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Jokes on the downvoters who thought kelp couldn’t turn sunlight into biofuel. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37885853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?i

• asdff 3y ago
  That user was quite bullheaded it seems, claiming such things are impossible without even understanding how kelp are grown today. They are grown on lines trawled by ships, not the ocean floor where there are urchins perhaps and depth requirements. Its already a massive industry in East Asia. It's the US that is decades behind on this effort. 16 million tons of seaweed harvested in 2016 in these countries: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00318884.2019.1639436 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00318884.2019.1...
  • adolph 3y ago
    It is interesting how a cultural element, like food habits leading to development of aqueous agriculture, can guide later utilization of the resource in an unforeseen manner.
    • waldothedog 3y ago
      Agreed. I was surprised to read in a John Adams biography about their household use of seaweed as a foodstuff and fertilizer. It makes sense for a community largely based along the ocean coastline, but it’s not something I had heard about in the US… I wonder when the practice waned here
      • adolph 3y ago
        It was/is a dish in the Northern Europe called “Dulce” in Ireland that somehow fell out of favor, story below. I imagine the evolution was like the lobster, at one point something indentured servants wouldn’t eat, at another a delicacy of sorts. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37943843 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37943843