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Ocean Farming: Seaweed is having its moment in the sun
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bruce511 4y agoUsing seaweed as a natural fertilizer has been known about for a long long time, and seaweed "farming" has been occurring since at least the 70's [1]. The farming in this case is less "planting new crops" and more "harvesting crops that already exist in the wild, in a sustainable way." Coastal communities where I grew up would regularly collect washed-up seaweed, and then bury it in the garden. But as the article points out, while the properties of seaweed are well known in some places, to most Americans it's a pretty unknown resource. [1] https://kelpakusa.com/ https://kelpakusa.com/
- prenoob 4y agoIndeed. There's a number of related videos on yt as well.
- quijoteuniv 4y agoThis is a total new arena where we can mess the environment with little or no restrictions and get something for free that we can peddle as a green alternative. Sounds promising!
- olddustytrail 4y agoSeaweed has been used as a fertilizer in Scotland for thousands of years. It's hardly new.
- zoklet-enjoyer 4y agoLot of things are having their moment lately
- EntrePrescott 4y agoseaweed is the new GPT?
- dvh 4y agoThere are decades where nothing happens and there are weeks when decades happen.
- noisy_boy 4y agoCounter-productive loading graphic: so good that you don't want to scroll down to the actual content.
- Forestessential 4y agoFrom the article: [picture of a laundry pod] (caption)" Edible bubbles designed to replace single-use packs for liquids. Ellie Smith for The New York Times"
- neonate 4y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20230318024611/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/15/climate/seaweed-plastic-climate-change.html http://web.archive.org/web/20230318024611/https://www.nytime... https://archive.ph/CGPwq https://archive.ph/CGPwq
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ccooffee 4y agoI've eaten seaweeds before in several formats, and they're surprisingly versatile. But they're "further out there" than kale, so I appreciate that the nytimes didn't want to push that angle. And, in case you're wondering "heavy metals bio-accumulate in ocean fish to questionable levels; could heavy metals bio-accumulate in seaweed to a dangerous level?", tl;dr: probably not to dangerous levels, but not certain. "Distribution of metals and metalloids in dried seaweeds and health risk to population in southeastern China"[0]: > Concern about metals and metalloids, especially heavy metals in seaweeds has risen due to potential health risk. This study investigated the distribution of 10 metals and metalloids in 295 dried seaweeds (brown and red) and estimated the possible health risk via hazard index (HI). > ... > The estimate of health risk showed that there was low health risk for potential toxic elements by intake of these seaweeds. (I've gotta say, that article doesn't seem entirely convincing. This is probably the first article of this format I've read before, so I might be totally off-base, but the error bars in their data[1] are huge. Given that the article literally has "health risk to population in southeastern China" in the title, I'm skeptical whether the article is intentional fluff/propaganda science.) [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21732-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21732-z (full text) [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21732-z/tables/2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-21732-z/tables/2 (data)
- azinman2 4y agoConsumer labs has done studies and shown excessive heavy metals from around the world. In fact I’ve never seen a seaweed in CA that doesn’t contain a prop 65 logo on it.
- sokoloff 4y agoMy push lawnmower has a Prop 65 warning label on it.
- azinman2 4y agoIt likely contains lead or some other prop 65 chemical. I wish the warnings were a bit better and more contextual, but it maybe that your lawnmower turns bits of its heavy metals into dust you could breathe in, which is dangerous. The ubiquity of prop 65 doesn’t mean the issue is with prop 65 warnings - the problem is the ubiquitous use of heavy metals and other nasty chemicals in manufacturing. Worse, most places don’t have such a warning so people have no idea. I was in H-Mart last weekend and the amount of food with prop 65 was quite disturbing. A lot of it grown in Asia in areas with heavy lead contamination. They have no such warnings there.
- Maursault 4y ago> But can seaweed thrive in a warming world? Apparently so.[1] [1] https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/seaweed-sargassum-florida-caribbean-scn/index.html https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/seaweed-sargassum-florida...
- doublesocket 4y agoAbsolutely mounds of it rotting away on the beaches in Barbados.
- pacificsnail 4y agoI think it's worth noting that you would never forage/collect seaweed that's been washed up on the shore, since 1. you don't know how far along it is in terms of decomposing 2. The water quality of where it grew So I am not sure this is a valid argument unless you were trying to imply that clearly seaweed is still growing. But one point in time says nothing about a possible trend
- Maursault 4y agoWhile the oceans are warming, well, you're right and wrong. The amount of seaweed has been increasing, but it has nothing to do with warming oceans.[1] [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-come-closer-solving-caribbean-seaweed-mystery-2021-09-29/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/scientists-come-close...
- sacnoradhq 4y agoIf you wanted to mitigate excessive atmospheric carbon, use bio carbon capture and sequestration. And where's the most logical place to do that? The ocean, as either phytoplankton or kelp or both.
- moab9 4y agoFish. And plankton. Sea greens. And protein from the sea.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoThe giant kelp forests of California 90% died in the past decade. They were sequestering the equivalent of $1.5B worth of carbon per year. The geography is such that the kelp would grow and get sucked down into the deep sea each year. If it were possible to regenerate this forest, who should get the money? Is there a way that the ecosystem itself could have a trust to ensure it’s long term ecological viability? https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/ca-sunflower-sea-star-kelp-forests/ https://www.nature.org/en-us/newsroom/ca-sunflower-sea-star-...
- stuaxo 4y agoThe kelp forest itself sells carbon credits and uses that money for other mitigations ? (I'm fully aware carbon credits are nonsense).
- dr_dshiv 4y agoI don’t think governments recognizes ecological entities. There would have to be some legal trust or something that sought the money, which could be in trust for ecological wellbeing.
- moab9 4y agoPlankton. Sea greens. And protein from the sea.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoImagine the possibilities for domesticated marine plants.. There don’t seem to be any truly domesticated species, though it’s arguable. Here are two great sources on the topic: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0065229619301168 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00652... https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.13278#:~:text=.%2C%202011).-,A%20recent%20seaweed%20domestication%20history,breeding%20programmes%20since%20the%201950s https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.13278#:~...
- Depurator 4y agoThere has been a lot happening in Norway in the last five years when it comes to farming kelp. The industry is still in its infancy, but I know one company that have invested toward expanding production toward 100,000 mtn. It's a lot of exciting new problems to handle though. How do you conserve biomass, preventing it from rotting without using excessive energy. Kelp is high in iodine, so for human consumption how do you get it out? Labor is very expensive, so how do automate seed production and harvesting? And how do you find a market and ship the product there?
- thomasjb 4y agoI've been interested in the cattle feed angle for a while now, as it does 2 things: produces sustainable cattle feed which reduces reliance on continued productivity of land (can keep same cows/acre without artificial nitrogen inputs), and the reduced Methane output reduces the emissions of each animal such that continued production doesn't fall afoul of regulators. Also, here in Ireland there is such a thing as Folio rights [1], inherited rights to collect seaweed from the foreshore, much like turbary rights, the right to cut turf from a certain plot of common land. Unless you are already in possession of these, getting licensed for seaweed harvesting is likely to be a headache. [1]: https://www.seaweed.ie/irish_seaweed_contacts/ https://www.seaweed.ie/irish_seaweed_contacts/
- kindacuriousnow 4y agoKinda curious, are the plastics removed from the seaweed before consumption or there is not a process to get rid of the small particles?
- thomasjb 4y agoI don't know, but that is something worth considering with all the seaweed uses
- peter_d_sherman 4y ago>"Pierre Paslier [...] wanted to create packaging that would come from nature and disappear into nature, quickly. With a friend from graduate school, Rodrigo García González, he created a company called NotPla, short for “not plastic.” From an East London warehouse, they designed an edible sachet of water, made of seaweed and other plant extracts: To drink the water you simply pop the sachet in your mouth. They designed another one that can hold ketchup and a third for cosmetics." There would seem to be a large market for non-plastic easily biodegradable waterproof containers (for whatever product) -- made from seaweed... Related: https://www.notpla.com/ https://www.notpla.com/
- carapace 4y agoSee also Greenwave https://www.greenwave.org/ https://www.greenwave.org/ > GreenWave’s 10-year goal is to provide training, tools, and support to a baseline of 10,000 farmers to catalyze the planting of regenerative ocean crops and yield meaningful economic and climate impacts. It's kind of gnarly: there's nothing visible from the surface except for some buoys. There are chains running from the buoys to the seafloor, and food (oysters or mussels or whatever) grows all along the chain, seaweed too. The thing is: no inputs. No fertilizer, no irrigation, nothing. You set it up, monitor it, then harvest. This is one of those things that makes so much sense that it's almost unbelievable.