Farming Kelp at Scale: An Alaskan Case Study

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The project set out to produce biofuel from seaweed.

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And to do that, you need to produce it at a cost point.

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And that cost point was about $80 per dry metric ton.

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So it's really low and really cheap.

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So in order to do that, we've had to figure out

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how we could optimize and increase our efficiency

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and dirt, uh, different aspects of the farming industry.

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So the hatchery out on the farm harvesting

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and it, this project doesn't involve the processing side,

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but that also, it's sort of something

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that we've looked into as well

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With my collaborators.

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We conceived of the project to demonstrate how efficiently

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and how effectively we can grow kelp here in, in Alaska.

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After a little bit of back

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and forth with the Department of Energy, it ended up that,

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uh, Alaska needed to be brought in to this.

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So Univers of Alaska Fairbanks became the lead

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of this project, and it's in cooperation now with, uh, uh,

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woods Hole and University of Connecticut

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and Private engineer

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and Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation and Green Wave

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and other, other organizations.

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For the, for the RBU project, I was, I was brought in to,

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you know, facilitate, like to do the gear work,

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deploy the gear to harvest the gear, giving feedback

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to the engineers that were involved with the project

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and trying to make stuff better.

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My site, Popoff Island site hosts the project,

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so my lease is where I would say 90%

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of the things we are trying we're done

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And we've had some failures to overcome.

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And, uh, so like any other type of agricultural experiment,

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basically we're, we're learning as we go

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With kelp farming, you can, you have one chance

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to try something each year, so you, you try it

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and you don't really know if it worked or not till harvest,

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and then the next year you sort of iterate

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and that's, so like, the time

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between iterations is pretty long.

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We can't try like a bunch of different things at once

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and then hopefully, you know, weed it out from there.

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It's just like, try it this year. Oh, it didn't work.

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Try this slightly different thing.

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Oh, that worked and like keep making

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incremental improvements like that.

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So on this project we use this Cliff Gotti designed,

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um, ary system.

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So it's almost, if you can imagine sort of a bridge,

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it's got that nice little arch and

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because it has that arch,

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all the lines are under the same amount of tension.

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I think the overall idea

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of the catenary style farm is great

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because it can be changed pretty easily

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If you had like a normal sort of square system

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and just try to put lines between that.

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They'd all have different tension levels,

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but that arch allows for that even tension.

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And so this allows us to have lines

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that are very closely spaced

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and so on normal farms they have individual long lines and

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because those move sort of freely

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and aren't under as much tension,

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you have to space 'em out further.

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So on most farms, maybe they're like 25 feet is the closest,

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maybe they're usually like 50 feet,

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but here we can have lines that are two

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and a half feet apart.

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So we're really optimizing that growing area

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and we can produce a lot more seaweed in a smaller area,

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which is, you know, it has benefits in terms

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of the aesthetics, in terms of paying for lease areas.

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So you need a smaller lease area,

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but you can grow more kelp.

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We developed this thing called the, the Harvest Buddy,

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and it was, it was basically a, a really small barge,

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16 feet long by 10 feet wide by.

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What I like the most is we were able

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to really shrink down the footprint needed for

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the machinery that you needed to harvest.

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And so it allows, allows a smaller, cheaper

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harvest vessel to kind of continuously harvest.

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And that was what RPE was really interested in.

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I think what gives me hope is the energy

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and the enthusiasm of the participants, the farmers,

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all the associated industries that supply the farmers,

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that byproduct the buzz in the marketplace.

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The fact that half the farmers I know are women, you know,

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this is, this is kind of rare in maritime industry for women

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to take a a, a more assertive role and, and,

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and participatory role, not just in the processing

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and downstream stuff, but also in the farming.

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It gives me hope that this is a well balanced

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and well managed and a

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and a truly participatory process in the public sphere

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as well as in our social economic development.

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The hope I have, especially in lieu of some

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of the fisheries disasters we've incurred in Alaska

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recently in the closure of some fisheries,

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notably our, our crab fishing.

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I hope that it gives fishermen an alternative,

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something else to do on the water.

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Um, something that's more stable from year to year

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and something that we can control

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and that has possibly positive ecological impacts.

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Um, so that's, that's what I hope, I really hope

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that it really does add to Alaska's economy in a,

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in a beneficial way.

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And the kelp is out here is just huge.

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You know, it's, there are very few spots on the east coast

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where we get kelp that's this productive like

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it is in Kodiak, Alaska.

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I think it's important to recognize that all forms

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of food production have unintended consequences.

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It's not unique to aquaculture, it's particularly rife

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with monocultures.

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So this is something that we should,

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we should learn from

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agriculture, not make the same mistakes.

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We don't know the best way to do everything yet.

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And so we're constantly learning.

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There's always room for improvement.

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Don't sort of rest on your laurels

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and just say, oh yeah, that's good enough.

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There are always better ways.

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And having, having different people from different

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backgrounds look at these problems

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and come up with different solutions

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and trying, trying this version versus

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that version has really been beneficial for us.

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So it has been a team effort to build this sort of

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optimal farm.