Scientists Want to Start Ocean Farms - This Surprised Me! 

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I'm surprised you didn't mention that certain seaweeds, if fed to cows even in small quantities, *drastically* reduce their methane emissions. So we can also grow seaweed as a feed supplement for cows to produce climate benefits.

I wrote multiple papers for my degree on algaculture (both micro and macro) for sequestration. A proper carbon market would go a long way toward accelerating this industry.

We're already producing enough food to feed 10 billion people, but 30 to 40% of it is wasted through poor storage and food being sent to landfill. We need to work on that side of the equation while also looking at ways of reducing the impact of the food we do need to grow - that would be a double punch for feeding people and saving wildlife.

I think a lot of it has to do with regulation. People love seafood, it's just expensive. Being able to reduce the cost of oysters significantly would get people interested in them. In addition to that, oyster shells contain a lot of minerals that can be used to create cement and concrete. There's a potential to create a secondary market for waste materials.

One option is growing seaweed as foodstock for cattle. Not a perfect solution, but an excellent stopgap option as we work on reducing the demand for beef.

Seaweed farming could be used to provide chicken feed very easily and people wouldn't necessarily know the difference.

There are even more benefits than just those you listed. Every single molecule of calcium carbonate locks up 3 molecules of carbon dioxide. So the more shellfish the more CO2 sequestered. In addition to that these farms become important breeding and feeding grounds for all sorts of marine species, meaning that wild fish populations are being affected in a positive way.

Logistics is also a concern. In many parts of the world, the distance to suitable ports makes it impractical to exploit most of the coastal waters for 3D farming. Factory ships that buy the harvest from small farming operations could solve this problem. Another incentive for growing kelp is it makes a good fertilizer for land based crops, and would free up many poor countries from their dependency on foreign fertilizer suppliers. This is especially significant now that Russian and Ukrainian fertilizers are not available-both major sources of potassium and phosphorus. And it's also been shown that kelp is a superior livestock feed, reducing methane in animal flatus by nearly 100% while providing more nutrients than soy, corn or other grains, and reducing the need for antibiotics.

Nice job! I like the idea of growing things that don't ruin the water, don't cause resistance in parasites, and don't result in seafood that is far less healthy than wild caught.

Here in the UK, we are an island surrounded by all sorts of wonderful fish and yet most will turn their nose up at kelp and shellfish. Getting schools to provide these as a healthy food option is probably the best way to change culture.

I really like this idea, above and beyond

I agree with the idea. Could we locate these 3d farms with the offshore wind farms? Thus providing additional benefits for these areas.

i love seaweed, i even eat my nori sushi wraps just by themselves as a snack, maybe it wouldn't be the most expensive snack ever if we had a few more farms in the future!

Saying we must produce more food while USA waste about half of what they produce mainly because of urban legends about "best before" dates (and I hear Japan bins whatever was produced before yesterday), maybe something else could be put higher on the list of priorities… For example, cooked milk bottles say to bin them past a few days after they are open, while they typically stay good to use for weeks after that. Even then, you can make cheese out of them…

You had me at scallops, anything to bring the price down to the point that they are affordable. I’ve seen numerous videos where they point out that the wild caught fish used for fish food is typically from less than pristine polluted waters and just pushes the toxins back up the food chain while exporting the toxins to a different part of the world. I often wondered if overfishing of invasive species such as the carp in the Mississippi River that jump into the boat would make a good alternative for fish food that might not be as toxic as the current sources that are being used. Also makes me wonder if pigs would like to eat seaweed and if so does it affect the flavor of the bacon. After all you need bacon 🥓 to wrap your scallops in. 😂

We enjoy seafood and shellfish. Bring on the 3D aqua farming. We live along the CT shore and love lobster, and fresh locally caught fish.

There are good reasons for why it's hard to get a permit for these kind of things. Things to consider: existing shipping, boating (recreation!), fishing, eco-system services and how you're replacing/modifying the local eco-system.

Seafood Friday was a firm tradition in my house growing up in the 1960s. Crab, prawns, cockles etc. It died off in the 1970s and a lot of fish shops closed in the UK. Not sure why. Fashions change I suppose. We started to eat pizzas and burgers, getting fatter in the process.

Habits don’t need to change, the price does. Unlimited demand when the price of shellfish and fish are as cheap as pork and chicken is all this industry needs.

I would definitely incorporate more shellfish and seaweed into my diet. If various macroalgae species were offered as pasta, flour, and other products, it's conceivable that it could gain a lot more popularity.

There are other methods for increasing yield and decreasing waste such as better storage technics(many countries do not have big cooling storages) passive cooling with carbon,also increasing yield with giving bacteria that binds nitrogen in air or increasing ecficiency of photosynthesis thorugh gmos. Better transportation methods. We dont have any shortage in crops just one place gets lots of food other places do not thats all.

NZer here. Amazing that so many people don't like shellfish! They should come to NZ and try our paua (abalone) - the best in the world, I reckon! Mince it up and make patties then fry it briefly with a bit of butter - add herbs too if you like. *Delicious!* All fish and chip shops here make paua fritters - deep-fried minced paua - awesome!

I am allergic to seafood myself but I am all for more of this to feed the world!

I hear this but I can't stop thinking of the salmon farms in sensitive Tasmania waters in Australia. A hold has been placed on any further expansion because it's destroying these natural waters and creating dead zones below them.

way overdue, Thanks for featuring this subject

Awesome idea, growing plants in the ocean would also invite small fish and other creatures to live and hide amongst the plants and provide food for the fish as fish frequently enjoy eating vegetation. Same benefits as growing mangrove trees along coastal areas.

Life in balance. The world needs new solutions to solve the biggest problems even if not equally distributed. An increase in aqua farming would reduce the strain on terrestrial farming.

Can you use seaweed grown from these farms to feed cattle? That could potentially be used as a wedge to open to door for lawmakers in the US to get onboard, if they could be used to supplement the massive amount of corn used for feed, freeing that up for consumers since that's more in line with the current diets, and also help expose people to the culinary uses of it also? Just a random thought.

The US alone disposes over 30-40% of the food it produces. Our problem isn't the lack of food, it's how it's disproportionately distributed and wasted. Restaurants throw away tons of food each week rather than donate it for various reasons. Like most of the problems in the US this comes down to greed.

This topic fascinates me. I write this at the beginning. I'm mainly interested in clam farms, and kelp beds. Kelp beds can be not only a good food source, but could also be an answer to global fertilizer shortages.

we also need to make a big push towards vertical land farms

I love seafood, but have you seen the price? If you want to create more demand, the prices will have to come down. For instance Costco Kirkland Seaweed cost $25.78 for 10 × 0.6oz packs, or $25.78 for 0.375 pounds.

First, I thought we were looking at an expected population drop. But the part I have the hardest time with is this. I live in Colorado. When I go to the coasts I live off sea food (I have no problem eating kelp or seaweed). Most states in the U.S. are landlocked. Sure, there’s sea food here, but in comparison to the coasts you pay more money for lower quality (frozen instead of fresh). There’s a reason you don’t find oysters, muscles, and sea bass at a Kansas BBQ. I love the idea, I’m just concerned about execution. In order to get all that fish inland you have to use high energy cooling systems in some sort of transportation that is typically petroleum based… Do we still get a benefit from this? I’m guessing you’d have to use electric boats so you’re not polluting your farming waters, electric cooling in electric… Trucks? Airplanes? Trains? to move this product… and then you have to store it (more freezers) until it’s consumed. In the U.S. the primary source of all this electricity is? Burning coal. We still have a LOT of work to do on infrastructure to make this as positive as it sounds Ike it could be… And we have to do it while politicians are being provided $500 steak dinners.

I live in an area that was filled with shellfish. Now the industry is all but gone. The area was over fished by big company’s. The days of the small fisherman are almost gone. I do not eat farmed fish today because it tastes bad. The meat today is also very bad. Our food supply sucks now. This sounds like a better idea. 😀✌️

there are a few scenarios where we are not reaching 10 billion. a plateau of 9 billion, followed by a small collapse down to 8 billion also seems plausible based on the data.

Pam here…. How do you protect your farm and your crop? I would think poachers would have a field day.

Never in our history have so few hunter gatherers had to support so many who don't produce or provide anything of value

I wouldn’t mind having fish tacos more often lol.

I live on the coast of BC, and I'm surprised this hasn't taken off here more for the 3d farming. Especially with the native tribal groups taking so much control over everything you'd think this would be something they would do as they don't have to meet most government policies and controls as they currently operate outside of the systems of governance and control that most others in Canada have to play by. Who doesn't love some quality seafood! And agreed we need more of this in all places and to work in conjunction with all other segments of farming 😀

if somebody can come up with a cheap way to prepare it into something longer lasting like cured meats and keep the price well below other protein options, it would have a place in my basket - my main issue with seafood is how often I get sick from it

The demand side is easy to solve, those proteins can be fed to livestock reducing the impact on the land on so many levels. But regulation is a different story, here in the EU is more common but still hard to get around all the red tape

I'm at American Dairy Farmer and also in ag tech entrepreneur I can say without a doubt at least in America in throughout the world We could easily double our food production just with no in techniques like precision agriculture better management better use of fertilizer tile drainage and more irrigation but the crop prices are not high enough to justify it and when you look outside of America production per animal or per acre is abysmal even in Canada dairy farms there are less than half as productive as American farms are. Another thing that pretty much no one knows about is that the vast majority of feed that goes to animal agriculture are recycled by-products from human food consumption that used to be landfilled because they're inedible for humans but ruminate cattle can do very well on them for example we grow soybeans for soy oil for human consumption as a byproduct we have soy holes and soybean meal when you make beer you have brewer's grain and Brewer's yeast that goes for cattle when you make ethanol you have dried distillers greens that goes to cattle when you grow wheat you have wheat meds that go to cattle when you grow canola you have canola meal that goes to cattle all of this used to be thrown away. In addition much of the land is either to dry to wet to steep to Rocky to have row crop farming or greenhouses and that is perfect for grazing cattle at a very low cost they feed themselves on pasture That is the reason why so many acres are dedicated to animal agriculture because most of the land in the United States is in the west and it's too dry and low quality to grow corn or soybeans or anything else. Don't get me wrong I'm all for innovation and trying all kinds of new things and seen whatever works in a free market If we can find a more efficient low cost way to grow food for the planet that'd be great but it's not true to say that we could feed the world with our current land higher prices for food would drive up investment innovation technology and other things on farms increase production The reason why people are food insecure around the world is only because they do not have enough money not because there's lack of food or ability to get food to them.

Really appreciate the efforts of ATMO device developers, but it looks like they forget the EMF exposure, which more and more people experience as making them ill. A good source for the negatives effects of EMF`s on humans and all life in general is "The Invisible Rainbow" by Arthur Firstenberg.

Maybe you wanna look into Vertical Farming and the economics of it. Maybe more interesiting probably is the Techincality in it but see for your self 👍👍

I almost never eat beef sticking mainly to pork, fish and chicken. I would definitely like to try more sea based options.

A couple of grand to buy a small boat. I realize I’m nitpicking but boats are expensive to buy and maintain. However, this is a very interesting video. Thanks for making this

Food production is less of a problem than food distribution. We currently produce enough food to feed the planet now yet some still starve.

I have seen the benefits for doing the fish side of farming in the deep seas as they are deserts of the oceans, which helps with the disease of things and the quality of the fish. I am all for being more efficient from on land farming to the ocean, and it's a good thing to evolve on all fronts.

we should include land use for lawns…

Biggest thing I have to adjusting my diet is price to fill value

Like so many of your listeners, you're just now catching on to this more regenerative strategy for combining food supply with support for biodiversity and climate recovery. In truth some of these ocean entrepreneurs have been refining their systems for over a decade now. So thanks for profiling it. The more people aware of the many ways we can do much better, the sooner we'll get there. How can we feed you more stories to investigate and then profile?

These farms will need to not abuse the fish or feed them low quality feed, and then the prices need to be affordable for people to decide they will start eating them. The current farms today use many shortcuts that produce unhealthy versions of their wild counterparts. Other than that this seems to be the water permaculture counterpart that we needed and I hope it gets off the ground here in the USA. I was under the impression that Americans ate a lot of seafood and shellfish already. Kelp would need to be introduced to a wider audience outside of the Asian American Community, as it should because it is so healthy.

This is great but we still need to reform agriculture on land. A great way is perennial grain and oil seed crops. Thia helps with water, fertilizer, and herbicide usage, decreases topsoil erosion, and makes intercropping much more economically viable to do. Check out the land institute working on this

as far as demand: the cost of ethically & safe-raised fish is much more expensive than the wild-caught. Farm-raised has gained a bad reputation because of the very points you mentioned (thanks for being honest on that) If there were a coding or labeling of these better sea-farms, and it were priced closer to attainable; I'd adapt to safer fish/seafood.

Beautiful

7:12 I love how this video clip of the fish is running backwards.

So I don’t know if this was already brought up, but I’ll start by saying that I love the system being presented here, and what it can offer. I live in Florida and I can see something like this being very feasible to implement in certain areas of our state. However, I’d like to challenge the statement made repeatedly that there isn’t enough land to grow food. There may not be enough land to have a weed-free grass lawn and enough land to grow food. If everyone began growing SOME food in their yards, more than enough food could be grown to help meet the population’s actual dietary needs, and the offset of food needs would actually reduce the amount of mass food production needed. This has been studied a lot, and it’s not actually a space or land problem, it’s a methodology and willingness problem. It’s inconvenient to grow a garden, so we let the grocery store supply our needs. Grocery stores rely on mass production, which causes the problem discussed. We’re attacking the wrong problem. Doesn’t take anything away from the value proposition of the seafood farming venture, it’s value just doesn’t have to be based on a false or limited premise.

Shellfish will likely never be as popular as beef in the US. It's just a more complicated dish, and there are higher risks of illness that puts a lot of people off of it. I know I personally only eat shellfish if I'm at a nice restaurant I can trust. But seaweed... seaweed is the real MVP here. Its use cases are so widespread, that it will genuinely be the most important crop of the 21st century (bamboo, hemp, and mushrooms all following close behind). It can be used for supplements, protein shake powders, animal feed, soups, salads, wraps, dips, sauces, dried snacks, fertilizer, and probably a lot more. Considering how cheap seaweed will be once scaled (considered zero inputs, and much cheaper "land" costs), this is going to radically alter the global economy. It should be a significant factor in the coming "Great Deflation."

Yes... I love trying new foods. And the ocean needs help balance acidic levels, which land-based farming (and landscaping) have seriously affected. It would be nice to turn that around and reduce Co2 levels as well. Great video...

It probably also helps to restore and boost land agriculture. With the gradually exhaustion of best phosphate reserves, more and more efforts on biological waste management are implemented. While 100% recycling is impossible, if the input is boosted with an important fraction of sea products where phosphorus was obtained from sea, instead of a flux from land to sea, the direction could become opposite, and land quality could grow over time, instead the current direction towards exhaustion of nutrients.

This sounds wonderful, I love sushi

Great video! I learnt a lot!

A key to acceptance is cost. Reducing the cost of any food will increase its purchase by people who buy what they can afford, especially poor people. Everyone wants healthy food for their kids, but chicken is popular because it's cheap not because chicken buyers don't like beef.

I think the big hurdle is convincing people to include foods the have not gown with into the regular diet. Yes, we can go out once or twice to a restaurant and eat them but that does not solve the problem. Although I grew up in the Caribbean and my wife is from Pennsylvania our food at home never includes fish (unless I fish it and even then my wife does not like bluefin tuna). We will eat it only in restaurants. An average Spaniard consumes 92lb. of fish and shellfish per year whereas an american only consumes 19lb. The problem, we did not grow with it as part of our diet. In the Caribbean, and parts of Central an South America, the diet is rice and beans with many eating it for every single meal. Difficult to change and start eating seaweed all of a sudden.

Amazing Video bro

The viking in my neck of the woods (North of Scotland) used to collect and eat seaweed. The Church stamped this out.

I would love to see a combination of 3 ocean farming, offshore wind and biorock to support coral growth.

I did this in high school 1986-1990. it makes sense. Winchester Bay, OR. Umpqua Aquaculture. It should have taken a larger role long ago.

I vastly prefer kelp to kale ! Thanks, Ricky & company, for spreading optimistic news!

We might not be able to enjoy eating raw oysters much longer. Just saw a video on flesh eating bacteria and it seems like its becoming more prevalent within the oyster population. It can become highly fatal within a short period of time. Scary stuff. Oysters are still great for cleaning and filtering the water though!

Great video

It’s a very interesting space for sure. Huge potential.

If it could be done cheaply enough; one huge market is kelp for organic fertilisers.

I love the fact that the fear mongers never addressed the shrinking world population. We will be fine. We become more developed world and we adjust naturally to what resources are available.

Pounds of feed per unit of meat is unfair to Ruminant livestock. There is lots of pastureland around the world that is unfit for row crop farming. Also, grasslands can be more effective than forests in the same area at capturing CO2 by building up soil carbon. Built up soils hold more fresh water, reducing the effects of both droughts and floods.

The 3D ocean farming techniques sound great! But about your comments about land use - I don't know how people in the rest of the world make this decision, but I can tell you how the decision is made here on the western Canadian prairies. No farmer would graze cattle on land that is good enough to farm wheat, flax, barley, oats, canola or corn. You can make a much better profit growing grain than raising cattle. But if the soil is low-quality, all you can do is to farm animals.

Aquaculture isn't just the ocean you could do it in your backyard and alot more. Just need to learn filters and biofilters

I find it particularly funny how these "water consumption metrics" are created and used as arguments. See, the water used in crops becomes either 1) rain through evaporation, 2) runs down in rivers, or 3) restores aquifers - all of which are cyclic, i.e. not lost. All of which can be used to irrigate more crops. Why the hell use "water consumption" for any sort of comparison then?! 🤷

One of my first concerns would be a national security one. Having a substantial dependence on farming in coastal waters opens our food supply up to being vulnerable to attack or being tainted by an enemy nation. It's also worth discussing the effects of adverse weather events on such farming. What if a hurricane wiped out x% of our food supply in a day? The idea is definitely interesting, but not without concerns.

Great conversation

You make me wanna do fish farming. We do cattle farming and goat and sheep farming. But we still desire to have a lot more fish. I want to encourage our people to do it. One pound of feed for one pound of salmon protein? Who can beat that?

I live in the USA, white fish and shrimp seem good. I'd like to see scrub land used for agrivoltaics, for food, biodiversity, and/or pollinator support.

The main problem increasing food production environmental or not is it will have a direct effect on population... increasing it as there's more food available. Food and water is the natural control of population in every species.

Before the invention of the automobile, more than a third of all farmland was used to produce biofuel, in the form of hay, to keep the transport system fed. Replacing horses with the internal combustion engine freed up that land for feeding human beings. If one is going to say that the land used to feed animals would be better used to feed humans directly, maybe we should refrain from using ethanol or biofuels to replace stuff that could be drilled out of the ground.

I love seafood but I live in the Midwest

I'm in for the seaweed consumption, but shellfish are like you said filters of the ocean, and the ocean is very polluted. So I would not eat them, as they would most likely poison me with heavy metals, and industrial chemicals in the long run. I say go plant based or vegan is the best to avoid all of these problems you are talking about.

Excellent 👌

What are your thoughts on vertical aeroponic farming in stackable converted shipping containers like FreightFarms.

Fresh water Agriculture is also a viable option.

Yep, seaweed is great stuff and very versatile.

Love sea food. But hard to get folks in a huge country with ocean shore to land ratio is an issue. Not raised with it, hard to get used to it later on. Was born and raised in the desert nut I love sushi. I am a rarity…lol. 40 miles to the nearest sushi place sadly. Only 120 to the ocean.

as an avid proponent of more meat eating, I agree that ocean farming - if done right - can help sustain our need for fresh protein. i love teh idea of using seaweed to create feed for land animals.

i love a steak or burger but we eat fish or shellfish 3 to 4 times a week and really enjoying it great upload as usual thank you

i thought the plan was to drastically cull us off . WEF yay ! ugh ....

Is there any specific product I can try that is grown this way? We already switched majority of our meals away from beef towards chicken, sneaking some non-meat meals from time to time, might be worth to try something new in this direction, too.

What I would need is a way to sample some of this stuff. IE: What is a kelp salad like? Is it similar to lettus in texture? Id imagine it some kind of slimy limp leaf which does not sound at all appetizing. On the other hand, I do love seafood, but in general, is so expensive.

Ricky, Did you know that cows LOVE to eat kelp? And when they eat kelp they don't fart (methane pollution cumulative amount is serious)... cheers, thanks for doing what you do. KH

People need learn to garden for them selves , that would be a big help.

YES!!