And to really solve this global crisis, we need to find a way that is both environmentally friendly and and you know profitable in some sort of capitalistic way as unfortunate as that is for a scalable solution to happen um that that needs to be the case and so sam i think what you've built is is really amazing and will have and is having a huge impact you know on on our planet and it's something that we desperately need so appreciate the work you're doing let's back let's back it up even further Tell us a little bit about you and your background and kind of what led to the creation of your company.

Well, just like every kid growing up in Washington, D.C., I dreamt I was going to become a coral farmer.

Pretty A to B path.

This was something I never could have dreamed of, to be honest.

I did always have a lifelong love for coral reefs.

The first time I saw one, I was six on the island of Hawaii on a family vacation trip.

I've been a scuba diver since I was old enough, since I was 13.

Tell us kind of the scale of the work that you've built and where it's at right now.

Wow

... over 100 nations.

There's about a billion people who depend on them for food, clothes, shelter, for jobs, for protection from storms.

A healthy coral reef, on average, reduces wave energy by 97%, so they're living sea walls protecting against storm surge from hurricanes and ongoing erosion.

They power tourism economies.

Everyone who wants to go snorkeling and diving or fishing or just put their toes in nice white sandy beaches, those white sandy beaches are only there often because of coral reefs.

Uh, so that's the hotels, airlines, governments, taxi drivers, restaurants.

[laughs]

And

how it's traditionally done is you get a grant or a set of donations, and you set up these... very cheap, which lends itself to the sort of the NGO approach, underwater gardens, you know, often with ropes and PVC pipe and whatnot.

And it was fantastic.

We got to see, you know, reefs come back to life and fishermen setting up their traps a few hundred yards away because the fish populations were covered so much.

And that model has significant limitations.

So, you know, of the hundreds of coral species that exist around the world, A portion of them are known as branching corals.

So you could sort of imagine cutting the size of your thumb will grow to your hand and wrist in these sort of fingers, deer antlers in six to 12 months.

You talk about hiring locally, but just paint a little picture, like, you know, what's it like in terms of the people inside? Yeah.

Never say never.

Never say never.

You never know what life is going to throw at you.

There are amazing organizations, community groups, NGOs, research groups, NOVA, doing coral restoration.

And we're big believers in their work.

There's some we collaborate with.

I'm actually on the advisory board of a group called the Coral Restoration Consortium, which is a global body looking to empower and uplift and share knowledge between groups.

What's kind of the word around investing in the spaces like this right now?