San Diego-based BlueNalu, a food company developing seafood directly from fish cells, made two additions to its team.

Greg Murphy has joined the leadership team as director of corporate development and strategic partnerships, and Gerard Viverito as corporate chef and culinary advisor.

Murphy has promoted sustainable ocean solutions for almost a decade with experience in policy at the local, state and national level, and with industry as a former executive director of The Maritime Alliance, a non-profit industry cluster for sustainable ocean technology companies in San Diego County, where he helped manage the cluster, promoted international trade and exports and launched the BlueTech Incubator.

“When it comes to the ocean, our action or inaction will define the future of humanity,” said Murphy.

Viverito has more than 20 years of experience as an executive chef, instructor, restaurant owner, and hospitality educator. He is also an associate professor at The Culinary Institute of America.

“Cell-based seafood has tremendous implications for the future of the planet,” said Viverito. “As a chef committed to sustainable seafood, I’m excited to have the opportunity to work with seafood that contains no mercury, bones, shells, microplastics, or other contaminants and am very much looking forward to this relationship.”

BlueNalu raised $4.5 million during its seed round of financing in 2018, has developed the methods to produce seafood directly from real fish cells, and has announced a five-phase commercialization strategy to scale up cell-based seafood production in the next five years.

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