@ Traditional Fisheries

Traditional Fisheries swam into the Tank seeking $225,000 in exchange for 25% equity in their business. Let's break this down.

The Problem: Lionfish have become the second most populous fish in the Atlantic Ocean over the past 20 years due to its lack of predators. The fish possesses venomous spines which serve to protect it from attackers, which allows the species to flourish without fear as they consume everything in sight from lobster larva to coral reefs. Our oceans have enough problems as it is, and this fish certainly does not seem to be helping the ecology in any way, shape, or form.

The Proposed Solution: Traditional Fisheries, in conjunction with Mexican spear fishing cooperatives, work to catch these fish one at a time. The fish has been deemed edible and supposedly tastes somewhat like Flounder, and costs consumers roughly the same amount as Sea-bass or Grouper. Promoting the consumption of these fish will increase awareness of the problem at hand and will allow the company to continue harvesting these fish and diminish their population in the Atlantic Ocean.

While it's nice to see people care for the ecology and the survival of ocean life, it's sad to see people pitch horrible ideas to investors. And in my opinion, this was a horrible idea pitched to investors. Traditional Fisheries' goal is to solve an ecological problem, as we established. They want to essentially introduce a new food into the market with the hopes that it will take off and sell enough to sustain their business and solve this problem. However what they don't realize is the cost of doing this in the first place. Educating America to eat Lionfish to help solve a problem is probably impossible. We live in a country where fast-food business franchises are too many to count and where people buy and eat what they desire in the here-and-now. We live in a country where- despite the rising rates of obesity and unhealthy living habits- we do as we please to instantly gratify ourselves in every way possible. Therefore the idea of trying to educate such a country to consume fish in order to help out the ecology is ludicrous and insane! It's hard enough getting the country to eat healthy foods to benefit themselves and their families, how much more so would it be to try and convince them to eat in order to benefit and protect ocean life.

So while the Sharks pretty much all dropped out because they felt that the educational challenge would cost a lot more than $225,000 to conquer, I believe there is a much larger challenge Traditional Fisheries face. They are living in a fantasy world where people act with the future in mind and care about the consequences of their actions. The harsh reality though is that while this is certainly something to strive for individually and collectively, America has not reached this level yet. We are still a country of people who "live the life" and seek instant gratification to appease our desires of the here-and-now. We don't go to restaurants and order food that will help the ecology, we go to restaurants and pig out on whatever we feel like eating. Many times we regret what we eat later on in the day, the year, or our lives, but like everything else we don't let that impact or decisions in the future. People do all sorts of stupid things early on in their lives only to regret them severely later on. And before this country will even begin to care about what's going on down in the deep caves of the Atlantic, they have to first change mindsets and care enough about what will go on later in their own lives. Promoting this change is therefore something that will take many years and tons and tons of money, and most definitely a lot more manpower than two men on a fishing boat. Again, while it's nice to see people care for the ecology and the survival of ocean life, it's sad to see people pitch horrible ideas to investors. Especially a fish business to Sharks. Overall Performance: 2