Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Seaweed farming inspires high hopes in Alaska for economic and environmental benefits

March 14, 2023 — To optimists, the plants that grow in the sea promise to diversify the Alaska economy, revitalize small coastal towns struggling with undependable fisheries and help communities adapt to climate change – and even mitigate it by absorbing atmospheric carbon.

Cultivation of seaweed, largely varieties of kelp, promises to buffer against ocean acidification and coastal pollution, the promoters say. Seaweed farms can produce ultra-nutritious crops to boost food security in Alaska and combat hunger everywhere, and not just for human beings.

“Kelp is good for everybody. It’s good for people. It’s good for animals,” Kirk Sparks, with Pacific Northwest Organics, a California company that sells agricultural products, said in a panel discussion at a mariculture conference held in Juneau in February by the Alaska Sea Grant program.

But before it achieves these broad benefits, Alaska’s mariculture industry must first address significant practical issues, including an American consumer market that has yet to broadly embrace seaweed.

Seaweed farming is a bright spot in an Alaska coastal economy roiled by climate change, habitat disruptions and uncertain fish returns.

It is part of an expanding mariculture industry in Alaska that, until recently, was almost exclusively about oyster farming. Commercial seaweed production in the state has grown in volume from virtually zero in 2016 to about 650,000 wet pounds in 2022, according to the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation.

Read the full article at the Alaska Beacon

Legislation calls for seaweed farming study, funding for tribal start-ups

March 2, 2023 — A bill introduced in Congress this week calls for a federal study on the possibilities of coastal seaweed farming, and creating a new seaweed farming fund to “reduce cost barriers for indigenous communities, emboldening them to participate in coastal seaweed farming,” according to sponsors Reps. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., and Mary Peltola, D-Alaska.

The Coastal Seaweed Farm Act would direct the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture to produce a joint study “evaluating the benefits and impacts of coastal seaweed farming and devise necessary metrics and regulations,” according to a statement Wednesday from Huffman and Peltola.

“Coastal seaweed farming has tremendous potential to serve as a sustainable replacement in food products, fertilizer, and animal feed; and it comes with a myriad of benefits for coastal communities – supporting local economies, providing food security, and regenerating marine ecosystems,” said Huffman.

“We also want to ensure equity in this field so that indigenous people can continue benefiting from the industry – so our bill creates a grant program to reduce cost barriers for native communities, many of whom have farmed seaweed for thousands of years.”

“Alaska and our Indigenous cultures have been leading the way in mariculture and responsible ocean harvesting for thousands of years,” said Peltola. “This act recognizes Alaska’s unique environment and the crucial relationships between our coastal and near-coastal communities, Tribal organizations, and Alaska Native Corporations, all of which are part of this sector.”

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Seaweed can help feed the world – but will we eat it?

November 2, 2015 — Let’s say you want to farm.

And let’s say there is a crop that requires you to plant and harvest, but do very little in between. It needs no fertilizing, no weeding, no watering, and it has very few enemies in the form of pests or disease. It gets all it needs from the environment around it and, under optimal conditions, can grow almost six inches a day. It’s healthful for people, and it actually leaves the environment better than it finds it.

That’s the case in favor of seaweed, and it’s a case that Charlie Yarish, a professor in the department of marine sciences at the University of Connecticut at Stamford, has been making for nigh on half a century. They call him “Captain Seaweed.” I visited his lab, and I’m a believer.

Yarish has spent decades doing the work that brings an interesting idea – let’s farm seaweed! – to the point where growers can start viable farms. There are some 3,500 kinds of seaweed, and figuring out which kind to grow, and where, and how, is a big job. The first rule? “Always grow a species native to the water you’re growing in,” says Yarish. Because some seaweeds are wildly invasive, that’s an important point.

One of the farmers who has taken advantage of Yarish’s research is Paul Dobbins. He’s a co-owner of Ocean Approved, a company that farms sugar kelp off the coast of Maine and sells it frozen, rather than dried. In a kind of busman’s holiday (I farm oysters), I went out with him to take a look at the kelp. It was early spring, and most of his crop had already been harvested, but he still had a line or two in the water. We pulled up to the buoy that marked a line, and he reached into the water.

What he pulled into the boat was a remarkable abundance of plant. Sugar kelp gives magic beanstalks a run for their money: It can grow from seedling to 15 feet over one winter. In the process, it cleans the water by removing some of the nutrients that can lead to algae blooms. Along with shellfish, kelp is one of the few farmed foods with a positive environmental impact.

And it doesn’t consume much in the way of resources. There’s the gas for the boat. There’s the labor in planting, harvesting and processing. And that’s about it.

There are a couple of ancillary non-environmental benefits. Most shellfish farming takes place from spring through early winter, so a crop that can grow from early winter through spring is an excellent complement; it can use both the space and the labor in the off-season.

Read the full story at Portland Press Herald