Saving Seafood

Kelp Farms and Marine Life Co-Exist in Southeast Alaska

September 25, 2026 — Marine aquaculture, or mariculture, provides economic opportunities for coastal communities in Alaska through farming shellfish and seaweed. NOAA Fisheries continues to support Alaska’s growing aquaculture industry through policy and permitting—providing access to resources and research.

A recent study highlights one of our newest aquaculture research collaborations. Through this partnership between the Alaska Fisheries Science Center and Sea Quester Farms, we investigated whether seaweed farms provide novel habitat for Alaskan marine species. We compared the fish and invertebrate species present within Sea Quester farm sites to similar locations with no farms, and found no major difference. The research provided a better understanding of how kelp farms interact with the environment, which could help inform sustainable management.

“This study responded to a direct need from resource managers and interest from farmers to understand specifically how the presence of kelp farms in Alaska influenced culturally and economically important fish and invertebrate species,” said Jordan Hollarsmith, Ph.D., lead author and macroalgae and mariculture research biologist at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center.

Read the full article at the full article at NOAA Fisheries

ALASKA: Kodiak kelp farmers form a co-op, plan to sell a million pounds

March 25, 2026 — Five kelp farmers from around Kodiak Island have started the Kodiak Ocean Growers Co-op. It’s a member owned and operated organization that hopes to benefit all of the archipelago’s kelp farmers in the growing, local industry.

Kelp farmer Tollef Monson, who operates Alaska Sea Greens with his wife Adelia on the west side of Kodiak Island in Uganik Bay, said the idea for the co-op started two years ago. He said the hope is that the farmers will collectively be able to communicate with buyers about a price that they can survive on.

“So each farmer didn’t have to go to each buyer and try and negotiate,” Monson said. “The co-op can be kind of a place of negotiation but also for aggregation, for the total amount of kelp that a buyer wants.”

Monson said the intent is for each participating farm to sell its kelp to the cooperative, which then sells to the buyers. They’re working with at least two main buyers this year, Macro Oceans and Cascadia Seaweed in British Columbia.

Read the full article at KMXT

ALASKA: Alaskan research outlines methods to deter Pacific herring from spawning on kelp farms

August 19, 2025 — Kelp aquaculture operations are rapidly expanding in Alaska and coming into increasingly greater contact with wild marine species.

In an attempt to limit some of the interactions between Alaska’s aquaculture operations and wild species, researchers have outlined strategies to prevent Pacific herring from spawning and laying eggs on kelp farmed at aquaculture farms along the state’s coast.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Rescuing Kelp Through Science

July 18, 2024 — Just off the shore in Casco Bay, Maine, marine scientist Scott Lindell descends into an underwater kelp forest, his ears filling with frigid water as he swims down to the seafloor. Lindell’s mission: to find sugar kelp, a golden-brown, frilly-edged seaweed—and, more specifically, sugar kelp in its reproductive phase. Peering through his mask in the swirling, murky water, Lindell can only see a few feet, so it’s not an easy task.

What he’s looking for: kelp blades streaked with sorus tissue, a dark band teeming with millions of spores. A wiry man in his 60s, Lindell has developed relationships with homeowners and researchers across hundreds of miles of New England’s coast so he can access the kelp integral to his work—and, potentially, to the future of seaweed farming in the United States.

After several dives, Lindell has filled his mesh collection bag with cuttings and swims to shore. He stores the prized tissue in a cooler to keep it damp and cool for the five-hour drive, and then sets off for his laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Here, over the next 45 days, the spores will be carefully cultivated into seed for farmers and scientists to outplant in the ocean.

Read the full article at Civil Eats

MAINE: Kelp farming off Maine waters could help to contribute to environmental sustainability

May 29, 2024 — Maine leads the nation in seaweed farming.

Kelp farms are located across several areas off Maine’s coast, including Casco Bay and the Midcoast.

Keith Miller of South Thomaston is a pioneer in kelp farming. He’s been fishing for decades and operates several kelp farms. He grows, harvests, and then sells his kelp to the seaweed farming company Atlantic Sea Farms, based in Biddeford.

Kelp is a winter crop, which means it grows best between November and April. Miller and his crew have another week or so to harvest the crop before it’s time to get ready for lobstering season.

Read the full article at WMTW

Fishermen diversify to fill the kelp demand

October 3, 2023 — Predominantly grown on the Pacific Coast from California to Alaska – and even in parts of New England – kelp forests have been harvested on a large scale since World War I, when the vegetation was used as a source of potash to make gunpowder. During that time, the harvest was unregulated and destructive to the surrounding habitats. Nowadays, the harvest of kelp is more sustainable due to harvesters only removing the upper portion of the canopy of the algae.

The evolution of harvesting kelp may have begun with gunpowder; however, the primary resource from kelp is algin, a product used as a gelling agent in foods, pharmaceuticals, waterproof and fireproofing fabrics, a component in fertilizers, and a healthy ingredient in food. In addition to this array of uses, kelp has been identified as a potential alternative energy source, according to NOAA Fisheries.

Studies on kelp forest ecosystems and the economics behind this sea plant show that it provides food and habitat for hundreds of fish species, invertebrates, and marine mammals. Additionally, healthy forests can protect coastlines and support other sustainable fisheries. Studies have shown that kelp generates a potential value of $465 to $562 billion annually across three critical ecosystem services:- fisheries production, nutrient cycling, and carbon removal.

Over the last 50 years though, climate change, poor water quality, and overfishing have damaged 40 to 60 percent of kelp forests. The impact has been significant, as more than 95 percent of these forests have been lost in one section of the coastline from southern Oregon to northern California due to high temperatures and over-harvest. As a result of the decline of the kelp forests, small-scale fisheries have been severely affected by a lack of food.

Read the full article at the National Fisherman

Kelp forests vastly undervalued resource in fisheries production, study finds

September 21, 2023 — Wild kelp forests help generate an annual average of USD 500 billion (EUR 456 billion) in global fisheries production, a study published in Nature Communications has found.

The study, “The value of ecosystem services in global marine kelp forests,” aimed to calculate the worth of this historically undervalued resource and emphasize its economic and ecosystem benefits.

Read the full article at SesfoodSource

Oregon State research uncovers key insight for restoration of globally important kelp forests

February 18, 2022 — Restoration efforts for kelp forests may be most effective in areas where the bedrock seafloor is highly contoured, research by Oregon State University suggests.

The findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are important because kelp, large algae with massive ecological and economic importance around the world, are under siege from environmental change and overgrazing by urchins.

The study, led by recent graduate Zachary Randell when he was an Oregon State doctoral student, shows that kelp forests in areas with ocean floor ruggedness – scientifically termed substrate complexity or surface rugosity – tend toward stability.

There were urchins in kelp forests growing in areas of high substrate complexity, but those urchins did not cause widespread destruction of kelp forests. One hypothesis is that substrate complexity retains “drift algae” – detached pieces of kelp and other algae – which urchins prefer to eat over live kelp, Randell said.

Read the full story at the Tillamook Headlight Herald

Seeds planted: Alaska kelp nursery tests farms for fishermen

January 25, 2022 — Kelp mariculture is expanding in Alaska and around the world. Kelp farms have been established in Kodiak and Southeast Alaska for a few years, but it’s a brand new industry to Prince William Sound and Kachemak Bay.

The crew at the Alutiiq Pride Marine Institute in Seward has hatched a kelp nursery to support local farmers plant seeds in the sea.

Kelp is extremely versatile and used in a variety of products, including food, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and biofuel, according to the institute’s Science Director Maile Branson.

“Kelp is also highly productive and sequesters large concentrations of carbon, counteracting localized ocean acidification,” she added. “Therefore, in a regenerative ocean farming system, kelp can benefit both the farmer and numerous marine species.”

Read the full story at National Fisherman