Fish and beer (and chips), as everyone knows, are an excellent combination, but until recently, you couldn’t really say that about beer brewers and fisheries.

An “unlikely alliance” has formed between New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins and two former Colorado School of Mines students that one day might just “end up saving fisheries all over the world,” according to 9News. A handful of entrepreneurs are toiling away in a sludge-treatment warehouse behind the brewery, trying to find ways to save fisheries from collapse.

The problem is simple. Fish eat other fish, according to Andy Logan of the Oberon FMR (fish meal replacement), but there’s not always enough to go around. They’re trying to create a high-protein fish meal from bacterial brewery waste, which in a win-win could save brewers the $200-a-ton disposal fee. TreeHugger loves the idea: “Leave it to a bunch of brainy graduate students to find a new use for beer.”