New Blog: Aquaculture Means Business

My research into ocean-friendly business practices has developed into a bit of an obsession with aquaculture. I believe this field is bursting with opportunities to make money while helping restore the world's oceans to their former healthy state. I hope you'll stop by my new blog - Aquaculture Means Business - and let me know what you think.

Sea Breeze Farm - Ocean-Friendly Farming

Check these guys out.

Located on Vashon Island, Washington, Sea Breeze farm describes itself as "a diverse, multi-species, grass-based animal farm". What makes them ocean friendly?

"We practice an intensive pasture rotation in lieu of commercial fertilizers. Our freely-ranging poultry flocks effectively forage, fertilize and cleanse the pastures behind our dairy herd. The resulting meat, dairy and eggs are remarkably flavorful, gorgeously colored and fantastically healthful. It goes without saying that no herbicides, pesticides, antibiotics or artificial inputs exist on our farm."

No commercial fertilizers, no herbicides, pesticides, or antibiotics going into the groundwater, the rivers, the ocean. Sea Breeze Farm represents the opposite of everything that is wrong with industrial agriculture. Not just a farm, but also a restaurant, a butcher shop, and a winery.

These folks appear to be thriving while doing no harm to the earth or its oceans. Let's hope they are the future of farming.

How I Fell In Love With a Fish: Chef Dan Barber on TED.com

A fish farm that doesn't feed its fish...that measures success by the health of its predators...and that serves as a water purification system? Watch this funny, enlightening TED talk by chef Dan Barber to learn why aquaculture must be a part of the solution to the problem of global overfishing and how it is possible, but only by leaving behind the current agricultural business model.

Selling Sustainably Sourced Seafood Online

I'm happy to see that someone has made a credible foray into selling sustainably sourced seafood online. I Love Blue Sea, a San Francisco-based start-up, buys and sells seafood that its owner, Martin Reed, has verified as sustainable. According to this article in the New York Times blog, Reed uses all third-party standards, like those of Greenpeace (nothing from the “red list”) and the Monterey Bay Aquarium (no “avoid” fish):

"If he knows that “pirating” (as illegal fishing is called) is big with a certain species, he won’t sell it at all. (Thus, no yellowfin.) And he is insisting that suppliers sell him only fish that can be traced — individually — through bills of lading and bar codes."

Having seriously researched starting a similar business, I know Reed has bitten off a major task. I wish him the best. Marrying sustainability to the profit motive (and remaining faithful to both) is a key component of saving the seas and the planet.

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.