Another nod to the benefits of seaweed and shellfish co-culture
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Following @michael_doall 's recent *hot off the press* announcement, here's a feature on The Fish Site about the good work the Mike and the Gobler Lab at Stony Brook University have been doing on Long Island. The Stony Brook study found that growing kelp can increase pH (and reduce acidification) and protect wild and farmed shellfish populations.
@kendall_barbery - Thanks @kendall_barbery. There's a lot of good reasons, both economic and environmental, for shellfish farmers to add kelp and other seaweeds to their crops. Seaweeds can provide shellfish farmers with crop diversification and also ADDITIVE revenue streams. I emphasize additive because you don't have to replace one crop with the other but can vertically integrate seaweeds and bivalves together in a 3D ocean farming system. And in addition to crop diversification, seaweeds can provide shellfish farmers with "market" diversification. Unlike shellfish which are primarily sold into the food market, seaweeds have applications in many different markets in addition to food, including skin care products, nutraceuticals, fertilizers and soil amendments, bio-packaging products, and a wide array of extracts. The importance of market diversification was very apparent during the COVID pandemic when restaurants across the world were forced to close down, drastically limiting shellfish sales. And the recent science from our lab and others has been showing many potential benefits to bivalves when co-cultivated with seaweeds, including protection from the negative effects of ocean acidification and harmful algae blooms. Here's links to couple recently published studies studies that demonstrate these benefits of co-cultivation of seaweeds and bivalves:
Frontiers | Kelp (Saccharina latissima) Mitigates Coastal Ocean Acidification and Increases the Growth of North Atlantic Bivalves in Lab Experiments and on an Oyster Farm | Marine Science (frontiersin.org)
Mitigation of harmful algal blooms caused by Alexandrium catenella and reduction in saxitoxin accumulation in bivalves using cultivable seaweeds - ScienceDirect
@michael_doall -Another great read https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0...
@michael_doall -Another great read https://www.nytimes.com/2022/0...