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.