This spring afternoon the dull pewter-hued ocean advances to shore with a choppy gait. Out farther, whitecaps show the presence of stronger wind at play, darkening the surface to a deeper silty-navy. The heartbeat of waves meeting the beach anchors all aspects of our lives. Having fished on this great expanse of water for lifetimes, our consciousnesses are thoroughly intertwined with its motions and moods, from silken glass – the gentlest of cradles - to iron-strong surges of force; from rain-gray monochrome to blinding cerulean studded with diamonds of light.

Our lifetime of harvesting seafood from its depths links our thoughts not just to what happens on the visible surface, but also below us, in the invisible currents and swirls of light and nutrients. We think of the millions of small fish, herring, and krill, the phytoplankton that glow with bioluminescence on moonless late summer nights – all the beings that feed our beloved salmon. Or we simultaneously curse and marvel at the stinging jellyfish which undulates with such mysterious elegance and causes temporary but significant pain when it finds its way into our eyes, elicting a heavy mucous response while we work. As fishermen, it has been our mentality to uniformly dread dealing with rafts of kelp and seaweed floating into our nets, pushed by the waves. Each frond and blade caught in the meshes makes it more visible to the salmon we are trying to harvest, and cleaning it out can take hours or even days – perhaps the most demoralizing work we have to do in pursuit of our harvest. Most fishermen carry machetes to cut up drifting bull kelp so that it will sink before it hits their net, and volume pumps and pressure washers are necessary tools of the trade to blast pesky ocean organic flotsam from our web.

But a transformation has occurred in our minds since we began farming kelp – specifically, local wild sugar kelp (saccharina latissima) – this winter. Once viewed negatively, kelp is now one of our favorite ocean-related topics to learn and dream about. Watching the growth of fronds throughout the course of this season has fed our patience and optimism muscles and has brought us to a deep appreciation of this truly amazing organism that requires no inputs – no food, fertilizer, fresh water – to grow inches per day when the spring sunlight kicks into gear.

While what we grow and possibly what most people are familiar with is kelp as a food source, and we are undeniably enthusiastic about the benefits of kelp in our diets (you can read more about this at the Blue Evolution site, which is the company that will be purchasing and processing our harvest), there are other uses too. The ideas around the growth of the kelp industry that really excite the neurons of our imaginations have to do with impacting the health of our oceans and by extension the rest of the planet. Check out some of the following ideas if you have a hankering for some upbeat visions for the future:

Some folks in Maine are researching using kelp as a carbon sink. We couldn’t be more on board with this idea. In fact, we are currently part of a grant project funded by the Department of Energy, collecting data from our farm which researchers with the University of Alaska will use quantify the carbon and nitrogen our farm sequesters.

Or how about this? Kelp can be made into completely biodegradable/compostable plastic substitutes. No more plastic packaging in our lives would be a glorious thing! We are aware of a company, Oceanium, which is working on this as well as on making biofuel out of kelp.

The lists of creative and impactful ideas for kelp go on and on – just google it, or better yet read the book Slime by Ruth Kassinger – and each time we hear of a new use for the organism our appreciation for it grows. Thanks to our new winter’s work with kelp, we are developing a much richer, deeply layered sense of the briny life-force that nourishes so much of the world in so many ways – the ocean itself. It is truly our privilege to live at its margins and work on its surface, dipping into the mysteries it harbors, learning to dance to its rhythms, and maybe actually doing something concretely quantifiable that benefits the health of the planet. We look forward to sharing more of this journey with you.

-Adelia & Tollef

A Renewed Relationship With The Ocean