per day? One tablespoon per day is a serving and that's enough nutrients to provide all the B vitamins and minerals you need for the day. Can I try it? I'm feeling bigger, stronger, better, faster. Mesa and Yoshiyama from Steinbank. We participated this year in the program and I know we've participated in the past. I believe this is a second annual competition. You know what it showcases is the entrepreneurial spirit of the community. You saw a lot of diversity as far as the number of, not only the number of entrants, but who was selected to participate in the second round. Dennis Boyd, Economic Development. Small Business Development Center, Westwide Center. And you're here at Nelha to hear the pitches, why? Well a number of the companies were clients of ours and our office is right here as well. So he sort of fell into it. He sort of fell into it, yeah. And I helped a lot of, we had some workshops before this helping people prepare pitches and how to write a business plan, things like that. Horne Brook, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of mentees that I had here today who went from what I would call a 50% performance to 100% performance. Kelly Moran, and what's your organization? Well my company is Heelow Brokers, but I've also done teaching at UH. I'm a farmer growing mangoes, dragon fruit. Having taught at the College of Business, a lot of my young students were graduating with a business degree and wondering where they were going to work. Where am I going to find my job? What's my career? And I really think the long-term solution to where a lot of these young business graduates go is entrepreneurial startups. The grand and funny high point finale of our visit was when we met and made friends with some very friendly octopi across the street at Nelha. This is the hatchery. This is where we're actually going to be doing trials for paralarval rearing. We were getting egg production. We were getting the females conditioning the females to actually lay eggs pretty easily. They typically come out and they start begging for food once there's people around, so they might start coming up and out. But yeah, typically the same as you'll see on the reef, they're hiding in their caves. Now they do have a tendency to squirt water up in the air, so yeah, you wouldn't want that getting wet. They come up around 11 and 3 p.m. begging for food. Then we feed them and then they go right back in their holes and they don't come out. The more that we can raise here on land, the less we actually have to go and take out in the wild. The paralarval stage. It's that first 30, 60, 90 days after they hatch that they're planktonic free swimming. They're delicate. Sometimes they're cannibalistic and the food they require has to be live and a certain nutrient profile. Reading pretty simple. They're prone to fighting, so I put them into mating buckets. There's some buckets that are on the ground over there with these windows cut out and they have little holes in them. The male actually has a mating arm, which is called the hectic otolus, and he reaches that through the holes in the bucket and reaches the female and transfers a packet of sperm. It's a year and a half lifespan. That's it. So really short lifespan. They grow really, really quickly. When you want to harvest them, it's kind of when their growth rate starts to taper off. You're giving them the same amount of food, but they're not giving you more meat, so to speak. We have them lay their eggs in these tanks. They have to be about a year and a half old to do that. They lay their eggs and then they die of senescence shortly after hatching. We would love to be able to produce them for human consumption. That's the biggest market for octopus. So really there are no hatchery technologies for rearing most sephalopods in an occult resetting. That's really the end game, is to actually start producing them and selling them local. I try not to get too attached to them. I've learned that from the very beginning. Yeah, I think they're amazing. It's terrible when they die. My staff names them. So this one's sticky, I guess. What's up with that? I guess this is why. And there's no danger of what you're doing? No. No, I mean, oh, well, there's that. All in all, it was a great trip. So many good things are happening at Nelha. It's very important that we have facilities like this and that we nurture and incentivize Hawaii's ocean and energy resources and entrepreneurs. Just as they do at Nelha. There's nothing like the Big Island and there's nothing like Nelha to demonstrate the richness, promise and prospect of Hawaii's natural resources. Want to know more about what's going on at Nelha? Check it out at Nelha.org. And now let's check out our ThinkTech schedule events going forward. ThinkTech broadcasts its talk shows live on the internet from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays. Then we broadcast our earlier shows all night long and on the weekends. And some people listen to them all night long and on the weekends. If you missed a show or if you want to replay or share any of our shows, they're all archived on demand on ThinkTechHawaii.com and YouTube. For our audio stream, go to ThinkTechHawaii.com slash audio. And we post all our shows as podcasts on iTunes. Visit ThinkTechHawaii.com for our weekly calendar and live stream and YouTube links. Or, better yet, sign up on our email list and get our daily email advisories to learn about our upcoming shows. ThinkTech has a high-tech green screen studio at Pioneer Plaza. If you want to see it or be part of our live audience or if you want to participate in our programs, contact shows at ThinkTechHawaii.com. If you want to pose a question or make a comment, call 808-374-2014 and help us raise public awareness on ThinkTech. Go ahead, give us a thumbs up on YouTube or send us a tweet at ThinkTechHI. We'd like to know how you feel about the issues and events that affect our lives together in these islands. We want to stay in touch with you and we'd like you to stay in touch with us. Let's Think Together! We'll be right back to wrap up this week's edition of ThinkTech. But first, we want to thank our underwriters. The Atherton Family Foundation Castle and Cook Hawaii The Center for Microbial Oceanography Research and Education Collateral Analytics The Cook Foundation The Hawaii Council of Associations of Apartment Owners Hawaii Energy The Hawaii Energy Policy Forum The Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology Hawaiian Electric Companies The High-Tech Development Corporation Galen Ho of BAE Systems Integrated Security Technologies Kamehameha Schools Dwayne Kurisu Calamon Lee and the Friends of ThinkTech MW Group Limited The Schuyler Family Foundation The Sydney Stern Memorial Trust The Volo Foundation Yuriko J. Tsukimura Okay, Helen, that wraps up this week's edition of ThinkTech. Remember, you can watch ThinkTech on Spectrum OC16 several times every week. Can't get enough of it just like Helen does. For additional times, check out oc16.tv. For lots more ThinkTech videos and for underwriting and sponsorship opportunities on ThinkTech, visit ThinkTechHawaii.com. Be a guest or a host, a producer or an intern, and help us reach and have an impact on Hawaii. Thanks for being part of our ThinkTech family and for supporting our open discussion of tech, energy, diversification and global awareness in Hawaii and, of course, the ongoing search for innovation wherever we can find it. You can watch this show throughout the week and tune in next Sunday evening for our next important weekly episode. I'm Elise Anderson. And I'm Helen Dora Heiden. Aloha everyone!