Saving Seafood

From Maine’s warming waters, kelp emerges as a potentially lucrative cash crop

June 28, 2021 — One bright, brisk morning last month, Colleen Francke steered her skiff a mile off the coast of Falmouth and cut the gas. A few white buoys bobbed in straight lines on the water. Francke reached down and hoisted a rope.

She has been lobstering for a decade and a half, she says, but as climate change warms local waters and forces lobsters northward, she’s been finding it harder to envision a future in that industry.

So, for the last two years, she’s been developing a new source of income. Heaving the rope aloft, she showed off her bounty: ribbons of brown, curly sugar kelp, raised on her 10-acre undersea farm.

Kelp, a seaweed more often thought of as a nuisance by fishermen, is emerging as a potentially lucrative crop, hailed for its many uses as a miracle food to an ingredient in bioplastics to a revolutionary way to feed beef cattle. And Maine officials, confronting a likely decline of the state’s iconic lobster fishing industry in coming decades, are now looking to kelp farming as a possible economic and environmental savior.

The state is working with local institutions to support training and grants for entrepreneurs such as Francke willing to move into kelp farming or other aquaculture ventures. It also labeled kelp a “natural climate solution” in its recently-released Climate Action plan. The goal, officials say, is to dramatically expand kelp farming as part of a reinvention of Maine’s seafood industry — and imagining a future in which kelp from Maine is held in something akin to the esteem that Maine lobster is now.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe

Applications for aquatic farming in Alaska drop due to pandemic, and kelp is favored over shellfish

June 2, 2021 — Alaska interest in growing kelp continues to outpace that of shellfish, based on applications filed during the annual window that runs from January through April.

The number of 2021 applicants for aquatic farming dropped to just seven, reversing a steady upward trend that reached 16 last year, likely due to a “wait and see” approach stemming from the pandemic.

“We had people whose personal situations changed because of COVID. They became home-schooling parents, things like that, where they can no longer dedicate the time they thought they were going to have out on a farm site,” said Michell Morris, permit coordinator at the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game. The agency partners with the Dept. of Natural Resources, which leases the lands where aquatic farming takes place.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Researchers rush to understand kelp forests as harvesting increases

April 22, 2021 — The kelp forests of the oceans are a habitat for a wide range of marine species, rivaling even the great tropical forests for sheer richness of biodiversity, according to scientists from the KELPER project, which studies these marine algae ecosystems.

The kelp species, or marine algae, that make up these seaweed strands anchored to rocks on the seafloor are typically Macrocystis pyrifera, or giant kelp, and Lessonia trabeculata, known locally as huiro palo. The largest natural reserves of these algae are found off the coast of Chile and southern Argentina, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Chile is the main beneficiary of this abundance, with an important industry dedicated to kelp harvesting, primarily L. trabeculata, making the country the world’s largest producer of macroalgae.

Algae contain a carbohydrate called alginate that’s used as a thickener in a large number of products in the food industry, such as desserts, ice creams, dairy products, sauces and condiments. It’s also used in the textiles and pharmaceuticals industries, including in the production of creams and toothpaste.

Until 2005, these long strands of kelp were collected on the beach by fisher-gatherers when, after a swell, the waves pulled them up from the seafloor and deposited them on the shore. Since then, increasing demand for alginate — a market estimated at $1 billion a year, according to a KELPER Project report — has driven the industry to start harvesting the kelp directly from the source in the sea, in a practice known locally as barreteo. According to the most recent figures published by the Chilean National Fisheries Service (Sernapesca), 40,261 tons of L. trabeculata were cut from the seafloor this way in 2018.

Read the full story at Mongabay

‘Run The Oil Industry In Reverse’: Fighting Climate Change By Farming Kelp

March 1, 2021 — In the race to stall or even reverse global warming, new efforts are in the works to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and put it somewhere safe.

One startup in Maine has a vision that is drawing attention from scientists and venture capitalists alike: to bury massive amounts of seaweed at the bottom of the ocean, where it will lock away carbon for thousands of years.

The company is called Running Tide Technologies, and it’s prototyping the concept this winter. On a recent day in the Gulf of Maine, boat captain Rob Odlin says the task itself isn’t much different from any other in his seafaring career, whether chasing tuna or harvesting lobster.

“We’re just fishing for carbon now, and kelp’s the net,” he says.

Running Tide CEO Marty Odlin — the boat captain’s nephew — comes from a long line of Maine fishermen, and once imagined he would continue the tradition. But he watched as the warming climate drove major shifts in fish populations, while regulators put a lid on how much could be taken from the sea.

Read the full story at NPR

Eat More Kelp campaign launched by climate change activists in North America

November 10, 2020 — Climate change is the impetus driving the new Eat More Kelp campaign in North America, which seeks to “change the trajectory of culinary culture in the United States and Canada to include more carbon-capturing, ocean-grown domestic sea vegetables,” according to its organizers.

A collaboration of activists, regenerative ocean farmers, and climate groups are behind the campaign’s creation. The initiative was announced in tandem with the founders of The Kelp Fund, Inc. launching a new website and e-commerce platform, which offers Eat More Kelp-branded merchandise for “concerned citizens and organizations around the world who are seeking impactful ways to raise awareness about how to fight climate change,” it said in a press release.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Training Builds on Growing Popularity of Kelp Farming

May 14, 2020 — The following was released by NOAA Fisheries:

For 28 years Riley Starks has fished near Lummi Island, Washington, netting Chinook, coho, sockeye, pink, and chum salmon. He also owns a bed and breakfast on the island that specializes in providing guests with unique skill-building experiences. They can smoke salmon and make jam and ikura, which is seasoned and cured salmon roe. He has observed many of the Puget Sound area’s 17 species of kelp—or brown macroalgae—while tending his nets.

He jumped at the chance to further build his own skills as part of intensive training in seaweed farming sponsored by Washington Sea Grant. In early February, he joined about 30 seaweed enthusiasts, including representatives of four tribes, seven military veterans, several commercial fishermen, and shellfish farmers. They took a three-day deep dive into the seaweed industry.

“The training was comprehensive and excellent,” Starks said. “I particularly appreciated the emphasis on the importance of working with the tribes early in the process—they have unique and important rights that must be respected.”

Seaweed farming has taken off in recent years in Maine and Alaska, which have dozens of farms and more in the works. Despite the increase in domestic production, the United States remains the fifth largest importer of seaweed for human consumption. Seaweed is added to many products, such as salsas, sauces, salads, seasonings, and pastas, used in restaurants and at home. That market demand, plus the health and environmental benefits of seaweed farming, have generated interest in Washington state. Uncertainty exists about the permitting process and access to local processing facilities, given the newness of kelp farming in local waters.

Read the full release here

MAINE: Midcoast businesses say court ruling on seaweed harvest could be devastating

May 10, 2019 — Two Waldoboro businesses are grappling with a March court ruling that could restrict seaweed harvesting throughout the state.

Both North American Kelp, at 41 Cross St., and Ocean Organics Corp., at 141 One Pie Road, have based their business models on sustainable rockweed harvesting, parlaying the natural resource to create jobs and grow their companies.

On March 28, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled that rockweed along the seashore isn’t public property in a 22-page opinion upholding a 2017 ruling by the Washington County Superior Court.

Read the full story at Bangor Daily News

ALASKA: Emerging mariculture industry seeks to streamline permitting

May 6, 2019 — Alaska may be famous for its wild fish, but some are working to make room in the state’s waters for more shellfish, kelp, and crabs on aquatic farms.

Mariculture is a hot topic in fisheries right now. Essentially, mariculture can be defined as the cultivation of plants or animals in controlled saltwater environments, but in Alaska, it doesn’t include finfish, as that’s illegal in the state. So mariculture farmers have stuck to primarily kelp and oysters so far, but they’re starting to get more adventurous.

As of December 2018, 58 aquatic farms were operating in the state along with five hatcheries and seven nurseries, though only 41 of the farms documented production in 2017, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

Oysters are still the most widely grown product, though kelp is gaining ground; after the first operations for kelp were permitted in 2016, four farms had produced 16,570 pounds of ribbon and sugar kelp by the following year.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce 

Seaweed matters: Eat your vegetables

April 26, 2019 — When I sat down at a Portland kombucha bar to attend a local Seaweed 101 session, I fully expected a love story about wild, vegan kelp and how we can change the world by eating more sea vegetables. What I didn’t expect was an in-depth exchange about federal fishery management and how it has decimated the industry’s communities in New England.

VitaminSea owner, and host of the session, Tom Roth was a commercial tilefish captain out of New Jersey a lifetime ago. He transitioned into New York Harbor tugboats as the industry declined, and started diving for kelp in his spare time from his home base in southern Maine about 15 years ago.

These days he goes out in a 40-foot boat that carries three other divers, two wooden skiffs and two Zodiacs. Each diver takes a small craft out on his own; they spread out, harvest, then meet back at the boat to help each other unload.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Marine heatwaves are getting hotter, lasting longer and doing more damage

June 1, 2018 — On land, heatwaves can be deadly for humans and wildlife and can devastate crops and forests.

Unusually warm periods can also occur in the ocean. These can last for weeks or months, killing off kelp forests and corals, and producing other significant impacts on marine ecosystems, fishing and aquaculture industries.

Yet until recently, the formation, distribution and frequency of marine heatwaves had received little research attention.

Long-term change

Climate change is warming ocean waters and causing shifts in the distribution and abundance of seaweeds, corals, fish and other marine species. For example, tropical fish species are now commonly found in Sydney Harbour.

But these changes in ocean temperatures are not steady or even, and scientists have lacked the tools to define, synthesize and understand the global patterns of marine heatwaves and their biological impacts.

At a meeting in early 2015, we convened a group of scientists with expertise in atmospheric climatology, oceanography and ecology to form a marine heatwaves working group to develop a definition for the phenomenon: A prolonged period of unusually  at a particular location for that time of the year. Importantly, marine heatwaves can occur at any time of the year, summer or winter.

Read the full story at PHYS