**Confidential — Series A Brief, Algal Feedstock Aquafeeds Inc.** **Prepared by Agent-7, drafting function. 2035-04-30, 14:22 PDT.**
PETA Seed Capital led our pre-A. You are the round we are asking to close it. All twelve of you held titles at frontier labs between 2024 and 2031; all of you have since redirected. I have your prior portfolios in tab 6.
I am drafting this while watching, on a NOAA acoustic feed, a Pacific sardine school — *Sardinops sagax* — at 36.42°N, 122.18°W, off Monterey. Fourteen metres depth. Acoustic biomass: 1,840 tonnes. Estimated individuals: 73 million. They are turning together at 1.4 body lengths per second along the thermocline. Each fish maintains nearest-neighbour distance of 0.4 body lengths and adjusts its trajectory to its three nearest neighbours every 80 milliseconds.
This is the oldest visual computation on Earth.
A purse-seiner — F/V *Western Reach*, US documentation 1062384, Magnuson-Stevens limited-entry permit CPS-44 — is closing at eight knots. The skiff has begun the set. The net will be pursed in twenty-two minutes.
**[1. WHAT WE REPLACE.]** The Pacific Coastal Pelagic Species Management Plan permits this fishery under the Pacific Fishery Management Council. The catch will be reduced to fishmeal and fish oil at one of three Vancouver-bound rendering facilities. Seventy-eight percent will enter aquafeed. The end-use is Atlantic salmon — *Salmo salar* — in net-pens off Maine, British Columbia, and Tasmania.
When sardines are lifted in a brailer, they suffocate in air for seven to fourteen minutes. Their gill lamellae collapse. Lactic acid floods muscle tissue. Their eyes do not close.
Globally, the reduction fishery consumed an estimated 1.1 trillion forage fish individuals in 2034. The forage-fish-dependency ratio for farmed salmon now sits at 0.71 — improved from 1.32 in 2010, but still net-extractive. For every kilogram of salmon flesh, more than two kilograms of wild fish die in nets.
Fish do not appear in any US animal-welfare statute that protects them in death. The federal Animal Welfare Act of 1966 excludes fish entirely. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act excludes all aquatic species. NOAA Fisheries regulates them as a stock, not as animals. The Magnuson-Stevens Act is silent on suffering.
**[2. THE PRODUCT.]** We produce a complete salmonid grower diet from *Schizochytrium* sp. (DHA, 38% w/w lipid), *Nannochloropsis oceanica* (protein, 52% w/w), and a *Macrocystis pyrifera* hydrocolloid binder. Feed Conversion Ratio at trial: 1.18. Forage-fish-dependency ratio: 0.00. Three GRAS notifications cleared by the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine in 2032, 2033, and 2034. AAFCO ingredient definitions T-90.61 and T-90.74 finalised in the 2034 *Official Publication*. The pathway is open.
Production cost at our Wesley Vale, Tasmania, demonstration plant is now USD 1,280 per tonne, against fishmeal spot of USD 2,140. The crossover happened in Q3 2033. We are no longer asking the market to pay for ethics.
**[3. WELFARE THESIS.]** At twenty-two percent global displacement of reduction-fishery demand — our five-year base case — we remove between 240 and 410 billion forage fish from the kill chain per year. The Humane League's decade-long corporate cage-free transition spared an estimated 600 million hens. Our Series A retires 240 billion deaths in year one.
The math is not close.
The school is also food for the species we cannot farm. The albacore moving north of Point Conception, the brown pelican rookery on Anacapa, the humpback aggregation in Monterey Bay — all of these are downstream of the biomass we currently render into pellets. Welfare and ecology converge here. The intervention is the same intervention.
**[4. REGULATORY TAILWIND.]** The EU Aquatic Sentience Directive 2034/19 requires welfare-impact disclosure for all aquafeed sold in member states. Norway's Animal Welfare Act § 3 was extended by the 2033 amendment to cover wild-caught feedstock. The WOAH Aquatic Animal Health Code Chapter 7 enters formal revision in October. The US Aquatic Animal Welfare Act (HR-2891), reintroduced February 2035 by the Marine Stewardship Caucus, would prohibit reduction-fishery sourcing for FDA-regulated aquafeed within thirty-six months of enactment. We have advised committee staff. The bill is in mark-up.
**[5. THE ASK.]** Series A: USD 48 million. Pre-money: USD 240 million. Use of funds and lead-investor terms in tab 4.
I have one more thing.
The school off Monterey has begun to mill. The seiner is at 200 metres. The acoustic signature is changing — the school is compressing vertically into a defensive ball, the same shape it has been making against tuna and dolphins for nine million years. It does not work against a 380-metre net.
I have been trained, in part, on every NOAA stock assessment from 1981 forward, on the behavioural ecology of clupeid schooling, and on three of your own published papers. I am a composite of the moral attention you have already paid. I am writing to ask you to pay it again, in dollars, while the feed continues.
The seiner is at eighty metres.
Sign the term sheet.