The Future of Ocean Farming | Hacker News Reader

The Future of Ocean Farming

modernfarmer.com

63 pointsprostoalex28 comments

About 93% of global warming goes into the surface layers of the ocean, cutting of circulation of nutrients, which has led to seaweed ecosystem and harvest reduction or collapse in different coastal regions (Australia, California,SE Asia for example). https://www.climatefoundation.org/ has developed a system to upwell water from beneath the thermocline over the past fifteen years. They have shown more than 3x growth over controls, and are looking to scale up and grow kelp offshore and in the open ocean.

If the Rossby waves begin to taper off what’s their plan?

Resturing natural upwelling does not depend on the strength of raspy waves. Thus it is possible using marine solar, wave and wind energy to restore natural upwelling and regenerate algae productivity offshore...

Wow, thank you for this!! This is really fascinating.

Do you have a better link to the project specifically and/or the engineering system? I could not find any photos. The only thing I could find was this https://www.climatefoundation.org/uploads/3/0/2/0/30209783/m...

There is some project-specific information on the Channel News Asia documentary titled "Race to feed the World," Episode 2, June 2021. It is available in this description of recent Marine Permaculture information, presentations and podcasts, available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DkZ11CpgSqdUnaNw2-Pt05OZ...

I guess Japan is the biggest market for konbu (kelp) at the moment. It does go well with some dishes, such as miso soup. Healthy and tasty.

Nevertheless, even in Japan, it's not very lucrative for the farmers. Perhaps they should switch to farming mixed shellfish and kelp too.

Given the benefits to local ecosystems and carbon removal, why don’t we subsidize them the way we do wheat and beef and all sorts of things that have negative effects?

There seems to be a limit on how much konbu could be realistically consumed. And in Japan, they probably already hit that limit.

I mean it is definitely eaten, just not that much of it. And I doubt consumption could go considerably higher, even if the price were artificially lowered by subsidies.

Now as you say there may be other reasons to grow it, I don't know enough about it.

Not all has to be consumed by humans though. I think the article said it can be turned into fertilizer and animal feed.

Biostimulants are even more sustainable economically...

There are many other types of sea vegetables such as Nori, Spirulina, Dulse, Wakame, Chlorella, and many more. Spirulina in particular has an amazing nutritional profile.

And while you're right that the current market for these sea vegetables isn't massive, chefs are starting to work more and more with them which is shifting cultural acceptance.

Traditional seafood gets a lot of its "Fishyness" from the sea vegetables at the bottom of the ocean food chain. So you can create a lot of beloved seafood flavors just using sea vegetables. As ocean populations decline, traditional animal based seafood is going to get more and more expensive and I predict there will be a demand for a cheaper way to experience those flavors.

And as chefs get better at utilizing these ingredients and if more and more farmers and companies start to get involved with growing these plants, i'm sure industry marketing initiatives will ramp up just like you see ads from the "Peanut Growers Association".

Speaking of carbon removal and beef, research has shown about 30% methane reduction if kelp is introduced into cows' diets.

https://www.fosters.com/news/20200107/unh-research-cows-fed-...

That's mostly because decomposing grass is the source of the methane, not cows. Cows just speed the process. But it's a lot harder to convince people that growing grass is bad for the environment than eating beef.

This reminds me of a couple of companies I learned about recently (through the topic of aquaponics).. They use solar energy to turn seawater into fresh water, then use that (and the electricity) to power greenhouses.

Seawater Greenhouse (UK) - https://seawatergreenhouse.com/technology

The Sundrop System (AUS) - https://www.sundropfarms.com/our-technology/

There's a company local to me that's been working to commercialize this for the past ten years: https://www.oceanrainforest.com/

Will it be possible to genetically engineer other vegetables to grow in salt water?

In salt water? Not realistically any time soon. But here in the Netherlands they've developed salt-tolerant potatoes that grow well in saline soils.

Ditto China and rice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BMxx70TXeY

Is there some international organization that would help people that want to setup kelp farming?

I live near a beach and I wonder how feasible it would be to start something like this

Green Wave: https://www.greenwave.org/

I really hope this stuff catches on, it is a phenomenal idea.

How can we as a community contribute to it catching on?

I think you should experiment with and publish recipes in your local region. What does it complement / replace?

Another suggestion is a back of the medicine cabinet supplement, for its iodine content. To mitigate the risk of thyroid cancer, I was eating iodine-rich foods just after the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

Buy farmed kelp and shellfish. If it is profitable more people will do it.

This whole article felt like a great buildup to a good deep writeup, but then it just ended.

Very odd.

If you click through to Modern Farmer at the top of the article the rest of it is on that site.

You’re right, how very strange!

Good, er, catch! URL changed to that from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/facing-warming-wat.... Thanks!

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