Sea To Soil

Sea to Soil

CURRENT NEWS

Alaska’s newest gold rush: Seaweed

By Juliet Eilperin 07/31/23
Dune Lankard piloted the gleaming gill-net fishing boat to Simpson Bay, where eight buoys bobbed in the sunlight. The bright orange inflatables, connected by lines and spread out across five acres, provided the only indication…
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Past climate-driven range shifts structuring intraspecific biodiversity levels of the giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) at global scales

By Jorge Assis and others 07/25/23
The paradigm of past climate-driven range shifts structuring the distribution of marine intraspecific biodiversity lacks replication in biological models exposed to comparable limiting conditions in independent regions. This may lead to confounding effects unlinked to…
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New study reveals seaweed’s hidden climate benefits

By Mary Kate McCoy 07/18/23
Humble seaweed is having a moment. It’s been heralded as a sustainable superfood, a biodegradable replacement for plastic packaging and a feed supplement to cut cows’ methane emissions. Now, new research shows that seaweed forests…
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Got Seaweed? Could kelp help New England’s declining seafood industry, climate change

By Amanda Pirani 07/17/23
Along the shores at Odiorne State Park, sparkling tide pools and gray boulders provide the perfect environment for Gabby Bradt, a marine biologist and fisheries specialist at the New Hampshire Sea Grant, to forage for…
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Kelp and seaweed forests are overlooked climate change solutions, new research reveals

By Oceanographic Staff 07/14/23
Kelp and seaweed forests, the largest coastal vegetated habitats on the planet, have been largely excluded from the ‘blue carbon’ umbrella, which encompasses the carbon mitigated by the world’s oceanic and coastal ecosystems. But a…
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Carbon sequestration and climate change mitigation using macroalgae: a state of knowledge review

By Albert Pessarrodona and others 07/12/23
The conservation, restoration, and improved management of terrestrial forests significantly contributes to mitigate climate change and its impacts, as well as providing numerous co-benefits.
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Could seaweed be the ‘fastest and least expensive’ tool to fight climate change?

By Bridget Huber 06/02/23
A bold experiment to use seaweed as part of a solution to climate change is underway in Iceland, where millions of basketball-size buoys made of wood and limestone and seeded with seaweed will be dropped…
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The most mysterious forests on Earth are underwater

By Benji Jones 05/03/23
A few miles west of San Diego is a stretch of ocean that’s rather unremarkable from the surface. The water is cold and blue. There’s some green seaweed peeking out.
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‘Unprecedented’ decline in kelp forest in Monterey Peninsula

By Tara Duggan 03/24/23
A historic ocean heat wave that ended seven years ago is still creating reverberations along the California coast by decimating large swaths of kelp forest in the Monterey Peninsula, an area famous for its sea…
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Our Energy-to-Food Future

By Christopher Marquis 07/15/22
As climate change seeps into every aspect of our food chain, including our oceans, there is an imperative to pivot to alternative sources for nutrition to keep up with the needs of our population. One…
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The Johnny Appleseed of Sugar Kelp

By Charity Robey 06/10/22
When Michael Doall was a teenager, he hated seaweed, and so did everybody else he knew on Long Island. It was an icky nuisance that brushed against your legs at the beach, fouled your fishing…
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Sea To Soil: Using Kelp As A Soil Amendment

05/24/22
Native to the East Coast, sugar kelp may become an important tool to sustainably maintain plant health, given it is rich in important micronutrients and powerful bio-stimulating compounds. Join Sean Barrett and Edwina von Gal…
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KEY RESOURCES

Lazy Point Farms

05/24/22
Lazy Point Farms are created to provide the structural, educational, and logistical support needed to advance the future of sugar kelp farming on Long Island. Whether you are an aspiring kelp farmer, an existing shellfish…

MORE NEWS

The Biggest Carbon Sink of All

By Mark Harris   05/19/22  
One of the brightest hopes for sequestering carbon lies in the darkest place on earth: the abyssal depths of the deep ocean. For millennia, dead plants and animals have sunk to the bottom of the…
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Kelp won’t help: why seaweed may not be a silver bullet for carbon storage after all

By John Barry Gallagher   03/11/22  
Over the last few years, there’s been a lot of hope placed in seaweed as a way to tackle climate change. The excitement stemmed from studies suggesting seaweed could be scaled up to capture and…
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Companies hoping to grow carbon-sucking kelp may be rushing ahead of the science

By James Temple   09/19/21  
In late January, Elon Musk tweeted that he planned to give $100 million to promising carbon removal technologies, stirring the hopes of researchers and entrepreneurs. A few weeks later, Arin Crumley, a filmmaker who went…
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Can Farming Seaweed Put the Brakes on Climate Change?

By Heather Smith   06/28/21  
Seaweed has been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for at least 500 million years. Recent studies suggest that wild seaweed continues to do humanity a solid by sequestering 173 million metric tons annually. The…
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Seaweed is About to Blow Your Climate Change Mind

By Heather Kramp   05/19/21  
Seaweed is also eaten by humans all over the world and its popularity in the U.S. is growing. Rich in protein and vitamins and minerals like calcium, iron, folic acid, and vitamin K, studies have…
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Move over, corn and soybeans: The next biofuel source could be giant sea kelp

By Diane Kim, Ignacio Navarrete and Jessica Dutton   04/01/21  
Giant kelp, the world’s largest species of marine algae, is an attractive source for making biofuels. In a recent study, we tested a novel strategy for growing kelp that could make it possible to produce…
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‘Run The Oil Industry In Reverse’: Fighting Climate Change By Farming Kelp

By Fred Bever   03/01/21  
In the race to stall or even reverse global warming, new efforts are in the works to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and put it somewhere safe. One startup in Maine has a…
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The Ocean Farmers Trying to Save the World With Seaweed

By Mélissa Godin   09/04/20  
In a cove in Bamfield, a coastal community in British Columbia, Canada, Louis Druehl steers his boat, The Kelp Express, a mile along the mountainous coastline. For 51 years, this boat has taken Druehl to…
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How Kelp Naturally Combats Global Climate Change

By Sylvia Hurlimann   07/04/19  
When we think of kelp, we conjure up images of magical underwater forests. Recent research, however, suggests that in addition to creating beautiful habitats, macroalgae such as kelp play a large role reducing the effects…
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How farming giant seaweed can feed fish and fix the climate

By Tim Flannery   07/31/17  
Bren Smith, an ex-industrial trawler man, operates a farm in Long Island Sound, near New Haven, Connecticut. Fish are not the focus of his new enterprise, but rather kelp and high-value shellfish. The seaweed and…
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Seaweed as a rich new source of heart-healthy food ingredients

07/20/11  
In an article that may bring smiles to the faces of vegetarians who consume no dairy products and vegans, who consume no animal-based foods, scientists have identified seaweed as a rich new potential source of…
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