What he’s looking for: kelp blades streaked with sorus tissue, a dark band teeming with millions of spores. A wiry man in his 60s, Lindell has developed relationships with homeowners and researchers across hundreds of miles of New England’s coast so he can access the kelp integral to his work—and, potentially, to the future of seaweed farming in the United States.

After several dives, Lindell has filled his mesh collection bag with cuttings and swims to shore. He stores the prized tissue in a cooler to keep it damp and cool for the five-hour drive, and then sets off for his laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Here, over the next 45 days, the spores will be carefully cultivated into seed for farmers and scientists to outplant in the ocean.

Every year, every ounce of any kelp variety farmed commercially in the U.S.—now approaching millions of tons—begins with this process. Many growers see it as a bottleneck: Propagation from wild-harvested seaweed is costly, lengthy, and ties rural coastal communities to laboratories that are often hours, if not days, away. It also shortens the seaweed growing season, as sorus tissue can only be harvested for a few months of the year. And, most frustrating to farmers, relying on wild stocks for farmed kelp means that growers have very little control over the final product. What could look underwater like a yummy blade may turn out to be a varietal better suited to feeding snails than pleasing the human palate.

Lindell’s eponymous lab at Woods Hole may look humble, with low ceilings and cement floors, but it’s meticulously organized, with hundreds of seaweed varietals catalogued and floating in refrigerated containers. As ferry horns punctuate the rushing sound of seawater piped into scores of tanks, a team of scientists toils away at an ambitious project: revolutionizing kelp propagation. They have just mapped a single sugar kelp genome for the first time, and the results are about to be publicized through the Joint Genome Institute in Berkeley, California. Next, they plan to map a genome for the entire species. The project is supported by a $5.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy MARINER program, part of more than $66 million that the agency has invested in American seaweed production since 2018.

If successful, their work will put Americans at the front of seaweed science globally, making it possible for laboratories like theirs to select wild kelp with ideal traits and create new kelp “seeds” in two weeks. This breakthrough in selective breeding would be the biggest advance in mariculture in the past hundred years, akin to Punnett’s Square, which revolutionized plant breeding in the early 1900s.

A Keystone Species in Decline

Different varieties of kelp have thrived in the world’s oceans for more than 100 million years, along the equator and up toward the poles. In 2023, scientists estimated that kelp forests suck up about a third of the world’s atmospheric carbon; kelp also supports fisheries and removes nitrogen pollution. Together, these benefits are valued at as much as $500 billion annually.

Now, this complex, ancient species is in jeopardy. Globally, kelp forests are receding at a rate of 1.8 percent a year, due in part to climate change and human impact. In 15 years, marine scientists say there may not be enough wild stock for farmers to rely on, especially in states like Maine, where kelp forests are rapidly declining. On the West Coast, kelp loss has been even more extreme, with 96 percent of forests from San Francisco to northern Oregon dying off over the past decade, according to The Nature Conservancy. Beginning in 2013, a series of cascading events wreaked havoc: First, a massive heat wave plunged the kelp into stressed conditions at the same time that purple sea urchins—which feed on kelp—lost their biggest predator, the sunflower sea star. Without sea stars to keep them in check, the urchins multiplied and, in a behavioral shift, left their customary nooks and crannies and began devouring the kelp forests.

Scientists believe Lindell’s work could help save the future of seaweed. By mapping sugar kelp, Lindell is creating a Rosetta Stone of kelp traits and corresponding DNA that can then be used by researchers globally to better understand, and protect, their wild kelp populations.

For example, for a kelp forest stressed by increasingly warmer waters, conservationists could identify and plant strains of kelp that are more heat tolerant. Tristin Anoush McHugh, kelp project director at The Nature Conservancy, monitors California’s remaining forests regularly, and believes that Lindell’s advances in seaweed reproductive technology could bolster restoration efforts. Scientists could isolate kelp that survive mass die-off events, propagate them in the lab, and then plant them in the open ocean, creating kelp refuges. “We can’t go and remediate 350 kilometers of coastline, but we can certainly create oases along the way,” she says.

A Market Worth Millions

For decades, China has led the industry, valued at $643.4 million in 2022, a slice of the larger $5.6 billion global seaweed market. According to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, China produces 89 percent of the world’s farmed kelp; the U.S. produces less than .01 percent—what one hatchery specialist in Maine calls a “rounding error.”

Many kelp companies in the U.S. cite America’s small appetite for seaweed as an impediment, especially compared to Asia, where seaweed is consumed regularly and in many forms. But minimal demand is only one reason for the low market share. The high cost of farming is another.

American farmers can expect to pay about $1 a foot for string inoculated with kelp seed. The yield is an average of 4 pounds of mature kelp per foot, which nets about 50 cents a pound, according to Lindell. “I don’t know any other agricultural or aquaculture industry where the cost of seed can be as much as 50 percent of the farmer’s revenue,” he says with a scoff.

Compared to other seaweed-farming countries, America is an outlier. Korean seed string is sold for 5 cents a foot and yields 30 pounds per foot, according to Jang K. Kim, a professor in the department of marine science at Incheon National University in South Korea. In China, the seed string cost-to-yield ratio is similar, because the government subsidizes that industry, according to scientists there.

Selectively Bred Spores, on Demand

When the sorus tissue is clean, Lindell’s scientists dry it overnight and then immerse it again in sterile seawater, prompting the tissue to release its spores. These develop into gametophytes—tiny, feathery clumps, male and female—that are selected for desired traits and then bred to create zygotes (fertilized eggs) that develop into kelp seed (or, technically, juvenile sporophytes). Using gametophytes for seed instead of wild-harvested sorus tissue would greatly decrease the costs, since using gametophytes requires no sanitizing and they can be bred for multiple seasons.

“[Gametophytes] allow us to do what animal breeders and plants have been doing for millennia now—make a single-pair cross that we can then ascertain some value to,” explains Lindell. “We can measure—how long is that blade? How sweet is it? Does it resist high temperature?”

Every harvest season for the past five years, his lab has measured these crosses for 30 to 50 traits, creating a tremendous amount of information for breeding commercially attractive future generations—and for potentially restoring wild kelp one day. The lab publishes all of its breeding information on Sugar Kelp Base, an open-source website for global seaweed researchers.

In Asia, selective breeding is common in mariculture, and is why yields can be four to six times larger than on American farms. But in recent years, Asia’s yields have flatlined, possibly due to a lack of genetic diversity after 50 generations of breeding the same genetic lines of kelp.

Instead, Lindell’s genomic selection approach allows his team to conserve genetic diversity while still selecting for specific traits. They’ve also worked closely with Cornell University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, borrowing crossbreeding techniques from terrestrial agriculture. “In the last five years, we’ve been able to make achievements that took the Asian countries 30 or 40 years to accomplish,” says Lindell.

What is the No. 1 thing they’re breeding for? “Yield. And No. 2 is yield. And No. 3 is probably yield,” says Lindell, laughing. “Every farmer’s business plan and projections are based on yield. Every 10 percent improvement in yield produces probably a 5 percent improvement in their bottom line.”

Increasing yield is part of the focus of the MARINER grant. Currently, the average U.S. farm yield is about 4 pounds per foot. So far, Lindell’s team has been able to triple that yield on average, with hopes of isolating a strain that can produce 25 pounds per foot, approaching the yields of China and South Korea. Lindell is also looking at kelp traits like a strong umami flavor, or thicker blades that make them easier to use as wraps for food, or an ability to resist predation by other marine organisms.

Creating gametophytes, says Lindell, allows seaweed farmers to become “the orchestrator of your own symphony when it comes to the seaweed planting season. You could start it as early or as late as you choose.” Growers would be able to time their own planting, instead of waiting for wild kelp to mature and produce sorus tissue—and they would have a longer growing season and therefore a larger yield.

Gametophytes also mean less nursery time. Currently, beginning with wild-harvested sorus tissue requires around 50 days to produce kelp “strings”—strings of kelp seeds grown out in a nursery until ready to deploy on a farm. With gametophytes, that time is cut to around 30 days. Additionally, farmers can choose varietals based on their traits, similar to the way apple growers select for flavor, color, juiciness, or other qualities.

The Near Future of Seaweed Farming

Except for the warming waters. The Gulf of Maine is warming 99 percent faster than the rest of the ocean, with devastating repercussions for all marine life, from kelp to finfish to lobster. “It’s harder and harder to find reproductive kelp in September to have ready by, say, Halloween,” says Thew Suskiewicz, a seaweed scientist at Maine’s Atlantic Sea Farms, the largest seaweed aquaculture operation in the country. The company provides seed to partner farmers to outplant. For the 2023-2024 season, Atlantic Sea Farms pulled in a record-breaking 1.3 million pounds of kelp for its line of foods.

Suskiewicz operates the farm’s hatchery after a career of studying algae, including at the seaweed food company Monterey Bay Seaweeds. “I’ve been looking at how kelp assemblages have changed in the Gulf of Maine in the last 30 years—and we’ve seen profound changes. Most of the species here have some life stage that is very dependent on the kelp,” he says, noting lobster as an important example. Lobstering is a nearly $400 million annual industry in Maine alone, according to NOAA. Wild kelp’s decline, he predicts, “is going to have a lot of cascading effects.”

Many of Maine’s lobstermen and commercial fishers are already experiencing huge shifts in the marine populations they harvest. That has led some to get into the farmed seaweed industry to diversify their incomes and businesses in the face of warming waters. Establishing gametophyte cultures would make kelp seed string cheaper, offer more predictability, and make kelp farming less dependent on wild kelp beds. Suskiewicz is working closely with Lindell’s lab, and next season will begin raising gametophyte-spawned kelp in Maine’s waters.

“Next year will be the first year we put them out, and we’ll just measure performance—including, how much did they grow? How do they taste? What is their blade length?” says Suskiewicz.

Suskiewicz believes that the American seaweed industry is at an inflection point, and that selective breeding is arriving at the perfect time. Five years ago, Atlantic Sea Farms seaweed salads were available only in specialty food stores. Now, they’re found across the country, thanks in part to the company’s intensive marketing efforts to introduce the average American to kelp.

Now that seaweed is a bit more familiar, Suskiewicz believes that if the cost of kelp seed drops through widespread adoption of gametophytes, the industry will be able to scale up and finally compete with Asia. “People can purchase their kelp from the U.S., from known monitored waters, by farmers in their community, rather than stuff that primarily comes over from China through [South] Korea—dried, dyed, and then shipped over,” he says.

As for Lindell, he sees enormous potential not just for sugar kelp, the species his lab is mapping. His team’s work could help regenerate other kelp species, too, including giant kelp in California and bull kelp in Alaska. And the kelp-farming industry could be the driver. More funding goes into farming kelp than preserving it in the wild, but the science applies equally: “All the learnings of the industry around resilience, growth, health, and disease resistance is going to carry over to conservation.”

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

The post Rescuing Kelp Through Science appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2024/06/27/can-seaweed-save-american-shellfish/ Thu, 27 Jun 2024 09:01:57 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56676 This article was produced as a radio story by our media partner Public News Service, reaching millions of listeners. Now, she says, “it takes us a while to even get a couple of dozen clams. That’s not right.” She points out that most of the shellfish she harvests these days have been seeded manually by […]

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This article was produced as a radio story by our media partner Public News Service, reaching millions of listeners.

Now, she says, “it takes us a while to even get a couple of dozen clams. That’s not right.” She points out that most of the shellfish she harvests these days have been seeded manually by the town of Southampton and local universities, “almost like a science project,” she says. “The natural way has been contaminated and polluted by mankind.”

What’s also not right: the quality of the quahogs. “The shells are so brittle,” she says. The increasingly acidic water in the bay makes it hard for the clams to build strong shells. She points to her necklace of wampum—mollusk-shell beads that are integral to Eastern Woodland Native American culture. Hers is a single large indigo-and-white pendant, half an inch thick, the way shells used to be.

Genia, a member of the Shinnecock Nation, has lived along these waters on the South Fork of Long Island, New York, for most of her life. Shellfish are a traditional food source for the Shinnecock; they were also once the backbone of Long Island’s robust commercial fishing industry. Her tribe witnessed the crash of the clam and scallop fishery in the 1990s and then another crash in the 2000s, which further depleted shellfish stocks and threatened the nascent farmed oyster industry. Both were caused by massive blooms of harmful algae.

In 2020, after watching the decline of Shinnecock Bay—a body of water that has fed her tribe for some 13,000 years—Genia worked with Tela Troge, a tribal lawyer, to form the Shinnecock Kelp Farmers, a group of five Indigenous women who grow kelp to fight climate change. The group hopes to heal their afflicted bay and inspire a new generation to adopt more regenerative practices on the water. “We want our children to be able to go out there and clam and collect oysters and scallops and mussels like we used to,” says Genia. Plus, Shinnecock women are water protectors, she says, and being out on the bay is “in our DNA.”

The women’s move toward seaweed as a solution is emblematic of a shift across the country as the world’s oceans change faster than scientists ever expected. Since the 1990s, ocean acidification—caused by more carbon in the atmosphere dissolving into the sea, among other factors—has increased at alarming rates; in the U.S., the West Coast is especially impacted. Increased acidification means crustaceans in their critical larval stage cannot pull enough calcium carbonate from the water to create shells.

By 2015, acidification had become so significant globally that the United Nations addressed the crisis as part of its Sustainable Development Goal 14: Life Below Water. Their guidelines have spurred government investment, university research, and private interest to tackle acidification ever since.

Nitrogen-rich wastewater, another byproduct of rapid human development, feeds huge blooms of algae (known as “red tides” or “brown tides,” depending on the species) that starve other marine life of oxygen. Some algal blooms produce toxins that make shellfish unsafe to eat. The blooms are a particular problem in shallow waterways like Shinnecock Bay.

These twin phenomena of acidification and algal blooms are deadly for all crustaceans, including shellfish. And they can spell disaster for coastal communities, as 3 billion people globally rely on “blue foods” from the ocean, including shellfish, as a primary source of protein.

But recent scientific studies show that as the ocean becomes unfriendly for shellfish, seaweed could offer a solution—in particular, the large brown algae called kelp. Wild kelp forests form the most extensive marine-vegetated ecosystems in the world. They grow on every continent except Antarctica and provide habitat and food for the ocean’s smallest creatures to its largest.

Rich in minerals, kelp grows quickly and doesn’t require fertilizer. It isn’t seriously affected by acidification or algal blooms, and in some cases, it can even mitigate their impact on shellfish, because kelp soaks up excess nutrients like nitrogen and increases oxygenation in the waters around it. What’s more, the fibrous plant, which can grow two feet a day, also pulls anywhere from five to 20 times more carbon from the atmosphere than any terrestrial crop, something that leading marine scientists are working to quantify right now.

Because of these beneficial properties, kelp is being hailed as a miracle, a panacea for the climate crisis. Scientists, coastal governments, and private industry alike think it could be the cornerstone of a new, blue economy that allows coastal communities in the United States to transition from extractive industries into more sustainable ones.

Bolstered by roughly $380 million in investments since 2018, kelp farmers have proliferated from around zero in 2012 to 108 active farms in 2023, according to Connecticut Sea Grant, part of a national network of university-based programs dedicated to encourage stewardship of marine resources. Seaweed farming, a longstanding tradition in Asia for more than a hundred years, is now gaining a place on U.S. shores.

The Scientists Who Kickstarted American Kelp Farming

Charles Yarish, now a visiting scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, is considered the father of American seaweed farming. Gregarious and welcoming, Yarish can talk kelp nonstop. In 1976, as a new assistant professor at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and also its Department of Marine Sciences, Yarish became increasingly fascinated by kelp’s ability to pull nutrients from the water column. He suspected that farming kelp and other seaweeds could help alleviate water quality issues.

Toiling away at his Connecticut laboratory and conducting experiments in the Long Island Sound, Yarish spent the next few decades proving this hypothesis, focusing mostly on how kelp can pull nitrogen from waterways. “The farming of seaweeds such as kelp not only has business applications but is terribly important for ecosystem services, removing [excess] nutrients from ocean waters and lowering pH,” he explained.

Those early studies have impacted the growth of mariculture studies globally. At UConn, Yarish established an internationally known Seaweed Marine Biotechnology Laboratory, and was tapped to advise the Department of Energy’s current MARINER Program, which has invested $66 million in seaweed aquaculture since 2018.

In 2016, scientists in Maine, alarmed by their state’s warming waters and increasing acidification, and inspired in part by Yarish’s early work, began studying whether kelp could provide a sanctuary for shellfish. Using the country’s first-ever commercial kelp farm in Casco Bay and funded by a constellation of government, nonprofit, and academic groups, the effort was led by Nichole Price and her team at the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences.

After three years, they determined that co-growing blue mussels with sugar kelp—Saccharina latissima, the go-to variety of farmed seaweed for colder North American waters—led to increased oxygenation in the water. The scientists also documented kelp’s ability to locally raise seawater pH, which allowed the mussels to build thicker shells despite the acidic waters.

Price dubbed this the “halo effect” of kelp. She plans to continue monitoring outcomes to see how farms will fare in the future, since Maine’s waters are predicted to be too acidic for shellfish to calcify for most of the year by 2030.

Price said evidence is growing to support the idea that co-growing shellfish and seaweeds can offset the impact of climate change. The scientific field is tackling some big questions that could benefit the kelp farming industry. Including, she said, “Is it a consistent halo effect, or is it only in these protected bays? Or does it depend on the size of the kelp farm? If it’s a really big kelp farm, can it still create a halo even in exposed areas?”

While scientists race to understand the best growing methods for seaweeds with shellfish, the co-growing concept has been widely marketed by Bren Smith of GreenWave, who was first introduced to kelp by Yarish in 2013, after Smith’s oyster farms on Long Island Sound were decimated by hurricanes. Smith’s brand of co-growing focuses on a polyculture ocean farming model that combines shellfish with seaweed, an idea that he propagated in a book, Eat Like a Fish, and in GreenWave’s instruction manuals for “regenerative ocean farming,” which the group said thousands have used.

Although scientists on both coasts are still studying the effects of co-growing kelp with shellfish species like oysters—which fetch higher market value but generally grow in different environments than kelp—Smith promoted the idea of growing shellfish and oysters together, and is widely known in the industry for popularizing this approach.

Growing shellfish alongside seaweeds or finfish is a practice long used in Asia, especially China. However, it has been slower to catch on in the U.S., in part because of the lack of trials here. Inspired by the Asian approach and by Price’s work in Maine, in 2018 marine scientist Chris Gobler began focusing on kelp’s potential to heal his local waterways in New York, where algal blooms posed a bigger threat than acidification.

Eastern Long Island in particular was burdened with aging, failing septic systems that leached nitrogen into groundwater and ponds, lakes, rivers, streams, and bays. That excess nutrient runoff, combined with warmer waters, essentially fertilized the growth of harmful algal blooms yet again that year. Large swaths of open water were closed to shellfish harvesters by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Although Price was studying the co-raising of kelp with mussels to offset acidification, there was no scientific evidence yet to show how kelp could help shellfish during algal blooms. Gobler, working out of Long Island’s Stony Brook University laboratory, thought that kelp might benefit oysters. Aided by Michael Doall, a former commercial oyster grower–turned scientist who’d devised a way of growing kelp in shallow waters, Gobler launched a three-year study in 2019, hoping to find a solution for Long Island’s troubled waters that could be applied on both coasts.

By 2022, he had his answer: “We’ve learned the seaweeds can inhibit harmful algal bloom and even represent a direct food source for the bivalves as they slough off microbial cells.”

What’s more, Gobler’s lab had proved that raising kelp with oysters led to faster-growing, healthier shellfish. Gobler dubbed the phenomena the “halo effect”—a nod to Price’s studies—noting that the kelp around oyster cages provided a “halo” of increased oxygenation to the oysters as the kelp grew. At the same time, the kelp removed excess nitrogen from the water column. Backed by Gobler’s studies and studies from Price at Bigelow Labs in Maine, the idea of raising shellfish with kelp is now spreading across the country, including to the West Coast, where acidification is even more pronounced.

A Kelp-Farming Breakthrough

Michael Doall, a scientist at Gobler’s laboratory, solved the problem. A former oyster grower, he saw the business potential for a crop that not only had ecosystem benefits but could be harvested in winter, opposite the main harvesting time of summer for oysters—providing two income streams from the same patch of water.

To pave the way for a kelp-meets-oysters business model that would work on Long Island, Doall decided to try growing kelp in shallower waters. In December 2018, accompanied by oyster farmer Paul McCormack, Doall began an experiment on Long Island’s Great South Bay. The two men sank metal screw anchors into the sandy sea floor and strung long nylon lines, inoculated with kelp spores, between them. And then they waited.

Over the next few months, the kelp not only grew, but outperformed their predictions. Doall and McCormack were ecstatic. “It worked really freaking great,” recalled Doall. Gobler, using the findings, then put sugar kelp to work in his breakthrough kelp-and-oyster co-raising study.

Using Doall’s growing techniques and the science from Yarish and Gobler’s laboratories, at least 10 sites across New York are now using sugar kelp to pull excess nutrients out of the waterways. They are also collaborating on a recently proposed $700 million project at Governor’s Island that relies in part on seaweed farming to help prepare New York City for climate change.

Although seaweed grown as a bioremediation strategy cannot be used for human consumption—in some cases, as with RETI Center’s project in the Gowanus Canal, the kelp harvested showed high traces of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a known carcinogen—scientists are experimenting with other potential uses for it, such as a kelp-based concrete.

Kelp Farming for a Tribe’s Future

“We are a frontline community and we have nowhere else to go,” said Danielle Hopson Begun, communications director and hatchery manager for Shinnecock Kelp Farmers. Hopson Begun is equally comfortable out on the bay or giving public talks, where she spreads the climate-saving mission of the group.

“When you’re hearing on the news about sea rise and acidification and you’re able to move yourself from Southampton Village to higher ground—good for you. It is not good for us,” Hopson Begun said. “For us, it [is] a moral imperative to preserve our way of life.”

To start their nonprofit, Shinnecock Kelp Farmers worked with GreenWave and Doall, who provided sorus tissue, the reproductive area of the kelp blade, for propagation. They found a home for their hatchery in a wooden cabin at the nearby St. Joseph’s Villa, a summer retreat for nuns. The wooded estate overlooks Shinnecock Bay, which now holds their kelp lines. For the 2023-2024 season, the farmers planted 30 lines at 100 feet each, a crisscross of golden-brown algae ribbons dancing beneath the water. As a sovereign nation, the Shinnecock did not need New York State’s permission to begin farming, and in 2020, they became the first seaweed growers in the state.

The group dries and processes their kelp by hand, turning the slippery curls of seaweed into hundreds of pounds of nitrogen-rich soil amendment that they use for gardening, sharing it with the local community at farmers’ markets. They lay the kelp out in donated screens, or along the pool fence at St. Joseph’s Villa, first washing the salt off the seaweed and then waiting for the sun to bake the kelp down.

Eventually, the heat crumbles the kelp into a dry, brown powder that plants love. Through this process, the nitrogen sequestered from the water column returns to the soil, a closed-loop nitrogen cycle now in vogue with organic farmers—although Shinnecock have been growing crops using seaweed as fertilizer for thousands of years, said Hopson Begun. Seeing the decline of seaweed in the bay in recent years, and knowing its benefits to shellfish, prompted them to start farming seaweed themselves.

While satisfying, the work is demanding, sometimes requiring the women to get up and work in frigid waters at dawn. For a recent November planting, they waded into 38-degree water during the first snow of the season, unspooling their kelp string as a hushed snow fell. But Hopson Begun wouldn’t trade it for anything. She said, “I love seeing something so small grow into something really incredibly powerful that potentially can make a big difference.”

Is Kelp the Answer for West Coast Shellfish?

In 2007, this reached a crisis: Oyster businesses were devastated up and down the West Coast because baby bivalves simply could not grow.

“When it came time for our [oyster seed] orders to come in, the hatchery said, ‘We had a complete crash. If anything survived, we are going to be supplying our own farms, not you,’” recalled Terry Sawyer, co-founder of Hog Island Oyster Co., a Northern California favorite for its shellfish-focused restaurants. “We were sitting there, flapping in the wind.”

Trained in marine biology, Sawyer is an entrepreneur and lifelong ocean lover. When he and his co-founder, John Finger, realized how catastrophic the situation was, it spurred them to embrace a whole new outlook on marine conservation. Hog Island now regularly hosts marine scientists to study the effects of warming waters on nearby marine life. The company also collaborates with the Central & Northern California Ocean Observing System, providing real-time data from their farm on ocean acidification as part of a global effort to understand why the ocean is changing so fast.

Acidification led Hog Island, based on Tomales Bay, just north of San Francisco, to establish their own hatchery further north in Humboldt Bay, so they could ensure their whole line of production, from larvae to finished oyster. The process took about three years, and cost $125,000 in permitting fees alone, paid to the California Coastal Commission. Sawyer said the decision was the only way they’ve survived a situation that is cyclical for West Coast waters. Hog Island buffers the water at their hatchery by adding soda ash to make intake seawater less acidic, allowing the larvae to grow. The technique is now common practice; West Coast farmed bivalves cannot grow in the open ocean anymore.

“I love to say, ‘If we have a problem, we have to figure out how to eat it,’” said Sawyer, pointing out that seaweeds are a “winner” crop if ocean acidification continues to rise. “We are going to need to look at organisms that aren’t as impacted by pH change.” For now, though, Sawyer has to wait to unfurl kelp lines in Humboldt Bay, as the California Coastal Commission has no regulatory process for inshore commercial seaweed operations.

Instead, Hog Island has been collaborating with GreenWave and The Nature Conservancy on a non-commercial research pilot study since 2021, growing bull kelp at the Hog Island hatchery in Humboldt Bay. The waters are notably less acidic near the kelp lines—a promising result as the Hog Island team waits for California’s permitting structure to change for a commercial kelp farm.

The Promise of Seagrass

However, wild West Coast seagrass meadows and kelp forests are declining, and that makes Hill very worried. Subjected to stress from marine heat, acidification, pollution, predation by sea urchins, and human encroachment, these water-based ecosystems may lose their power to help fight ocean warming. “The more we protect habitats like seagrass meadows and salt marshes, the better chance we have at climate mitigation,” said Hill. She sees promise in seaweed farming for the same reasons.

Helpful marine organisms—like sugar kelp, bull kelp, and seagrass—could help reduce some of the worst climate impacts that scientists are documenting on the U.S. coasts. Raised in quantity, they could bring at least some stretches of shoreline back into balance, allowing marine life to thrive again in our waters.

The Shinnecock Kelp Farmers are starting to see it happen, bit by bit. “The most darling was a little tiny scallop that took up space on one of our lines. They’re endangered,” said Danielle Hopson Begun. “To see that little guy holding to and finding a place in our farm was very satisfying.”

This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

The post Can Seaweed Save American Shellfish? appeared first on Civil Eats.

]]> https://civileats.com/2024/06/27/overview-promise-and-possible-pitfalls-of-american-kelp-farming/ Thu, 27 Jun 2024 09:00:50 +0000 https://civileats.com/?p=56672 Today, consumers can find burgers, chips, and even a cannabis gummy made from domestic farmed seaweed, and a recent Nielsen report estimated the value of the edible seaweed industry  to be $1.87 billion in the U.S. One particular type of seaweed, kelp, has come to the fore: More than 2 million pounds were pulled from […]

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Today, consumers can find burgers, chips, and even a cannabis gummy made from domestic farmed seaweed, and a recent Nielsen report estimated the value of the edible seaweed industry  to be $1.87 billion in the U.S. One particular type of seaweed, kelp, has come to the fore: More than 2 million pounds were pulled from coastal U.S. waters during the 2022-2023 season, and experts predict that the 2023–2024 season will be even larger.

What’s driving this growth? The answer goes beyond seaweed’s industrial applications or the fact that Americans are developing a taste for kelp as a nutritious, low-calorie food. Scientists say this seaweed also offers a multitude of ecosystem benefits. Kelp can pull excess carbon out of the atmosphere—with some estimating that it sequesters at least 10 times more carbon than a terrestrial crop. It reduces ocean acidification, too, and removes the excess nitrogen that feeds massive algal blooms, a threat to other marine life.

This scientific proof of kelp as a regenerative crop that could save our seas has helped the industry attract rapid investment—according to our estimates, roughly $380 million since 2017, from sources including the federal government, corporations, venture capital funds, coastal state spending, and nonprofits. Kelp could also help climate efforts on land, in industries ranging from textiles to plastics to beef.

As Silicon Valley and others turn their sights to this remarkable seaweed, the time is ripe to ask critical questions about the future of an industry that could be rapidly expanding. Will smallholder farmers, whose work has been pivotal in setting up domestic seaweed production, reap the benefits of the industry’s growth? Or will multinationals move in, growing seaweed at scale—potentially boosting ecosystem benefits, but perhaps also introducing the environmental repercussions of monocropping? And will federal money flow to small farms as well as large?

Regulations are at issue as well. Small coastal growers now navigate a tangle of legislation, with no one entity claiming oversight. The country’s first seaweed bills now sit in Congress, with the potential to unleash a new round of investment in an industry that is still not tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Could large investors leapfrog to offshore farms, where the regulatory environment may be more permissible?

In this series, we’ll ask those questions and more. For context, we’ll trace the rise of seaweed farming in the U.S. and profile small farmers who are using kelp to both mitigate climate change and adapt to its impact. We’ll explore how scientists are creating more efficient ways of growing kelp while also protecting the future of wild kelp forests.

Tightening our focus, we’ll look at the main issue vexing kelp producers today—laborious processing—and a company that’s trying to solve that problem. Our final story will go macro, with a view of the venture-funded pilots that may shape a future of seaweed driven by corporate investment.

The stories in this series provide a framework for how we might guide the future of kelp, and how it may—or may not—fulfill its potential as a climate solution.

This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center’s Ocean Reporting Network.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2020/06/26/the-thanksgiving-tribe-is-still-fighting-for-food-sovereignty/ https://civileats.com/2020/06/26/the-thanksgiving-tribe-is-still-fighting-for-food-sovereignty/#comments Fri, 26 Jun 2020 09:01:34 +0000 http://civileats.com/?p=37219 February 2021 update: The Biden administration’s U.S. Department of the Interior withdrew the efforts begun under the Trump administration to de-establish the Mashpee Wampanoag’s reservation. November 2020 update: The Mashpee Wampanoag’s tribal lands remain unsettled. In July 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that included an amendment to specifically protect the Mashpee […]

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]]> February 2021 update: The Biden administration’s U.S. Department of the Interior withdrew the efforts begun under the Trump administration to de-establish the Mashpee Wampanoag’s reservation.

November 2020 update: The Mashpee Wampanoag’s tribal lands remain unsettled. In July 2020, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that included an amendment to specifically protect the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe’s lands. The amended bill has not yet been voted on by the Senate. And in August, the Department of the Interior appealed the federal court’s ruling that halted the U.S. government’s attempt to de-establish the tribe.

On a Friday afternoon in late March, Cedric Cromwell, Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe in Massachusetts, received a call, from Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) director Darryl LaCounte. Cromwell assumed LaCounte was calling to see how the agency could assist the Mashpee Wampanoag Nation in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, which was already disproportionally affecting Indigenous peoples across the U.S.

Instead, Cromwell learned that, based on an order from Department of Interior, the federal government was de-establishing the Mashpee Wampanoag’s reservation, effective immediately. De-establishment would mean the tribe could continue to hold onto their land, but they would have to pay steep back taxes on it. They would no longer be able to operate as a sovereign nation, and would suddenly be unable to operate their own police or judicial system.

The land in question is their ancestral home, where the Mashpee Wampanoag greeted the Pilgrims in 1620, and from where the Mashpee helped the colonizers farm, taught them about local vegetation and aquatic life, and even held the first Thanksgiving with them. Their 321-acre reservation is far smaller than the tribe’s original nation, which stretched from eastern Rhode Island into Massachusetts, and has been inhabited by the Mashpee Wampanoag for 12,000 years.

Describing the revocation as a “terroristic attack from this administration against my tribe,” Cromwell likened it to how colonizers used smallpox to exterminate Indigenous peoples 400 years ago, after the Mashpee Wampanoag welcomed the Pilgrims to their shores.

“They killed us off and took our land. . . . Talk about re-opening wounds and repeating history,” said Cromwell, referencing how Pilgrims distributed diseased blankets to the tribe, after the Wampanoag taught the Pilgrims to fish and hunt for cod, sea bass, turkey, rabbit, and lobster. “When you think of our homelands being taken away, that would take away our ability to farm our land as a sovereign nation,” he added.

“They killed us off and took our land. Talk about re-opening wounds and repeating history.”

An East Coast tribe, the Mashpee retain their indigenous fishing and hunting rights, relying on wild foods like striped bass or deer for sustenance. They also rely on gathering herbs, vegetables and fruits, like elderberry, blueberries, beach plum, wild garlic, milkweeds or fiddlehead ferns, many of which grow wild on their reservation.

In response to the U.S. government’s move, the Mashpee filed an emergency restraining order against the Department of Interior to stop its actions, and tribes across the country were watching the case closely: The BIA move was the first time since the end of the Termination Era in the late 1960s that the U.S. government attempted to de-establish a reservation, and observers feared that it foreshadowed how the Trump administration intends to approach tribal relations.

On June 5, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reversed the Interior Department’s move, effectively saying that the Department of Interior did not follow its own guidelines.

“I believe this president really thought he could get away with it,” said Cromwell. “There is no legal precedent for how he can do this.”

Despite the legal win, which allows the Wampanoag to continue developing their food sovereignty plans, the tribe still needs to federally establish their reservation, which is necessary to secure their long-term sovereignty.

Fighting for Access to Traditional Foods

Although the Mashpee are a smaller tribe, the fact that they have remained on their historical lands is significant in the U.S., where many tribes have been forcibly removed, and gives them access to some of their traditional hunting and fishing grounds and the cultural traditions centered around food.

An overhead view of the Mashpee Wampanoag’s traditional territory on Cape Cod. (Photo courtesy of the Mashpee Wampanoag)

As the tribe’s land has been systematically taken away, they face food insecurity and are turning to greenhouses to try and ensure the ability to raise year-round crops in the cold Northeast climate, said Cromwell. In addition to their agricultural enterprises, they have an operational oyster farm, as well as recreational shellfishing, crabbing and fishing in their traditional waters. As recently as 2015, they’ve fought locally to protect parts of their waterways from development.

“[My parents] taught us how to survive by the season—food sovereignty is everything for us,” said Sherry Pocknett, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribal member and chef who is in the process of opening Sly Fox Den, an indigenous food restaurant, in Connecticut. “It is just really hard for East Coast Indians to keep their lifeways going because . . . no one wants you on their property or to cut through to get to the source [for shellfishing].”

The Mashpee tribe built a 3,500-square-foot greenhouse on their land in an effort to provide more food for elders, as well as promote agriculture in their community. They raise squash, potatoes, and corn—vegetables that are part of a typical Thanksgiving, said Cromwell. Additionally, the tribe’s health services use the greenhouse to grow natural herbal remedies, while the larger farm is also as an educational tool for the tribe’s native language project.

“Diabetes is very high amongst our people, because of the industrialized food that our bodies weren’t really accustomed to eating,” said Cromwell. Pointing out that reservation status would help support the tribe’s farm initiative, he stressed the importance of “getting back more to the traditional foods—beans, squash, and corn—that help heal the body.”

Food Sovereignty and Legal Status

Since the Mayflower arrived from England in November 1620, Indigenous peoples’ ability to sustain their cultural and food traditions has been irrevocably linked to their ability to access land, which is why this recent decision to further divorce the Mashpee from their traditional holdings has many up in arms.

“Our Indigenous ancestors had the luxury of the knowledge of generations handed down to them, we’ve lost a lot of that. People don’t even know their own environment anymore,” said Sean Sherman, a chef and the creator of North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS) a Minnesota-based nonprofit that works to promote Indigenous foodways. At his Minneapolis business, The Sioux Chef, he said that many patrons are surprised by the cedar tea they serve, and the fact that the common tree is actually a flavorful food source.

Recent history in the United States shows that it is “extremely important” for Indigenous peoples to have access to their ancestral land, he added. “Because of the loss of land, and because of the loss of connection and access to our own foods, we see a lot of loss of culture . . . especially to the East,” Sherman said.

The Shinnecock tribe in New York also has access to, and is fighting to retain, hunting and fishing rights on their traditional lands. And they’re facing a food sovereignty challenge similar to the Mashpee Wampanoag. Traditionally a hunter-gatherer tribe with a strong connection to the water, the Shinnecock’s local waterways have been increasingly circumscribed by local and state authorities, as well as non-Indigenous fishermen.

Similar to their sister tribe, the Mashpee Wampanoag, the Shinnecock are also now turning to a greenhouse and community garden, in an effort to bolster their food sovereignty, as some of their traditional gathering methods, and where they are able to hunt, have been affected by modern development.

Describing the Shinnecock as a “wealthy tribe” because they can still access traditional foods such as beach plums, clams, and deer, tribal member Jason Colfield said, “that one word—sovereignty—holds a lot of power within Indian Country. We don’t take it for granted. And we are constantly fighting for it.”

In 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in Carcieri v. Salazar that upended the status of every tribe not federally recognized in the landmark 1934 Indian Reorganization Act, which aimed to “conserve and develop Indian lands and resources” and strengthen tribes’ sovereignty and cultures.

“That one word—sovereignty—holds a lot of power within Indian Country. We don’t take it for granted. And we are constantly fighting for it.”

This decision created legal confusion for dozens of tribes, including the Mashpee Wampanaog, who in 2007 were federally recognized, but in 1934 were left off the U.S. government’s list of “recognized” tribes. The 2009 decision made it impossible for the government to take the Mashpee Wampanoag land into trust, the legal process for creating a reservation, as well as the land of dozens of other tribes across the U.S.

“[The Carcieri] decision threw into limbo the status quo that all tribes should be treated the same under federal law, including that land could be taken into trust,” said Derrick Beetso, general counsel of the National Congress of American Indians.

Despite legal contracts that predated the formation of the U.S., the Mashpee tribe among those tribes left out of the 1934 Act, and it was the first to try to establish a new reservation after 2009. That’s why the Mashpee case is important: Other tribes who were similarly left off the 1934 federal list are hoping to follow the Mashpee approach and establish their own sovereign nations.

In addition to the threatened loss of sovereignty for the Mashpee Wampanoag people, many worry about what kind of legal precedent the proposed de-establishment will set. Indigenous law in the U.S. has gone through many phases, and while some feel that tribal sovereignty has moved in a positive direction in recent decades, the Trump Administration’s sudden move seems to be a worst-case consequence of the 2009 Carcieri v. Salazar decision.

While the tribe was able to block the Department of Interior’s decision to de-establish their reservation, they are still not federally established and Mashpee Chairman Cromwell underlined the importance of having H.R. 312, which would re-affirm their status, or H.R. 375 which would amend the controversial Indian Reorganization Act, passed in Senate.

Either bill would allow the Mashpee to federally establish their reservation, giving them more ability to make long-term plans for tribal food sovereignty, and it would also set legal precedent for other tribes, including the Shinnecock, to follow suit.

“The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe . . . greeted the pilgrims and shared their harvest in this thing called Thanksgiving. We are American history,” said Cromwell. “The U.S. is almost saying, ‘Well, we got what we wanted, [now] we are going to completely erase you.’”

Photos courtesy of the Mashpee Wampanoag.

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]]> https://civileats.com/2020/06/26/the-thanksgiving-tribe-is-still-fighting-for-food-sovereignty/feed/ 1 https://civileats.com/2018/03/15/can-the-shinnecock-nation-save-its-fishing-rights/ https://civileats.com/2018/03/15/can-the-shinnecock-nation-save-its-fishing-rights/#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2018 09:00:07 +0000 http://civileats.com/?p=28509 Sunrise was just breaking when David Taobi Silva walked out of Heady Creek after checking his eel nets for catch from the previous night. It was April in Southampton, New York, near the far eastern tip of Long Island, and the mornings were still cold. The 42-year-old has been fishing in this creek since he […]

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]]> Sunrise was just breaking when David Taobi Silva walked out of Heady Creek after checking his eel nets for catch from the previous night. It was April in Southampton, New York, near the far eastern tip of Long Island, and the mornings were still cold.

The 42-year-old has been fishing in this creek since he was a boy, although he usually accessed it from the western side, from the Shinnecock Indian Nation Territory. That day, however, he’d decided to park his car on the creek’s opposite shore, in the so-called “estate” section, where houses sell for north of $5 million dollars—a very different neighborhood than the one filled with mostly one-story abodes on the other side of the creek.

When he got out of the water, Silva was surprised to see two New York State’s Department of Environmental Control (DEC) agents waiting for him. A former tribal leader, Silva expected that once he identified himself as Shinnecock, the agents would let him go on his way, as tribal members are not bound to the fishing and hunting regulations that other New York citizens must follow. But to his surprise, they ticketed him, seized his net from the water, and made him wait for hours on the dock for another officer to arrive. In addition to the loss of his nets and the $500 worth of eels he had caught earlier, Silva now faces fines that could exceed $80,000.

“It feels like we are being targeted,” said Silva, who filed a civil rights complaint in Suffolk County Court in late November. One of the arresting officers had been involved in five previous incidents with Shinnecock, all of which were eventually dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction. Silva’s complaint, which is still in process, states that the repeated arrests constituted harassment of the Shinnecock.

The view from the Shinnecock Indian Nation Territory across Shinnecock Bay to the mansions that dot the other side. (Photo by Alexandra Talty)

For the Shinnecock, confrontations with state authorities have become routine in recent years. Despite a contract with English settlers dating back to 1648, wherein the Shinnecock reserved their rights to the waters and shores in perpetuity, tribal members have been ticketed for fishing repeatedly over the past 15 years. The cases, however, are always dropped in court due to the lack of jurisdiction. In addition, Silva notes that U.S. code 1948 explicitly requires New York State to honor all previous treaties with Indian tribes with regards to hunting and fishing rights. Silva will return to court on March 19 to continue his fight against the ticket.

In practice, state law limits the Shinnecock’s ability to sell their catch—tribe members can sell any marine life directly from the reservation, similar to how Native Americans can sell untaxed cigarettes or alcohol. But no restaurant or wholesaler can legally resell them in New York State.

Gathering food from the water is an indigenous tradition integral to their lifestyle and identities. And because tribal leaders estimate that 40 percent of tribal members live below the poverty line, expensive commercial licenses are out of reach for most, and the ability to fish for sustenance is especially important. Many tribal members also believe that the fisheries are mismanaged by the state and would like to the chance to participate in the process of setting fishing quotas and environmental regulation.

Running Up Against Regulations

Tribal members are living in what they consider a legislative loophole, wherein longtime treaties explicitly reserved rights that more recent state marine protections limit. Every major Shinnecock contract has reserved the tribe’s hunting and fishing rights, stating that if the tribe sells off parcels of land, tribal members are still allowed to conduct activities on it, such as collect seaweed or harvest the meat and bones from beached whales.

“The federal government and state government need to get their rights from us,” explained Johnny Smith, a Shinnecock tribe member, medicine man, and shop owner.

Autumn Rose Williams, the first ever Shinnecock to be named Miss Native American USA, posing for photos on native Shinnecock land. (Photo by Alexandra Talty)

Complications arose starting with the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976, which ignored these treaties and made blanket marine protections.

“Illegal possession of shellfish, illegal harvesting of shellfish, illegal possession of undersized fish—those are the tickets that we usually get [as a result of the 1976 Act],” said Shane Weeks, a 28-year-old Shinnecock tribal member, artist, and commercial fisherman, who has also been working to establish a commercial eel fishery on the tribal territory.

The goal is to harvest lucrative glass eels from the waters around the tribe’s land, which can fetch as much as $2,500 per pound during peak market times. The number of eels has dropped significantly in Maine’s nearby fishery, further spiking demand. The Shinnecock also hope to study the mysterious fish and potentially breed it, although the species has never yet been successfully bred in captivity.

The Act’s passage has also prompted action from a number of tribes across the U.S.: Maine’s Passamaquoddy tribe and tribes in Western Washington have worked with (and fought against) those states’ legislatures to establish their own tribal commercial fisheries, paving the way for indigenous people across the United States to follow suit.

Although the DEC recognizes the rights of the Shinnecock to fish within their boundaries, the agency said in a formal statement to Civil Eats, “Native Americans are not exempt from fishing regulations … The state’s laws are in place to protect the depleted species, American eel, and sustain its future in New York water.”

Shane Weeks looks at a memorial for the 10 Shinnecock men who died in the 1876 shipwreck of the Circassian off the coast of Mecox Bay in Bridgehampton. Tribe members point to their long history of maritime traditions as part of their fight for fishing rights. (Photo by Alexandra Talty)

Tribal member Bryan Polite sees the state’s position as a metaphorical “call to arms.”

“The alarm bells are beginning to ring,” Polite said. “What’s next? Our hunting rights?” In Southampton Town, Shinnecock are not restricted to the same seasons as other recreational hunters and are also able to hunt animals such as wild turkeys.

Polite finds the situation extremely frustrating. He was on the tribe’s Council of Trustees in 2016 and visited DEC offices in Albany for a “good-faith meeting” at which they discussed setting up a Shinnecock regulatory department. In their discussions, they detailed a department that would issue permits to tribal members for sustenance licenses and at the same time better integrate the tribe’s program and licensing with the state. At that point, “sustenance was never in question,” Polite said. “Neither was our fishing rights in terms of not [being able to take] it to the market.”

Multiple tribe members told Civil Eats that they sent at least a few certified documents to New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s office to advocate for their marine access rights, but never received a response. The governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Broader Quest for Native American Food Sovereignty

Like the Shinnecock, the Passamaquoddy tribe, which established a commercial fishery in 1997, also hopes to establish an eel fishery. Freddy Moore III, former chief of the tribe, feels heartened by the effort, as it has prompted some younger tribal members to work in a culturally sustainable way.

“Tribes around the country have been buying into an economic model that is inconsistent with the nature of our life,” said Moore. “They are chasing casinos, manufacturing plants, and facilities as if that will elevate our quality of life… [but] there is a cost associated with that.”

Moore believes that the effort to establish casinos has pitted elements of tribal leadership around the country against the establishment of fisheries. Instead of chasing what he calls “borrowed models,” he believes the most important thing a tribe can do is establish their own food sovereignty.

“If the time comes when our people look to the marine environment as a means of sustaining their very lives, and we haven’t protected that, we will be in very big trouble,” said Moore. “Either allow us to feed ourselves, or feed us in jail.”

Now, younger tribal members tell him they feel the spirit of their ancestors when they are fishing, he said.

Still, Shane Weeks worries that the next generation of Shinnecocks, as well as those who did not grow up on the reservation, will forget that these rights and this heritage exists. “We don’t fish as much as we used to; my dad’s generation grew up having to hunt to eat,” Weeks said.

Passamaquoddy’s Moore believes that the burden of proof is on the state to show that they have the authority to legislate the activities of indigenous people.“You can’t legislate identity,” he said. “Your identity is a human right.”

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