The Power of Kelp

[Music] so here we are in the pacific northwest we're sitting in northwood canal and we are just thinking about all the wonderful uses of seaweeds i have this grand vision that will replace all the corn grown in iowa with kelp grown on the pacific coast it's probably one of the best possible things you could farm in this kind of environment you don't have to water it apply pesticides or fertilizers or anything it's literally a input free crop we're growing sugar kelp out here it's just one of many species that are available for the grower in the pacific northwest we actually sit in the largest diversity of seaweeds practically in the world and we're just starting to realize all the benefits of growing kelp in this region [Music] so i've been a shellfish farmer now for about 30 years and about 10 years or so ago we really started noticing in the hatchery environment that the oyster larvae just weren't thriving and it all turned out to be issues associated with this emerging global problem of ocean acidification our human carbon dioxide emissions are literally acidifying our oceans and this is a global problem but it's particularly bad here in the pacific northwest and here in puget sound we've got vulnerable animals like oysters and other shell forming organisms they're having a hard time maintaining their shells as the sea water that they live in becomes more corrosive in 2013 the paul allen family foundation challenged people to come up with out-of-the-box ways to address ocean acidification and joth davis and i and betsy peabody with the puget sound restoration fund and a couple of other scientists we got together and pitched an idea to this contest that was based on the concept of phytoremediation kelp which is a very fast growing algae has the power to absorb a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide and other nutrients out of the water as it grows so we wanted to see if we could harness this power of kelp to actually mitigate the effects of ocean acidification locally here in a small part of puget sound about the size of a shellfish farm [Music] so behind me in the middle section is where we grow kelp and on the perimeter you see a long strings of black buoys from those were hanging shellfish in oysters specifically and we recruited a crack team of scientists and aquaculture experts to conduct an experiment at joss farm this team installed a football field-sized array of submerged grow lines planted it out with kelp seedlings and deployed sensors to detect changes in seawater chemistry that might come about as a result of the growing kelp [Music] the kelp grew really well but it turns out the currents here were too fast for it to measurably improve seawater chemistry so a key take-home from this experiment is that if we're hoping to use kelp to mitigate ocean acidification locally it's really critical to look for optimal conditions and monitor sites to make sure that mitigation is actually happening we also learned that when you're cultivating kelp you've got to be thinking ahead by the end of our first growing season we had an enormous crop what we didn't have was a plan for what to do with it fortunately eli wheat an agro-ecology expert at the university of washington and the owner of skyroot farm on whidbey island nearby came to the rescue where we saw 14 000 pounds of homeless kelp eli saw captured carbon and nutrients so eli offered to have us delivered the entire harvest to his farm and then he would do experiments on how to incorporate that kelp into the soil to improve productivity my background as an ecologist is in thinking about systems and so when we started farming here we wanted to take our understanding of ecology to approach the farm from a systems thinking perspective and so the kelp project just really fit into that bigger vision of nutrient recycling on the farm like it's like this incredible cross ecosystem connection so you're growing kelp in the water to reduce ocean acidification and benefit by valve growth and we can then take that kelp which has been so beneficial in the marine environment and bring it onto our farm and use it to increase the productivity of our farm as a system so it felt like wow this is a totally amazing opportunity there's no downside of growing seaweed you could grow for biofuels you can grow seaweeds for fertilizers compost and i think the highest best use is growing seaweeds for food chefs and consumers are clamoring for this new exciting sustainable delicious product and who knows what's going to happen in the next 20 years the oa problem hopefully will get better and in the meantime i think that growing seaweeds has all these co-benefits that we hope will assist in culturing shellfish like oysters we know it sucks up carbon we know it sucks up nitrogen and we definitely feel when we harvest kelp from this site we're making a difference and that means a lot to me as a long-term shellfish farmer in the area and i said more power to kelp you

Channel: Puget Sound Restoration Fund

Views: 44,641

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Id: 7Y5_7sfbvgY

Length: 5min 56sec (356 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020