SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Seaweed Farming Is Here On LI

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“Kelp Help” is the title of an article in this summer’s issue of Sierra magazine, the publication of the Sierra Club. Its subtitle: “Can farming seaweed put the brakes on climate change?” 

“Seaweed agriculture,” the academic publication Frontiers in Marine Science has reported, is “the fastest-growing component of global food production.”

Seaweed farming has come on strong worldwide, and it is being developed now in Suffolk County as a way to counter a number of severe environmental problems. 

Dr. Christopher Gobler, co-director of the Center for Clean Water Technology at Stony Brook University and a professor within the university’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, commented last month about how a small area of kelp can absorb as much nitrogen as several of the new Innovative/Advanced (I/A) septic systems being installed to reduce nitrogen emanating from cesspools. As to climate change, he notes how kelp soaks up carbon dioxide.

His team has been harvesting kelp from test “farms” in Moriches Bay, Great South Bay, Peconic Bay and in the Long Island Sound.

The kelp of choice—sugar kelp—is native to Long Island. A brown rubbery plant, it can grow underwater in fronds up to 15 feet long and astonishingly quickly.  Also, sugar kelp appears, said Dr. Gobler, to contain compounds lethal to the red algae that can infect shellfish and cause sickness, indeed death, in people. Kelp can be used as fertilizer.

And, moreover, it’s edible. Attending a “kelp-tasting” sponsored by the Cornell Cooperative Extension Marine Program at Noah’s restaurant in Greenport at which she received “a much-needed grounding in the current state of help farming,” Charity Robey, the food columnist at The Shelter Island Reporter, “learned a number of new ways to use kelp in cooking.”

“Toasted kelp,” Ms. Robey related, “is like a blue-corn-tortilla-chip-of-the-sea. It is full of umami, a taste that is also associated with meat and mushrooms…” Chef Noah Schwartz also, “For the starter…wrapped a tenderized strip of savory kelp around a chunk of seared yellow fin tuna. Definitely a crowd-pleaser.”

Frontiers in Marine Science declared that “seaweed agriculture…offers a slate of opportunities to mitigate” climate change.  The largest seaweed-producing nations are China, Indonesia and the Philippines. 

“The Upshot.” Sierra says: “Seaweed farming has promise. In addition to sequestering carbon, it can provide habitat for fish and mitigate local effects of ocean acidification.”

“Still,” declared the magazine, “the most effective way to sequester carbon is to not release it in the first place.”  Quite correct, but this and seaweed farming are not mutually exclusive. 

Meanwhile, in the realm of aquaculture, there’s the push underway in many parts of Suffolk for growing oysters—not only because they taste wonderful but for the environmental good they can do.

“Oysters eat murky water for lunch,” notes the website of the Save The Great South Bay Oyster Project. “If we bring them back in volume, they’ll clean the bay better and faster than any human can. Did you know that one oyster can filter up to 50 gallons of water a day. What could that mean for The Great South Bay? It’s been calculated that 5,000 acres of oyster farms in the bay would be enough to deal with 147% of the nitrogen problem. A clean bay AND 5,000 acres of oysters, with each acre producing $100,000+ in revenue. A revitalized bay AND a revitalized shellfishing industry. And the resurrection of a way of life that has seemingly vanished.”

To our west in New York City, the “Billion Oyster Project” is underway—and there’s a link to Suffolk. On little Fishers Island, northeast of Orient Point and part of Southold Town, what’s now the Fishers Island Oyster Farm was begun in 1981 by Sarah and Steve Malinowski. “We got our start during a time when only a few people were exploring the possibilities of modern aquaculture, and it took a lot of determination, collaboration, and a few serendipitous accidents for us to arrive at where we are now,” Steve explains. 

They started growing clams and put out a handbook on clam aquaculture. Then, in “the mid-1980s brown tide…decimated the Peconic Bay scallop industry.” And they began growing scallops “to restock scallops into Peconic Bay. Meanwhile, the hatchery where we were obtaining scallop seed mixed some oyster seed into a delivery. Thus, we began to grow oysters!”  

Soon the Fishers Island oysters were being served in restaurants far and wide. And not only were oysters being exported west, but their son, Suffolk native Peter Malinowski, co-founded and became executive director of the Billion Oyster Project. It has so far planted 45 million oysters many of which have been growing in a reef the project built, “the largest reef in New York Harbor history.” Declares the project: “It took less than 100 years for New Yorkers to wipe out the oyster population in New York Harbor. And, the Billion Oyster Project is rebuilding this natural resource and habitat.” 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.