Why restaurants fly fish from Japan 🐟

As the Seed Oil Scout I’ve had the opportunity to meet many inspiring founders, but none as ambitious as Saif Khawaja, founder of Shinkei Systems.

Saif aims to vastly improve the primary protein source for over 3 billion people with his fully operational fish killing robot 🤖 details below:

All hands on deck

Japan and California face the same ocean. You could catch the exact same Bluefin tuna in either, yet for some reason restaurants will fly a fish filet from Tokyo to Los Angeles.

The difference in quality is undeniable, but this isn’t because of the fish itself, it’s the processing.

Most wild-caught fish are suffocated on the boat, essentially tossed in a pile on ice to flop around and bleed out. As the fish struggle for hours, their muscles produce ammonia and lactic acid, which degrades their flesh as they rot.

The “fishy” smell at an American fish market is bacteria consuming the excess blood left in the muscle. Japanese fish can be dry aged for weeks with barely any ice.

Properly harvested fish tastes better, is more nutritious, lasts much longer and currently costs much, much more

Not for sale

Armed with this knowledge, for now there’s nothing you can do besides stress yourself out. Ikejime is too expensive and labor intensive to be practiced by hardly any American fishing boats or farms, it’s basically not for sale in the states.

Fish are wet, slimy, wiggly, and come in all different sizes, making harvesting them a tough job for a machine, but it’s 2024 and someone has finally done it.

Shinkei Systems has deployed a computer vision guided, AI-enabled robotic system that has dramatically lowered the cost of this process. They are already supplying Nobu, and Local Coho via Fresh Direct in NYC.

The seas ahead

Shinkei-harvested fish stays fresh for 2-3x as long as traditionally harvested fish, their system can be deployed on boats or on land. This vastly reduces spoilage and could boost the efficiency and sustainability of the entire fishing industry.

The concept is proven, but Shinkei will need to reach massive scale in producing these robotic systems to make a dent in the 438 BILLION POUNDS of fish harvested globally.

Shinkei is basically the “Tesla/Anduril/SpaceX/of food processing”, and something we should all be rooting for.

Extra Virgin Ventures has officially put our money where our mouth is in the Shinkei Systems seed round, if you’ve found this interesting follow Saif on twitter.

🫡

Special thanks to @ReallyTanMan for introducing us, & buy Masa Chips!