Fish 'n' Chips

 

What investor of sound mind would even harbor a thought of buying into a venture that was capital intensive, fraught with risk hadn't charted a business plan, and promised a "return" of 3% or 4% at best? Yet Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel Corp. and one of the pioneers of the semiconductor industry, bought in. What is more, he was joined by Robert Noyce, cofounder, with Moore, of Intel Corp.; David Packard, of Hewlett-Packard Co.; Ward Paine, a California venture capitalist; and William Budge, former chairman of Folger Coffee Co. Together, this rather potent cartel has chipped in more than $2 million over the past 10 years, with Moore's personal investment running in the several-hundred-thousand-dollar range.

If it sounds fishy, that is exactly the point -- since the object of this lavish attention is SilverKing Oceanic Farms, a salmon-breeding operation that is one of but four such commercial enterprises in the United States. It is not surprising that the investors all happen to be concerned more about the fish than the fiscal. "If I'd cast a critical eye on [the ranch] as a businessman," Moore says, "I'd have probably pulled out a long time ago."

The salmon ranch, located about 12 miles north of Santa Cruz, Calif., is run on a day-to-day basis by Roger Haas, who had written a college paper on open-ocean fish farming and launched the venture a decade ago. Moore -- along with his colleagues -- joined shortly thereafter, largely because of his passion for salmon fishing. He blames the latter on his wife, Betty.

"She got me sportfishing again after a long hiatus," he says. "That was 20 years ago, and since then we've vacationed together in some of the more out-of-the-way fishing spots in the world." Places like Costa Rica, Belize, the Turneff Islands, and Australia. When he goes out on his boat, anchored in South San Francisco it is usually after salmon, a species he never tires of learning about.

"We're the only operation in the country releasing fish into the open ocean," says Moore. "When you release salmon in open waters, you're extremely lucky to get 2, 3, perhaps 4% back. It's almost absurd how delicate these fish are.

"We can really try only one major new thing a year -- that's how you develop breeding stock -- and often it's disastrous. We first dumped fish right out of buckets and into the ocean. Every one of them died. We've experimented with different transportation systems to get them from the hatchery to the water, some of them useless.

"It took us three years to create an entryway that would be attractive to fish trying to return home to spawn. The first try was a pipe running straight into the water, but the salmon didn't want to swim up the pipe. The second year, we cut a stream across the beach, but they still had trouble. Finally, we built what you see now, a fish ladder with a little hook at the end that creates a pond they can swim around in before deciding to head up the chute."

It is almost enough to make Intel's bid to stay on the edge of 32-bit microprocessor technology look tame by comparison. "These guys are entrepreneurs," Haas notes, "so they're not afraid to go along with something new. I'd say the biggest change for them is the time factor. If Intel puts a new chip on the market, somebody usually copies it within a matter of months. But if a competitor set up shop here just down the road, it could take him 10 to 15 years to develop his own brood stock. That's a much longer time frame than someone like Gordon is used to dealing with. But, I must say, he has guts. And the instinct to push new ideas and technologies."

In time, there may be handsome profits to show, as well. Haas is hoping for some 800 to 900 fish on peak days in the season ahead -- a single large chinook can fetch as much as $100, dressed, on the wholesale market -- and 30,000 to 50,000 fish-years are a possibility, albeit a remote one, by the end of the decade. But Moore professes not to make profit his principal concern.

"That would be nice, sure," he admits "and I suppose I do think of that to justify the investment to myself. But I could do other things with my money. I've noticed, though, that up in Oregon, where Weyerhaeuser has its salmon farm, a significant percentage of the fish caught by commercial boats and sportfishermen are tagged from the farm. So I guess this little business is really just enhancing my own recreational pursuits."