Show Me the Green (I'm Talking Kelp!)

Paul Dobbins and Tollef Olson run what is believed to be America's only commercial kelp farm. According to this Los Angeles Times article, the two entrepreneurs launched their project in 2008, having been inspired by mega-aquaculture sites in Asia and a $7-billion global seaweed industry.The LA Times article says they are marketing kelp as an exotic frozen vegetable.

"It's a giant brown algae in the water, but it turns bright green when it's cooked," Olson said. "Think kelp noodles. And kelp salad. And kelp slaw."

The Falmouth, Me.-based company, Ocean Approved, sells its "sea vegetables" and Bangs Island mussels. While acknowledging the "yuck factor" involved in trying to get Americans to eat seaweed, Olson and Dobbins recognize the opportunity in this $7 billion global market.

Kelp is processed to extract food gums -- texturizing agents called agars, alginates and carrageenans. The additives make toothpaste thick, yogurt creamy, beer foamy and skin moisturizers moist, among countless other uses.

"Most Americans don't know it, but they already consume seaweed products every day," Robert Vadas, professor of marine sciences at the University of Maine, told the LA Times. "Most of it is imported."

China is the largest producer and exporter, and the U.S. once had a major kelp industry in Southern California. Today, only a handful of smaller U.S. companies harvest seaweed. Those in California chiefly provide feed for abalone farms. Those in Maine mostly supply fertilizer, livestock feed and dietary supplements.

A green source of protein and mineral supplements. Natural fertilizer. Essential component for the ever-popular sushi industry Locally, sustainably sourced. Consumer of CO2, producer of oxygen and food and shelter for many species in our overfished oceans.

I gotta talk to these guys.

Brilliant! THIS Is the Kind of Thinking Ocean-Friendly Business Will Be Built On!

"A clever melding of wild harvesting and aquaculture, using a single piece of equipment."

According to Trevor Corson's blog,  Massachusetts lobstermen are experimenting with using baskets of oysters to weight down their traps, instead of the bricks they usually use. In overworked corporate parlance, this is a great example of "synergy".

"Heaviness is what you need for a lobster trap to sink to the bottom of the sea and stay there," says Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters and  The Story of Sushi: An Unlikely Saga of Raw Fish and Rice. "When I worked as a lobsterboat crewman in Maine, numerous winter days were spent outfitting new traps with heavy bricks."

But bricks are not the only things that are heavy. The Massachusetts lobstermen are part of a pilot study in which they are replacing bricks with baskets of oysters, which will grow bigger while their weight helps keep the trap sitting on the bottom. Later, the lobstermen can harvest and sell the big oysters they’ve grown, along with the lobsters they’ve been catching.

If this works, I can see a past generation of lobstermen thumping their foreheads in "I coulda had a V8" fashion at the gorgeous simplicity of this idea. In addition to providing a new revenue stream, filter-feeding mollusks like oysters, mussels, and clams do double duty by helping to clean up the oceans.

The success of this strategy is by no means guaranteed:

"It partly depends how well the lobsters and the oysters get along in the trap," Corson says. 'Initial reports are that the lobsters are a little less inclined to walk inside."

But it demonstrates a way of thinking that has grown all too uncommon. I wish the lobstermen, the lobsters, and the mollusks the best of luck in their collaboration.

New Year, New Opportunities

I've been a bit remiss the past few months in attending to The Sea Suite. My missing persons work, combined with family and job responsibilities and more than a bit of emotional turmoil in the second half of 2009, forced some important choices -- and also provided some much-needed motivation.

Through it all, I have been having conversations with activists, scientists and entrepreneurs and have come away more convinced than ever that the problems facing our oceans (which means our planet) not only can be solved by informed, engaged consumers and businesses but can only be solved by informed, engaged consumers and businesses. Of course, there is a role for government in bringing about positive change; but the more I have seen of government in action (or, should I say "government inaction"?) the past 8 months, the more I have come to believe that, without a transformation of the values that inform our decisions about what we buy and sell, our governments' solutions to the planet's problems not only will be ineffectual -- they will prove truly harmful.

Here is where positive change will happen -- in places like this, where people who already understand and care about the issues facing our world articulate those issues and share their ideas and strategies for solving them. Delegating and deferring responsibility to government agencies equals accepting our own helplessness and putting our faith in bureaucratic structures that continue to fail us at every turn.

In 2010, I resolve to reaffirm my commitment to promoting ocean-friendly business, my little niche. I hope like-minded people out there will join me in this pursuit and share their wisdom. Opportunities abound -- let's seize them.