- This is a climate solution.
Seaweed, found in sushi, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals
and fertilizer, is also a carbon sink.
Its ability to grow super fast without taking up land
makes it a great way to store carbon
and help address climate change.
While already popular in Asia,
the seaweed farming industry in the US
is in its infancy and could boom in the next decade
to meet the demand of carbon offsetting.
So I wanna know, can seaweed save the climate?
To find out, I've come to Stonington Kelp Company
off the coast of Connecticut to learn how one woman
has launched her seaweed farming business
and what the future of seaweed aquaculture could look like.
I'm Lucy Biggers, and this is One Small Step.
(upbeat music)
Suzie Flores grows food-grade sugar kelp
which is a type of seaweed
and sells it to local restaurants and shops.
Kelp is an important habitat and food source
for fish and Invertebrates.
Her process uses a system with ropes
and requires zero inputs like fertilizer.
As it grows, the kelp absorbs carbon and nitrogen
from the water and turns it into a nutrient-dense food.
We're heading out to the farm to see how Suzie grows
and then harvests her kelp.
So we've been on the boat for about 30 minutes.
We're about to get out to the seaweed farm.
It's 10 acres.
We've seen a lot of seals
on the way out here and it's brisk out here.
- So it's such a Beautiful day out for us
but not for the seaweed.
This is like hundreds of pounds of seaweed
that's growing here right now.
And this is kind of the beginning of the season.
I try to harvest to order
because it allows me to use the ocean as my refrigerator.
So we just grab it.
I had my seven-year-old on the boat yesterday with me
and he was cutting seaweed,
and we just put it in a fish basket or food-grade bucket.
(Suzie cutting seaweed)
- [Lucy] It's so bountiful
and I love the sound of it getting cut.
(Suzie cutting seaweed)
- [Suzie] There's no wrong way to do it.
- That was easy. - And you just want to get it
into the bucket.
I try to keep it from hitting the boat as much as I can.
That's very good. - It's beautiful.
Suzie's farm is here in this body of water
off the coast of Connecticut.
She produces 8,000 to 16,000 pounds of kelp per year.
New England is a great place to farm seaweed
because it already grows naturally here.
It's also native to the Pacific coast.
132 countries around the world
have the conditions to start seaweed aquaculture
off their coast.
But only 37 countries currently do so.
- This is sugar kelp.
This is Saccharina latissima.
It's the only seaweed you can grow to eat in this state.
And that's because they are being really smart
about not introducing any sort of species
that could decimate the natural kelp beds
or any of the other edible seaweeds,
or just non-edible seaweeds
in the Fishers Island Sound.
So this is a little guy.
Up top is the stipe.
I think it's like the most delicious part.
And then just the rest is the blade.
- I can eat the whole thing. - You can eat the whole thing.
Yeah, please eat it.
Enjoy it.
Isn't that awesome.
Can you imagine that like pickled?
- It's so good.
- Yeah, chopped up like in a relish or something like that.
- It's very short travel, farm to table to mouth.
- Yeah, seriously.
There's definitely a lot of use for sugar kelp
and other kelps as animal feed, as a soil input
because it carries a lot of nitrogen naturally,
in pharmaceuticals, cosmetics.
It can be used to make alginate, which is a thickening agent
which people use in ice cream.
So you can see some of the stipes are gonna be longer
than other ones.
And that's because the current that rips through the site
is dragging the seaweed.
- And how fast does this grow? - It's a millimeter.
First week of December,
and now it's average like 100 centimeters long.
- A millimeter the first week? - Like the size of
a baby fingernail.
It's really tiny.
- [Lucy] And now we're in April
and this is how many feet long?
Oh my gosh!
Some of these are...
Look at this. - And I've been
harvesting this too.
So I'm cutting them and then they're growing back.
That's why they absorb so much more carbon and nitrogen,
because they're growing so fast.
- So how does carbon sequestration work?
Well, the structure of the seaweed is built with carbon.
So as long as it's intact,
the carbon is in the atmosphere as CO2.
One proposed way of preserving the carbon
is by sinking the seaweed into deeper parts of the ocean
where it's not able to fully break down,
thus sealing the carbon on the ocean floor.
One study that looked at the carbon sequestration potential
of seaweed farming
found that sinking 14 to 25% of current seaweed production
could offset the entire aquaculture sector
and make it carbon neutral.
As more and more major companies pledge
to become carbon neutral,
the seaweed industry could become a big player
in a carbon offsetting market.
In the future, someone like Suzie could get paid
to sink her seaweed and sequester carbon.
Are you doing anything right now to help
sequester even more carbon?
- We have two different people
that we're partnering with right now.
And they're actually studying the best way
to make the seaweed grow the fullest,
and they're studying the amount of carbon and nitrogen
that's being sequestered on my farm.
'Cause it's all gonna be different, right?
Like depending on what your waterway is
you're gonna have different levels.
So once we figured that out,
then I would like to investigate more
in ways that we could...
I mean, I keep the 10 acres,
even though we've only been farming this four acre
kind of plot of the 10 acres
because I think that there's the potential
to use the seaweed in another way
Why not?
- Seaweed farming holds a lot of potential
but the industry in the US is still in its infancy.
Remember that map of countries that farm seaweed,
the US isn't even counted as a seaweed farming country
because the industry is so small
and there is no federal policy around seaweed farming.
And globally, seaweed farming has room to expand a lot.
Currently seaweed aquaculture accounts for only 0.05%
of the area occupied by wild seaweed populations.
Researchers estimate that 48 million kilometers squared
of the ocean is suitable for seaweed aquaculture.
Expanding seaweed farming could also increase food security.
By one estimate, creating ocean farms that grow seaweed
and shellfish in just 5% of US territorial waters
could create protein equivalent to 2.3 trillion hamburgers
and sequester carbon of 20 million cars.
And how often are you thinking about climate change
in your day-to-day work?
- Me, and what's really nice
is a lot of the other small farmers,
they tend to be oyster fishermen
or even lobster fishermen, any type of fishermen,
you think about it all the time
because that impacts your entire livelihood.
The oyster fishermen that I work with,
they already understand that by growing their oysters
they're doing a lot to help improve the waterways.
And so by adding seaweed onto oyster farms,
like you're filtering the water,
you're sucking carbon and nitrogen out of the water,
you're helping prevent ocean acidification,
you're helping prevent algal blooms
which wind up keeping every other fishery alive.
- Would you start sinking some if it was like-
- I would take six more acres, like the remaining six acres
and just figure out a way to sink it.
- And then get paid for that as carbon sequestration.
- If there was a way to do it
and it was like a super responsible
like everybody's given it the thumbs up, I am all about it.
The last thing I wanna do is like see an area
where everybody's just sinking their lines irresponsibly.
Everything just has to be kind of thought through.
If we're supporting that culture that we have here too,
I think that that's a win-win
and it's gonna support all the local waterfront businesses
because I would like to see seaweed be as endemic
as like the lobster roll to this region,
but I'm not trying to sell it to Oregon.
I'm trying to keep it close to home
and just see what we can do with it right here for right now
because I really do think it defeats the purpose.
I don't put my seaweed in plastic.
Again, it sounds very idealist right now,
but let's just stay slow
and see if we can grow it here first.
And then once we do that well,
maybe we can figure out like seaweed-based plastic
that dissolves in the water
rather than goes into turtle bellies.
It's an industry that just it can only grow.
(upbeat music)
- So we're back on shore after visiting the farm,
and we're gonna do a little experiment and taste test
with how the seaweed taste changes with temperature.
- Yes. Well, I mean, that's essentially what it is.
So I just get a little
and I'm hoping that it hot- - That's boiling water?
- It looks pretty hot, right? - Yeah, it looks hot.
- When you blanche, you're just essentially taking it
and dipping it right in.
- (gasps) Whoa!
- So here's kind of the side by side.
- [Lucy] So what's the science behind this?
Why is this happening?
- Well there's three different pigments contributing
to the color of the seaweed when it's in its natural state.
And so when you're putting it in the hot water
you're melting away two of the pigments
but one of them, chlorophyll,
which is why remains green.
Has a higher melting point.
- It's like a super food, so what does that mean?
- It's very high in iron.
It's very high in calcium.
It's high in iodine.
It has antioxidants.
It has a omega-threes.
It has a lot of things in it
that people can't find in terrestrial plants.
A lot of the same elements that you'll find in fish
that they say, you gotta eat this, it's really good,
it's brain food, longevity,
you can find that in seaweed.
So it's actually a really great solution for people
who maybe don't like fish or people who don't eat fish
for whatever reason.
It's almost overwhelming when I think about
all of the benefits.
I'm like, it's good for the environment.
It's really good for your body.
It will make all of your food taste better.
Like it does kind of sound like I'm an insane person.
- Win, win, win, win, win!
- Exactly.
- Jobs. - At that point
they all walk away.
They're like, you're making this up.
- It's too good to be true.
It was so fun to go out to the boat today
and see kelp farming firsthand.
And will see we farming save the climate?
Well, not on its own,
but it offers so many awesome benefits.
The fact that this industry is growing so much,
it's offering local jobs,
and creating solutions for our climate,
I think it is a win-win win.
And I cannot wait to see
what the future of kelp farming holds.
We just wrapped the shoot and Susie gave us a tip
that a local restaurant carries her seaweed.
So obviously we're gonna go get lunch there right now
and try all the seaweed delicacies.
And Suzie's kelp is part of this dish.
This is kelp wrapped (laughs).
What is it again? - Scallop.
- Don't cut.
Kelp-wrapped scallops.
(diners talking)
This is so good.