Synthetic, Sustainable Bait Featured at Impact Investment Conference
Kepley BioSystems among Most Promising Companies at 2017 Fish 2.0 Innovation Forum
GREENSBORO, NORTH CAROLINA, U.S., December 5, 2017 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Kepley BioSystems (KBI) was one of 40 of the most promising sustainable seafood companies chosen to present their business and products at the 2017 Fish 2.0 Innovation Forum held on November 7-8, 2017, at Stanford University. KBI placed in the top tier of its segment, and the final awards from the academic and impact investment participants’ ratings will be announced later this month.
Bringing sustainably-minded marine enterprises to Silicon Valley for the first of such conferences, 2017 Fish 2.0 Innovation Forum & Finals focused on "sustainability," which was also a founding tenet at KBI. The featured KBI invention was a synthetic bait engineered to revitalize fishing communities and preserve ocean ecosystems. Traditionally, wild-caught pelagic fish, collectively known as “forage fish,” have been the indispensable bait used for attracting crab and lobsters to traps. As these ecologically vital fish have been increasingly over-utilized and subject to erratic pricing and sporadic shortages, commercial fisheries have needed consistently available and affordable options more than ever.
OrganoBait™ is the revolutionary KBI approach that provides a disruptive alternative. It uses synthetically derived chemistry to deliver the same naturally occurring chemo-attractant nanoparticles as those emitted from traditional fish-based bait to effectively and safely attract crustaceans. KBI developed OrganoBait™ at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering in Greensboro, North Carolina, with grants from federal and state agencies, including the National Science Foundation, NOAA’s North Carolina Sea Grant program, and the North Carolina Department of Commerce.
