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.

Ocean Friendly = Investment, not Sacrifice

One of the most important messages I took away from the book and film, The End of the Line is that saving the oceans (and, by definition, the planet) is not rocket science. At the most simplistic level, it is about what we put into the oceans and what we take out of it.

Overfishing depletes a finite resource (easy enough to understand when we talk about fossil fuels - why not when we talk about fish stocks?) and disrupts the ecological balance by removing the predators that keep populations in check at all levels. By depleting fish stocks, we also eliminate the fish waste that is essential to the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In other words, there is a direct connection between overfishing and the threat of global warming. If you care about climate change, you have to care about the health of our oceans.

On the inputs side: You don't need to visualize large-diameter pipes pouring sewage into the oceans. Think chemical fertilizer and livestock waste from factory farms running off into the streams and rivers and ultimately into the oceans. Think plastics, endlessly swirling in the North Pacific Garbage Patch, breaking down to plankton-size tidbits and becoming a permanent feature of the food chain. Think of all those Styrofoam peanuts that are such a pain in the ass to get off your living room carpet and multiply them a trillion-fold. Think of ghost nets clinging to rocks and reefs on the bottom of the sea, pointlessly and indiscriminately strangling all kinds of marine animals.

Ocean-friendly business is not some nice-to-do, warm-and-fuzzy fish-hugging thing. It is responsible stewardship of our planet. Pursuing ocean-friendly business practices is not a sacrifice - it is an investment in a niche market that will become mainstream as the planet's people become better educated. Do you want to be a leader and establish a sustainable advantage, or are you going to wait around and play catch-up?

Save the Oceans, Save the World, Make a Profit

Mother, Mother Ocean,
I have heard your call.
Wanted to sail upon your waters
Since I was three feet tall.
You've seen it all...

Jimmy Buffett, "A Pirate Looks at 40"

I can't describe myself as a pirate, and looking at 40 through the rearview mirror I flatter myself that my eyes are still good enough to make it out. Nevertheless, I have always loved the ocean. My heroes growing up were people like Jacques Cousteau, Hans Hass, Ron and Valerie Taylor -- anyone with the courage to go deep beneath the surface and the generosity to bring the mysteries of the ocean back to us in their words and pictures. Someday I would be part of that world, I promised myself at 15. It took more than 30 years for me to keep that promise.

During my long dry years, I never lost my taste for the sea. I've always loved seafood - its flavor, its texture, and the fact that I could eat as much of it as I wanted and always feel I was doing something healthy. Oh, yeah, in the 1970s they used to talk about mercury in fish, but then that went away and I always figured it must've been an urban legend, like the crocodiles in New York City's sewers. The first time I had my cholesterol checked, the doctor told me my only problem was that I didn't have enough of the good kind. His prescription: Eat more fish.

Most likely the only health advice I ever followed to the letter.

Until about a year ago, when I read the book that ruined my life: Bottom Feeder (How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood) by Taras Grescoe. There went my salmon, my tuna, my beloved shrimp! Not only was what I was eating not all good for me, but my eating habits were, quite literally, destroying the health of the planet by plundering the oceans our world depends on. From Bottom Feeder I went on to other books: Hooked (Pirates, Poaching and the Perfect Fish) by G. Bruce Knecht; Whale Warriors (The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals) by Peter Heller; The End of the Line (How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat) by Charles Clover.

Books like these tapped into my already powerful interest in socially and environmentally responsible business practices. I had long been of the belief that the very profit motive that contributes so strongly to many of our world's problems contains the seeds of their solutions. Here, it seemed, was an environmental problem so fundamentally simple and so bound up in my most basic passions, I felt competent to take it on.

Which is what brings me to The Sea Suite.

I wanted to create a business that would be part of the solution to problems like overfishing, marine "dead zones" caused by nitrogen-rich fertilizers and other chemical runoff, the almost unbelievable problem of plastics. The difficulty was, I knew very little about the industries and the markets that cause and perpetuate these problems, and the more I researched the less simple the problems seemed. They were not a mere matter of what we put in and what we took out, but of how we related to the oceans, how we defined their value, and our ability to understand how the behavior of a farmer in a land-locked state like Iowa or a family scrimping to survive in sub-Saharan Africa cumulatively affected the seas upon which our collective survival depends. And, if that wasn't bad enough - I had to try to figure out, based on that knowledge, what kind of business could help address these issues while not requiring the business owner to neglect the material well-being of himself and his family.

Needless to say, I failed. If failure begets wisdom, I must be one of the smartest people on the planet by now. But I still don't know what I'm doing.

Which is why I created "The Sea Suite" and dubbed myself the "Sea E O." I want to know what other, like-minded businesses and businessfolk are doing to reduce our impact on the oceans and restore them to health and vitality. I could bloviate forever about what I do or don't know - what I am hoping is that others (people with the courage to take on this challenge and the generosity to share their learnings - my new heroes) will enter the conversation. Let's help each other work through our confusion and frustration, develop new approaches, and, in the end, leave the sea and the land better than we found them.