With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1388249
Williamson, a former naval officer and base commander at CFB Esquimalt, saw the World Bank Group reporting that 10 percent of the world's food mass should come from seaweed aquaculture in the next 25 years. The industry has potential to become a significant, sustain- able source of food for people, animal feed, bioenergy and plastics. Williamson looked at the state of seaweed production in the province and saw vast opportunity. "It was typically a cottage industry or moms-and-pops—very small- scale," he recalls. "Or they were harvesters. They would get a licence to responsibly cut down growing seaweed and then let it regrow. But that's very limited." Cascadia started small, with two one-hectare pilot farms in Barkley Sound, south of Ucluelet, that first season in 2019. The company is aiming for exponential growth. "We have a near-term target of 1,000 hectares under cultivation in the next three-ish years," Williamson says. "We're on the cusp of being North America's largest cultivator of ocean seaweed already, and scale matters." Scale will let the company drive down costs, sell more and earn the revenue needed to explore several verticals. Cascadia is starting by making plant-based foods, including vegan jerky and two types of crackers that will launch this year. Its next vertical: cattle feed that reduces the amount of climate-warming methane the animals release, and cuts down the fertilizer and irrigation needed to grow what they eat. Eventually, the company plans to develop bioplastics and nutra- ceuticals from some of the 630 seaweed species endemic to B.C. Cascadia's ambitions are just part of a tsunami of innovation emerging from ocean industries around the world, including from companies in B.C. Robotics, sensors, data analytics, advanced materi- als, autonomous vessels and communications technologies are just some of the marine sectors poised to disrupt and accelerate over the next decade and beyond. The world will keep demanding more from its oceans—for food, energy, shipping lanes and the ecological systems that sustain life on the planet—driving the need for new and better solutions. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development projects that the ocean economy will grow to US$3 trillion by 2030— double its size in 2010, and outpacing the broader global economy by about 20 percent. Canada and B.C. are racing to grab slices of that pie, but they're starting with crumbs. Kendra MacDonald is the St. John's– based CEO of Canada's Ocean Supercluster, which helps marine technology companies, governments and academic institutions across the country collaborate to develop the industry. She says it contributes more than $30 billion to the economy, or about 1.6 percent of national gross domestic product. "That's about half of the average contribu- tion from the ocean economy to countries around the world." It's a modest stake for a nation with the world's longest coastline, but MacDon- ald sees a long runway for growth: "That presents a tremendous opportunity for us when you look at our natural geographic advantage and a lot of our technological competencies." In this province, the Association of Brit- ish Columbia Marine Industries ( ABCMI) estimates that the ocean science and tech- nology sector directly employs more than 1,200 workers and generates $150 million in GDP annually. B.C. is a longtime leader in environmen- tal expertise, MacDonald says when asked about how it will move forward. The United Nations has proclaimed 2021-30 a Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Develop- ment, illustrating the global importance of careful marine stewardship. Climate change, overfishing and pollution pose dire threats to world's waters. "The ocea n is u nder pressu re," G r e a t B i g S e a 50% Share of the world's population that lives in coastal regions, which make up 10% of total land 40 million Projected full-time equivalent jobs in the global ocean economy by 2030, J 29% from 2010 80% International trade in goods carried by sea 3 billion People worldwide who depend on marine and coastal diversity for their livelihoods 4 kg AMOUNT OF GOLD PER PERSON IN THE WORLD THAT SITS ON THE SEABED 10% Estimated share of the world's minerals that will be sourced from the ocean floor by 2030, versus almost none today JULY/AUGUST 2021 BCBUSINESS 117 BCBUSINESS.CA SOURCES: THE OCEAN ECONOMY IN 2030, OECD; YOU CAN'T GO GREEN WITHOUT BLUE, KPMG INTERNA- TIONAL; GLOBAL MARINE TECHNOL- OGY TRENDS 2030, LLOYD'S REGISTER, QINETIQ AND UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON