What if you could have wild Alaskan salmon that came with a side of carbon offsets? Hmm, now there’s an interesting idea, at least to us! And now, it’s actually closer than ever to reality. Enter our humble kelp farm in Uganik Bay. Wait, what??

Tollef with sugar kelp on a glassy spring day

Here’s the story: Over the course of the winter, the native aquatic plants we have seeded silently morph from barely a fuzz on the underwater grow-lines to these beautiful six-foot and longer blades. While growing (with no inputs: No electricity, fresh water, feed or fertilizer of any kind), our sugar kelp is actively scrubbing the ocean, taking up nitrogen, carbon, and phosphorous and doing its part to help mitigate the effects of climate change.

Adelia the scientist, prepping to take water and kelp samples

Every month we take samples which are analyzed by the University of Alaska to determine the effect of our sugar kelp farm on the ocean conditions, and soon we will be part of an exciting program through Greenwave to recognize the environmental services provided by our farm and others around the world. In the pilot of this program, a small group of farmers were able to remove 14,160 pounds of carbon and 1,133 pounds of nitrogen from the environment. We are looking forward to scaling up so that we as an industry can continue to positively impact the health of our oceans which nurture us and our salmon.

This has a different feel than anything else we’ve ever done - actually giving back in a measurable way to the planet. Maybe some day we will be able to support this type of earth-healing by selling carbon credits. For now, we are grateful to be doing our little part. Now if that doesn’t make you feel good about eating our salmon, we don’t know what will! Happy Earth Day - for us every day is about this type of living and interacting on this amazing planet.

Feel-Good Salmon