Pacific Hybreed raised $1M in a funding round, backed by Hawaiʻi Angels and Blue Startups. The funds will be used to scale hatchery production and expand breeding programs.

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On a global scale, shellfish aquaculture provides a sustainable, low input source of healthy food. When practiced sustainably, shellfish farming can enhance water quality while providing habitat and other ecosystem services in the marine environment. Pacific Hybreed is the first commercial shellfish breeding company in the U.S. Our products offer both resilience, to mitigate the impact of threats to current production, and growth, through enhanced yield for producing Pacific oysters, Manila clams, Kumamoto oysters, and rock scallops, among other commercially important shellfish. Based on decades of university-based research by founders Dennis Hedgecock and Joth Davis, our technology responds to a changing global climate, warmer and more acidic oceans, and emerging diseases, including Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome (POMS), a viral disease that has devastated oyster production worldwide. Specifically, hybrid vigor, resulting from our crossbreeding program based on world class quantitative genomics, can enhance yield and resilience in shellfish, as it has in corn and other crops, without relying on genes from unrelated species (i.e., no GMOs). Our products will not interbreed with wild stocks.