Seaweed | 60 Minutes Archive

[00:00:01]60 Minutes Rewind Many of us think of seaweed as a nuisance, the slimy, sometimes smelly stuff that clogs fishermen's nets, gets tangled in our ankles in the ocean, and washes up unwanted on the beach.

[00:00:19]Even its name, seaweed, implies something undesirable.

[00:00:25]And yet, increasing numbers of fishermen, scientists, and foodies in this country are starting to look at seaweed very differently. As a promising source of food, jobs, and help cleaning ocean waters.

[00:00:39]With rising global populations and limited space to expand agriculture on land, they are turning to the sea and its weeds as a new frontier.

[00:00:52]>> Welcome aboard.

[00:00:53]>> Thank you. It's not often you get a ride to visit a farm on a boat.

[00:00:58]>> Here we go.

[00:00:59]>> But we were on board with Bren Smith, the nation's leading advocate for a whole new type of farming, ocean farming. We joined him on a cold day in December, the time of year he heads out to his version of fields to plant his staple crop, a type of seaweed called sugar kelp.

[00:01:18]>> Here it is.

[00:01:20]>> This is the farm? I can't see anything.

[00:01:22]>> The whole idea is it's down under the water, so it's the white buoys. Yeah, that's the edges of the farm.

[00:01:28]>> And the black ones?

[00:01:29]>> Black buoys are holding up a horizontal rope below the surface, so it's rows, kind of rows of crops. This is the seed.

[00:01:36]>> He showed us what looked like a tube covered in fuzz. Is that kelp?

[00:01:41]>> Yeah, these are the baby plants. They're about 2 mm, and these are going to going to grow to 15-18 ft by the spring. It's one of the fastest growing plants on Earth.

[00:01:51]>> You can see >> And unlike all those plants that grow in Earth, seaweed doesn't need fertilizer or fresh water.

[00:01:58]>> I wait.

[00:01:59]>> It's what's called a zero input crop.

[00:02:02]>> So now we're just going to unravel it.

[00:02:04]>> Just attach the string it grows on to rope and suspend it 8 ft underwater.

[00:02:10]>> And that's it, huh?

[00:02:11]>> That's it.

[00:02:12]>> In 5 or 6 months, that fuzz will look like this.

[00:02:16]This was some of his crop last year.

[00:02:19]Smith began leasing the right to farm this 20-acre plot of water in 2012 from the state of Connecticut. His was the first commercial seaweed farm in the state. Now there are nine with a half dozen more in the works.

[00:02:35]>> We hope, you know, in 10, 20 years there are thousands of farmers doing this. We think it's the future, the time to move out in the ocean, and luckily we could do it the right way.

[00:02:44]>> Smith spent most of his life working the oceans in what he now considers the wrong way, on industrial fishing boats going after lobster, tuna, and cod.

[00:02:54]>> We were tearing up whole ecosystems with our trawls, fishing in illegal waters, and just really chasing fewer and fewer fish further and further out to sea.

[00:03:03]>> And you didn't think about the idea that you were depleting >> Yeah, no.

[00:03:08]>> the population of fish.

[00:03:10]>> The oceans just seemed boundless.

[00:03:12]>> Boundless and bountiful.

[00:03:15]>> The sense of meaning of helping feed my country. You know, fishermen, there's some jobs, you know, coal workers, farmers, I think steel workers, and and fishermen where you know, they're jobs that are soul-filling. You know, they're jobs that we write and sing songs about. And I just I wanted that life, and it's I still do.

[00:03:32]>> But that life was increasingly in peril.

[00:03:36]Cod stocks crashed due to overfishing.

[00:03:39]And after Smith reinvented himself cultivating oysters in Long Island Sound, hurricanes and Sandy hit destroying his crop 2 years in a row.

[00:03:49]>> Bren was really on the verge of bankruptcy >> Searching for a new career on the water, he sought advice from Charlie Yarish, a professor of marine biology, whose lab at the University of Connecticut studies some of the thousands of different types of seaweeds.

[00:04:06]>> But there's only 20 globally that are actually farmed.

[00:04:10]>> They're not all edible.

[00:04:12]>> No, they're not all edible. Some of them actually are quite toxic. We have now all these strains in the >> It was Yarish who suggested Smith consider sugar kelp, a local seaweed that gets planted after hurricane season is over, has a mild taste, and can also be used as animal feed and fertilizer.

[00:04:33]>> Seaweed for you was the light bulb.

[00:04:35]>> Yeah.

[00:04:36]>> The eureka moment.

[00:04:37]>> We can create jobs here. We We can protect and improve the environment. We don't have to make this choice.

[00:04:44]>> Yeah, that looks nice.

[00:04:45]>> Smith now operates one of the largest seaweed hatcheries in the country with tanks full of developing kelp spores and a processing room that comes alive in spring when he and his team bring in the harvest and get it ready for sale.

[00:05:02]Blanched in 170° water, kelp turns a vivid green and can then be sold fresh or frozen, sometimes in the form of noodles.

[00:05:13]Smith's customers include Google for their cafeteria, Yale University, and several restaurants and wholesalers. He has sold out the last four years.

[00:05:24]But at this kelp farm across the country in the waters outside Seattle, producing food is almost beside the point. This is a test farm where Betsy Peabody of the Puget Sound Restoration Fund and a team of scientists are doing an experiment to see whether seaweed can help fight the growing problem of ocean acidification caused mainly by increasing carbon dioxide levels in the seas.

[00:05:50]>> Roughly 25% of CO2 in the atmosphere is being absorbed into oceans.

[00:05:57]>> That is >> what we're getting from fossil fuels from both carbon emissions, from deforestation, and I think initially people thought, "Well, thank goodness the oceans are taking up some of that carbon dioxide." But then scientists started to document that in fact when that carbon dioxide goes into the ocean, it causes chemical changes.

[00:06:22]>> Changes like increasing the water's acidity as documented in the US government's 2017 Climate Science Special Report.

[00:06:31]The excess CO2 causes a decrease of carbonate ions, which many marine species use to build their shells and skeletons.

[00:06:41]Worldwide, ocean surface waters have become 30% more acidic over the last 150 years. And in the Pacific Northwest, the problem is compounded by currents that bring more carbon-rich waters to the surface. And that's where seaweed comes in.

[00:06:58]>> Kelp take up carbon dioxide like any plant does, and it just so happens it lives in the water.

[00:07:03]There are winners and losers in ocean acidification. Organisms that produce carbonate shells, like shellfish, they're a loser. They can't handle the lower pH. They can't uh deposit as much uh calcium in their shells. On the other hand, when seaweeds like kelp, they actually pick up that carbon dioxide because now it's easier for them to do photosynthesis.

[00:07:28]>> Imagine trees on land pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. Well, seaweeds and kelp are really good at pulling CO2 out of the water.

[00:07:38]>> So, basically what you're doing is the equivalent >> Mhm.

[00:07:42]>> of planting trees in the ocean.

[00:07:44]>> Exactly.

[00:07:46]>> And then testing to see how much of a difference it makes.

[00:07:49]>> We've got scientific mooring buoys anchored at both sides.

[00:07:54]>> The yellow.

[00:07:55]>> The yellow buoys.

[00:07:56]>> They're measuring how water changes as it flows through the kelp field and seeing if baby shellfish grown with the kelp do better at building their shells.

[00:08:07]Results won't be in for more than a year.

[00:08:10]And Bren Smith is eager to see them.

[00:08:13]He's been growing shellfish on his kelp farm, too, but not, he admits, because of the science. He says it's good business.

[00:08:21]>> Yeah, you can just hold it there.

[00:08:22]>> Yeah.

[00:08:23]>> In November, he and his team loaded thousands of baby mussels into netting that look like massive sausages and then suspended them from ropes that hang down below the kelp.

[00:08:35]He calls it 3D ocean farming.

[00:08:38]>> Why 3D?

[00:08:39]>> We call that because we're using the entire water column. And if you can stack crops on top of each other, it's just really efficient. You don't use large, you know, plots of ocean. But you get so much food.

[00:08:51]>> So, you've got your seaweed.

[00:08:53]>> Yep. You've got the kelp here and then we have the mussels.

[00:08:57]>> Underwater, each row looks something like this.

[00:09:00]>> Off those same lines, we have scallops and then below the whole system, we have cages with oysters in them.

[00:09:07]>> He brought up one of those oyster cages from the bottom to show us.

[00:09:12]>> What kind are these?

[00:09:13]>> Uh we call these Thimble Island Salts.

[00:09:15]And let's haul some mussels.

[00:09:17]>> Andy hauled up a mussel line so we could see their progress, too.

[00:09:21]>> They're in bunches.

[00:09:22]>> These are our mid-size, so they'll double in size. We'll harvest these just about the same time we harvest our kelp.

[00:09:28]So, this is going to be a big harvest.

[00:09:31]>> The story will continue after this.

[00:09:37]>> So, are you a fisherman or you a farmer?

[00:09:40]>> I'm a farmer now. Whether I like it or not, I'm an ocean farmer. I and I talked to fishermen about this. They say, "Listen, we have to make this transition. That heartbreaking move from being a hunter to a farmer." But, what what else are the pieces of what it is is sort of to be a fisherman? It's to own your own boat, succeed and fail on your own terms, and have the pride of feeding our country. We get to keep those things.

[00:10:04]>> He's so convinced he's launched a nonprofit called GreenWave to encourage others to follow his lead.

[00:10:11]>> How you doing?

[00:10:12]>> Husband and wife Jay Douglas and Suzy Flores are among his seaweed farming disciples. A former Marine who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, Douglas learned the ropes, literally, on Smith's farm last spring. Spent a year getting a permit for his own plot of ocean in Connecticut and built 36 anchors from scratch.

[00:10:35]The day he and Flores went out to plant their first crop, Smith was along for guidance.

[00:10:41]>> Want to set this at a angle downwards.

[00:10:44]>> His nonprofit provides free seed and guarantees to buy 80% of their harvest for the first 2 years. He estimates that with a $10,000 to $20,000 investment and a boat, new farmers can turn a small profit the first year, rising to well over $100,000 later on.

[00:11:05]>> You're on a >> What am I on? What am I on?

[00:11:06]>> Has anyone actually said, "You know, you guys are a little nuts?"

[00:11:11]>> Yeah.

[00:11:11]>> Yeah.

[00:11:12]>> People just yeah, kind of scratch their heads and say, "What are you What are you making all these anchors for?" It's like, "I'm starting a kelp farm."

[00:11:18]>> What the hell is kelp?

[00:11:19]>> Yeah, right.

[00:11:20]>> Why? [laughter] >> Yeah, why?

[00:11:21]>> Which raises a question for this whole endeavor. Will Americans in large numbers start eating seaweed?

[00:11:28]>> And just toss them in there, a little kelp.

[00:11:30]>> Chef and author Barton Seaver thinks so.

[00:11:33]He's written a whole cookbook of seaweed recipes.

[00:11:37]When I hear the word seaweed, the last thing in my head is I want to eat that.

[00:11:42]You think they'll buy it out there?

[00:11:44]>> I do. I think, you know, 10 years ago kale wasn't on the shelf.

[00:11:48]>> He says first off, the name seaweed's got to go. He prefers sea green.

[00:11:55]>> So, is this one of the dishes you created?

[00:11:57]>> This is an Italian dish that typically uses spinach.

[00:12:01]>> He suggests integrating seaweed, pardon, sea greens into things we already know and like. Are you nervous that I might not like it?

[00:12:11]>> In front of all of America? No, not at all.

[00:12:13]>> [laughter] >> Surprisingly, it didn't taste fishy or seaweed-y.

[00:12:21]And he says kelp is rich in calcium, fiber, iron, and antioxidants.

[00:12:27]That's really good.

[00:12:29]It is really good.

[00:12:31]>> I This is what's exciting about this space. The oceans are a blank slate.

[00:12:35]Like for my generation, it's a really exciting moment. I can farm and grow food, but also I can soak up carbon and nitrogen while creating jobs, while giving people the opportunity to create small businesses.

[00:12:47]>> And while fulfilling his dream of living his life on the water.

[00:12:53]>> Yeah, I want to die on my boat one day.

[00:12:54]That's sort of the goal. And I think if I look over my life, my goal is just always how do I keep working at sea?