Meet the foundersThe company ranching urchins on the farming frontier

If you have ever been lucky enough to observe a kelp forest – fronds of seaweed rolling with the waves above and disappearing into the inky blue depths below – you may be able to understand the passion that drives conservationists and entrepreneurs alike to protect these unique ecosystems. Such is the drive of Aaron Huang, co-founder of OoNee – an Oregon-based sea urchin ranching startup.

Back in 2014 coastal restoration was gaining interest, as were the effects of increasing ocean temperatures and, whilst working in tech in Silicon Valley, Huang became interested in the restoration of California’s kelp forests, immersing himself in their watery world.

“At the time, the kelp forest issue was pretty much front and centre for me, because they were vanishing so quickly in California. In fact, it’s estimated that over 90 percent of California’s, and over 50 percent of Oregon’s, kelp forests are now gone,” he highlights.

This interest in coastal kelp forests grew over time, eventually becoming the spark which would begin OoNee - Huang’s company which aims to use land-based aquaculture as a nature-based solution to a pressing environmental problem.

Sea urchins naturally feed on kelp detritus as it settles to the bottom of the forest. In turn, urchin populations are kept in check by predators such as the sunflower sea star. However, when these predators all but disappear – as was caused by an El Niño-induced sea temperature increase in 2014 – the urchin population can explode, leading to unsustainable grazing by urchins, and the subsequent loss of kelp forest ecosystems.

“The net effect is that, over the last decade, a lot of kelp forest has been critically damaged and denuded, based on the fact that those urchin populations just kept decimating them. One of the key challenges with the current situation is that those urchins won't just die once the kelp forests are gone. They can actually go into a state of hibernation for years and, if a kelp piece of kelp grows back, they'll reanimate,” Huang explains.

Whilst some groups have attempted to cull the urchins as a simple and direct route to population control, the small scale of these efforts have had virtually no impact on the wider urchin numbers. This is where Huang and his team at OoNee come in, championing a business model that they believe to be both profitable and sustainable.

Ranching as a solution

OoNee’s simple but effective model involves the removal of urchins from wild kelp forests to a land-based facility where they can be fattened up before harvesting. This feeding process is a vital step, Huang explains, as the edible gonads or urchins – called uni in Japanese – are virtually non-existent whilst the animal lies in its dormant state. Fed on a diet of commercial macro-algae pellets and kelp, it takes only 8 weeks for the urchins to reach a harvestable condition. The uni, which supposedly has a texture similar to custard and a salty umami taste, can then be sold to high-end sushi restaurants for up to $70 per 100g.

OoNee’s current prototype system is capable of producing up to 3 kg of uni every 8 weeks. The current land-based prototype consists of eight raceways, and is fully recirculating, which Huang explains was an obvious choice for two key reasons.

“Designing a fully recirculating system which doesn’t need access to seawater has allowed us to scale and deploy this comparatively fast. Firstly, with climate change, water parameters are starting to change. This could be temperature changes or alterations to water salinity and quality. There is also the risk of industrial pollutants in outside water sources, and having a fully controlled system protects us from that,” he explains.

“I think, starting from now, more and more aquaculture operations are going to be based inland, due to the increase of water levels in coastal areas. It can also serve as a way to overcome the issue of securing permits to deploy a site in a coastal area,” Huang adds.

Whilst the urchin ranching industry is still fairly niche, other innovators - such as Urchinomics - are making a name for themselves within the wider aquaculture sector. OoNee is keen to stand out, however, with a polyculture system enables the operation to optimise for energy and feed costs, while enabling a fully recirculating system that can eventually be brought inland, closer to customers.

“The ranching system itself, and how it is designed, really enables us to think about how our unit economics scale. Building a system that can turn over urchins every 8 weeks is really important. For us, focussing on that first and having the luxury of being a newcomer to the industry allows us to hone in on the design of the system. We fully acknowledge that having the right system that will scale, that's fully recirculating, that's land-based is going to be the criticality for us to differentiate and get to market quicker,” he explains.

Money talks

Describing himself as a fundraising storyteller, the management of stakeholders and grants – vital to the success of any burgeoning business – is very much in Huang’s wheelhouse. One of the key challenges faced by the company during its pilot phase, he says, is getting this key aspect of operations right.

“Beyond just thinking about risks around permitting, IP and technology development, really getting the right capital stack and the right partners behind you from a funding perspective is a huge criticality, along with how you balance the stakeholder management, your impact, and your ability to actually be sustainable and accomplish all of your missions,” he reflects.

“After completing the Hatch Crest Accelerator last month, we have just recently kicked off fundraising for our seed round. We have finished a lot of our milestones concerning permitting, market pilots, and feeding trials, so with the seed funding of about $850,000, mostly earmarked for operational expenditures, we can start to scale up,” Huang adds.

Despite the company being only 18 months old, Huang has ambitions to go from the current eight raceway system to a 200 raceway ranch, capable of producing 800 kg of uni per production cycle.

“You start to get a pretty good sense of what the operating margins will be at that scale. There would be a lot of product to be soaked up, but even during our market pilot last year a lot of restaurants and distributors came back just wanting more and more after trying our samples. Even with us just being in Oregon, Seattle, and San Francisco the market demand is so high it could easily soak up our supply for the next few years,” he says.

Looking to the future

As ambitious as they seem, Huang’s plans for the scale-up of OoNee make sense when viewed as part of the wider food industry.

“The ecosystems are already collapsing on land and in the ocean, and wild harvest numbers are just plummeting. There's not really, in my mind, a choice for how we do things. We're kind of at the early stages of developing new systems for doing things in a more sustainable way and my personal perspective is that this type of model writ large will be how we are going to feed the billions of people on this planet,” he concludes.