International Seaweed Symposium 2023 - nerd out with Chloe
As part of our commitment to share any knowledge we uncover on our seaweed journey open source, we've put together an exhaustive write up of our time at the 2023 International Seaweed Symposium in lutruwita/Tasmania. We were extremely fortunate to be supported to attend the symposium via both the Marine Bioproducts CRC and the Fisheries Research and Development Council. Read on for my summary of the many talks and presentations I attended over a few days at the conference.
Monday
I started off the day listening to a great talk about kelp forests by Melinda Coleman from DPI NSW. A key take home message from this presentation was that climate change is outpacing adaptation by kelp forests in Australia, meaning passive management is insufficient if we want to keep this ecosystem intact. Coleman referred a lot to “future proofing” (meaning an intervention to provide populations/species the ability to resist or adapt to future conditions), a concept that equally applies to seaweed farming – when selecting species or strains, we need to keep future conditions in mind. Maintaining genetic diversity within a population can enhance adaptive capacity, which might mean safeguarding a population before it contracts too far and goes through a genetic bottleneck.
Some sobering data about how Ecklonia radiata (Golden Kelp) is faring:
The nation of Oman has completely lost their Ecklonia forests, meaning Golden Kelp is extinct there, and the unique genetic diversity of this region has been lost.
Sean Connell and team have shown a decline in Ecklonia in metro SA waters due to water quality. Could we be headed in the same direction as Oman?
Our current restoration methods for seaweed generally involve attempting to replicate a past baseline, but this technique will be insufficient under the future climate. Future methods might include:
Improving the thermal tolerance of populations by adding in heat adapted individuals to the gene pool (sourced from the range edges).
Ex situ conservation, like bio banking. Putting samples into perpetual culture means we won't lose genetic diversity like what has happened in Oman. Seaweed farming could play an important role here.
Next up there was a presentation by Sebastien Jan, about his seaweed production company in Magadascar. It was interesting to see the stats on the international seaweed supply, and that 95% of the global supply comes from only 3 geographic areas. Production being so concentrated definitely adds risk to the supply chain. Jan also discussed the fragmented structure of the supply chain in Madagascar, composed of many stakeholders, from smallholder producers through wholesalers, processors and exporters – meaning the farmers receive an unequal share of the value, and leading to issues with quality and traceability. The challenge for the seaweed revolution is to tackle the biomass issue (globally, seaweed cultivation is barely growing despite increased demand), but production needs to scale in a way that is sustainable and responsible, with an integrated supply chain.
Helen Fitton spoke next, with a focus on commercialising seaweed extracts. There's growing interest in extracts for agriculture, food, industry and health. From Fitton's perspective, safety and regulation are king when it comes to novel commercial extracts and applications. As a side note, I discovered at this session that the recent hollywood production “Ticket to Paradise” actually featuers seaweed farming! Planning to check this out once we're settled back home. Please don't hold me responsible if you decide to watch and it's terrible!
In the Q&A portion of this presentation, a question was asked that I think really encapsulates a major tension building in the developing seaweed industry in Australia. An audience member asked, “if novel extract is so beneficial to humanity, shouldn't the IP be shared open source?”. Fitton answered that she personally supported the idea of open source information sharing in such cases, but then raised the point that we've been hearing over and over from different corners - “if you don't protect your IP, how will you raise investment $?”.
We're personally very frustrated with this approach, especially given that so much of the R&D done into seaweed cultivation, processing and bioproducts over the past few decades has happened at public research institutions, presumably for the good of everyone. Raising $ is definitely more challenging when you're planning to work open source and can't demonstrate a clear path to ROI, but we've had some real success in this regard recently – keep an eye out for future updates. We will eventually put together a document outlining the $ we've received so far for Moonrise Seaweed Co., and how we went about this.
The next session I attended was with Helena Abreu, co-founder of Alga+. Abreu spoke about lessons from cultivating Ulva spp., 'the lettuce of the sea'. It was great to hear about a business that has followed a trajectory similar to what we're aiming for. The Alga+ team first had the idea for the business in 2006, became operational in 2012, and are only now in 2023 scaling their operations. Like we've said before, cracking into seaweed farming takes A LONG TIME. Alga+ grows Ulva and a few other species in a modular land-based system, adjacent to a coastal lagoon in Portugal. The biomass is certified organic, with the only nutrient input being from fish farm waste water from nearby operations.
Ulva was selected as their first commercial species due to:
available knowledge on farming protocols
the fact that it was pre-validated for year-round production
desirability to the food industry, having a neutral flavour, and being lower in iodine than kelps but rich in other key minerals
The lagoon site was selected because it was:
being on-shore, there's easy access – a logistical plus
it's a large site but much of it is no longer in use for aquaculture, so there's room for expansion
the water quality is suitable
Some production stats on Alga+:
14ha farm site, 0.4ha currently under production
Average yield 300 T / fw / ha / yr (keep in mind, the dry:fresh ratio for Ulva is 1:5, which is considerably higher than many other species)
$1million Euros in product sales so far, breaking even at ~10 years
Employs 2.7 people / dry ton produced
Wholesale price ~$9k Euros / fresh T.
Abreu was keen to point out that R&D is the backbone of Alga+, and they've invested significant resources into product development, pre-processing, consumer profiling, outreach and education. Abreu considers land-based cultivation the best solution for seaweed farming into the future, and said that while it's an intensive investment to get started, up-scaling is possible.
In contrast, Sophie Steinhargen is interested in large-scale sea based cultivation of Ulva, and presented her research showing how this might be possible. Steinhargen has developed a method of seeding twine with Ulva seedlings, and has had success deploying it on longlines in the Danish straits. Steinhargen found the crop to cope well with harsh conditions, across the full range of the salinity gradient represented by her sample sites.
Where Abreu and Steinhargen agreed was on the many applications of Ulva biomass, across many industrial sectors including as a biomaterial, pharmaceutical agent, food and feed. Ulva is one of our target species for cultivation at Moonrise Seaweed Co., and I found both of these talks to be pretty exciting – the tricky part was taking notes at a furious enough pace to get all the good stuff down!
Next up was a pre-recorded talk from Marianne Thompson, about climate positive value chains from gentle harvesting and processing of sea lettuce (more Ulva!). The audio wasn't great, which was frustrating because the premise of Thompson's presentation really resonated with me. The general gist was as we're surpassing global planetary boundaries and need to move towards a climate neutral society (where we capture as many emissions as we release), seaweed can play a role in developing climate neutral circular food systems. Thompson wants to see the bio-based economy empowered, but points out that to determine if seaweed cultivation is truly climate neutral, we need to account for emissions at the post-harvest stage, and prioritise gentle harvest and refinery methods. Definitely a lot to think about here and I'm planning a deeper dive into Thompson's work as we plan out our infrastructure.
In the afternoon, Jacyln Robideux presented an overview of seaweed farming in the US. The US industry is concentrated on coldwater kelps, cultivated by small-scale, seasonal producers. In Maine in particular, where the bulk of US seaweed is grown, the development of the industry has been reliant on the pre-existing working waterfront and fisheries, and seaweed represents an off-season (winter) crop and provides only a supplementary income. Barriers to entry in parts of the US are lower than they are in Australia, with a streamlined permitting process, and established social licence to operate. A key point from this talk was that growth for the sector was launched by processors – having downstream processing and infrastructure in place, and processors partnering directly with farmers, has meant that sufficient stabilised biomass has been made available to initiate industry growth.
Also in the afternoon, Courtney Schatzman from Ocean Rainforest gave a summary of their experimental trials growing Macrocystis in the California Bight. Ocean Rainforest are considering these trials a success, as biomass has exceeded expectations, and they've demonstrated reduced hatchery cost from their innovative method of direct seeding. I found two points from this talk particularly interesting:
Regarding outplanting, timing is paramount. Field data from their trial sites has shown that seeding after natural seeding events leads to an almost doubled yield.
Seasonal nutrient patterns can inform optimal harvest time.
Kristina Bergman spoke next about the environmental performance of a Chinese industrial-scale kelp farm. Seaweed aquaculture is frequently touted as a low resource crop, but it's crucial to look into the post-harvest processing steps – are they so resource intensive that they outweigh the resource savings at cultivation? Bergman has applied life cycle assessment to industrial kelp, which looks at the environmental footprint of a product including both inputs and outputs across the entire life cycle. What I found fascinating in her results is that the carbon footprint of growing kelp at industrial scale is completely dominated by the production and disposal of ropes and buoys. Other high impact aspects of production were boat fuel, hatchery electricity, and any nutrients added at the hatchery stage. The two key takeaways for me from this talk were the importance of using recycled or next-gen materials for buoys and ropes, and the fact that post-harvest processing is a major hotspot for environmental performance.
I then attended a really dynamic and inspiring presentation by Clare Bradley of Agrisea. The talk was called 'From garage to greatness: a NZ seaweed story', and gave a great overview of both Agrisea's commercial journey and the seaweed sector in NZ more generally. Agrisea is Maori owned and operated, makes kelp products for primary production, and is focussed on regenerative agriculture – lots of crossover with our aims at Moonrise Seaweed Co. They've also recently been involved with an experimental project to farm Ulva on-land to clean up fresh waterways, and the IP from this project is open-source – a very cool initiative. A couple of quotes really stood out to me from this talk. Bradley was discussing the idea of weaving different knowledge systems together (e.g. First Nations TEK, western science, etc.) and said that “sometimes one knowledge thread pulls harder – but when you're weaving something you need tension”. She also discussed the Maori concept of titiro whanui, meaning “looking really long, looking really wide” - an excellent framework when we're looking to develop regenerative models of production. Brad will have much more to say about the connections he made with Clare, Tane and other First Nations delegates in his write up, but suffice to say there's a lot to learn from Agrisea and how they've approached the seaweed industry as a First Nations led business.
Next up was Nigel Bradley (no relation to Clare), talking about the National Framework for a Sustainable NZ Seaweed Sector. The document itself is worth a look for the details, but particularly relevant to our own emerging seaweed sector in Australia is that NZ has identified their competitive advantages as being the development of high value products for niche markets, tech led value extraction, and brands with high social and environmental licence.
The last session I attended for the day was Marie Magnusson talking about Ulva, specifically “bucket science”. Plenty of interesting findings here, including optimal growth forms for tumble culture (germing clusters rather than original morphology) and optimum salinity range for growth (15-25ppt, which is considered at the lower end). Magnusson talked again about Agrisea's estuary bioremediation work, harnessing a diffuse source of nutrients to promote algal growth. An interesting engineering detail about this project is that they pumped the estuarine water into storage tanks at high tide, and ran it single pass through their cultivation tanks. Yields were 10g dry weight/sqm/day at relatively stable temperature – you'll notice that this is a different yield metric to the one discussed earlier (which was 300T / fw / ha / year). I'm still getting my head around these but essentially the yields are a little over half of what Alga+ is getting with their system – which really shows the impact of the fish waste on growth rates in the Alga+ farm, but also demonstrates that you can still get reasonable yields using diffuse nutrient inputs. [Someone with a better maths brain, please correct me if I'm wrong – I'm converting 10g dry to 50g wet (1:5 conversion ratio), and then scaling it too 182.5 T / fw / ha / year].
Thursday
My second day at the conference I started off watching the plenery session by Alejandro Buschman, looking at global & local agronomical trends for seaweed. Some interesting stats presented here:
Seaweeds currently account for ~25% of world aquaculture production.
USA is still increasing their wild harvest.
Chile's prodution is decreasing.
Essentially, despite the growth story often told, seaweed aquaculture is not increasing in every key region.
Many initiatives are either losing $ or breaking even – there's a need to either increment productivity or value-add to the biomass.
Buschman also gave an overview of the fertility site concept from terrestrial agriculture and discussed how this might apply to seaweed. Essentially, yields can be maximised by optimising light harvesting efficiency. In tank culture this might involve looking at tank stocking density, tank depth, etc. In ocean culture it's been found that floating canopies of seaweed may have a higher growth rate than submerged lines. Buschman challenged listeners to think about what the ultimate goal of seaweed farming is – maximised production, or outcomes aligned to the UN sustainable development goals? Much to my delight, he questioned the feasibiltiy of offshore farming, pointing out that the lack of nutrients is a major constraint. Buschman also echoed several of the other speakers when he suggested that to obtain enough value from biomass, biorefinery needs to be developed that allows multiple products to be produced from the same biomass.
Next up was Caroline Slootweg, discussing the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs), and how they're used by impact investors in selecting projects to fund. Slootweg's suggestion is that to unlock more investment capital for seaweed projects, we need to shift the story to move beyond the ocean, and tap into these other buckets. For example, if we expand our storytelling about seaweed to encompass the regenerative agriculture movement, we can tap into a broader base of support.
Following this, I really enjoyed a presentation by Hunter Forbes, called “Farms and Forests: Evaluating the Biodiversity Benefits of Kelp Aquaculture”. Forbes spoke about the way seaweed is promoted as a “silver bullet” - something we've discussed in the past in the Moonrise newsletter. This hype has led to an increased interest in seaweed afforestation (planting and/or farming where seaweed does not already exist), but without much research into the ecological costs and benefits of this approach. Forbes made the important point that if we overhype the potential benefits of seaweed farming, we risk losing the social licence to operate if some of these claims turn out to be unfounded. There's been a conflation of kelp farms with kelp forests when talking about biodiversity benefits. An increase in local diversity at farm sites may not always result in net or 'positive' biodiversity impacts, and may even have negative impacts – for example, major ecosystem changes affecting natural populations of phytoplankton and megafauna. The other point raised was that kelp farms represent novel habitats, and the species assemblage characteristic of kelp farms may not represent the local ecosystem. Forbes also raised the idea that kelp farm habitats are inherently transient, and could create ecological traps, in that organisms could be drained from surrounding ecosystems and then lost at harvest time. I found this concept pretty fascinaing and definitely something I hadn't considered or heard about before. There are some farming techniques that could potentially mitigate the ecological traps problem, such as targeted fallowing and partial harvest – but these are costly and may be challenging in the commercial context. I really feel that the evidence is stacking up that to farm seaweed regeneratively, profit can't be the only driver. Forbes suggested that we need to recognise the trade-offs and synergies between different ecosystem services related to seaweed farming, and ask the question – do we even want farms to support biodiversity? These benefits to biodiversity are variable and uncertain at best, based on current data (which it must be said, may not even be wholly indicative, given that much of it has been collected on experimental farms, which are not subject to regular disturbance from industrial activitiy). The overarching message of this talk was that when it comes to kelp, farms are not forests. The greatest benefit may come from focussing on the preservation and reforestation of forests, and sustianable biomass production from farms. So much to think about! I was blown away to discover that Forbes is very early in his career, as this presentation was one of the most exciting at the entire conference.
I rounded out my time at the symposium with a talk from Catriona MacLeod, who also happens to be our sub-program leader at the Marine Bioproducts CRC, and was a key ally in driving more First Nations participation at the conference. MacLeod discussed the business proposition/commercial potential around seaweed in Australia. Seaweed is making headlines, but what is the cost matrix? This is particularly important in an emerging market like Australia, where costs of production are likely to be relatively high by global standards. MacLeod discussed four end uses for Australian grown seaweed: human foods, ingredients, agricultural applications and novel uses. The point came up again (as it did in other talks across the week), that one way to extract more value from biomass is from integrated biorefinery, in which more than one commodity comes from a given unit of biomass. MacLeod mentioned that the use of seaweed in animal feeds and pet foods is really taking off. Agricultural applications is often seen as a secondary market for biomass, but can be a lucrative market proposition in and of itself (just look at Agrisea). For businesses, the decision is whether to sell whole/raw biomass at a relatively low margin, or value-add as an integrated business, which involves a significant investment in post processing. This is something we're grappling with at Moonrise Seaweed Co. currently. A couple of other points from this presentation:
Market pricing is highly influenced by business structure/production plan, processing requirements, product format, scale, distribution channels and the presence of bespoke (branded) products.
Corporate interest in seaweed is huge, but we need R&D investment in processing and product development.
There may be a competitive advantage to developing businesses around diversified products/multiple species.
And so concluded an absolutely mammoth couple of days at the International Seaweed Symposium in nipaluna/Hobart. I absolutely thrived taking in all this exciting research and hope my summary can be of use or interest to some of you salty legends. Make sure to check out Brad's write up for a deep dive into his experience of the symposium from a First Nations persepctive.
Keep frothing,
Chloe
Write up of a few sessions Brad attended (for details on First Nations focussed workshop and presentations, see Brad’s full conference blog post):
Muriel Dittrich from the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Alaska had a presentation titled Developing cultivation protocols for two red Alaskan seaweeds with cultural relevance. Given this title and the corresponding synopsis, I expected Dittrich to be present on a Native-ed approach to seaweed cultivation in Alaska. Strangely there was no mention of the cultural relevance to Native Alaskans, nor any reference to First Nations sovereignty or connection with seaweed. Dittrich focused the presentation primarily around land-based cultivation protocols for two species of red seaweed - red ribbon (Devaleraea mollis) and stiff red ribbon (Palmaria hecatensis). The goal is to demonstrate tumble culture methods in tanks for these species in order to then scale growth in waters off the coast of Alaska. The presentation echoed a sentiment from many other discussions at the symposium – one of concern around declining wild biomass but also one of hope in regards to cultivating seaweed.
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Staying in Alaska, the next presentation was by Angela Bowers from the University of Alaska Southeast to talk about a Private Non-Profit salmon hatchery program that began in the 1970s in response to declines in salmon fish stock. Now with over 30 hatcheries releasing 1.7 billion salmon per year the program contributes nearly 1/3 of the total salmon fishery in Alaska, with salmon being an integral of the culture and economy in Alaska.
Building on the success of this model, Bowers presented their more recent experimentation growing Sugar Kelp (Saccharina latissima) and Ribbon Kelp (Alaria marginata) alongside the salmon hatcheries in an integrated multitrophic aquaculture (IMTA) system. This method of growing seaweed is designed to soak up excess nutrient from the salmon feed and waste, including high levels of ammonia, nitrogen, nitrate, nitrite and dissolved phosphorous.
Results are still forthcoming but trials over the past few winters have shown good results, and Bowers notes that in Alsaka alone the statistics on kelp harvested in 2017 was less than 20,000 pounds while in 2022 the amount of kelp harvested in Alaska has skyrocketed to more than 500,000 pounds. The industry is growing at a rapid rate and the potential for kelp to reduce environmental impacts from the salmon industry.
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Norway is another coastal nation with a long history and culture of using seaweed. Céline Rebours is a researcher from Norway and presented her findings from studies conducted on the effects of freezing and thawing Sea Lettuce (Ulva fenestrata). There are many complexities with growing sexually reproductive species of macroalgae such as kelp, and so part of the Norwegian industry are focusing on producing vegetatively reproducing species such as sea lettuce for the food industry.
One hurdle to overcome with the food industry is how to store and transport the biomass to restaurants or consumers. Dehydration is one method used for kelp and other species, however this method produces undesirable effects on sea lettuce such as bleaching discolouration and cell wall damage upon rehydration. Rebours and her colleagues will be publishing the results of their freeze trials through the Research Council of Norway, and both chest and blast freezing methods of storing sea lettuce show promising outcomes after 10 months with darker green colour remaining strong, no tensile difference (1 month vs 10 months), an increased umani flavour, increase in bitterness, and low levels of water loss.
Recommendations for producers included blast freezing and storing for up to 5 months, however Rebours noted that energy consumption (freezing/storing) needed to be considered in regards to both the economic and environmental implications of this form of production.
