Kelp Farming, for the Climate

Seaweed and giant kelp are sometimes called “the sequoias of the sea.” Yet at a time when so many people are talking about climate solutions and reforestation — there aren’t nearly enough people talking about how the ocean can be part of that. In part one of our two-part series, we go out on the water to see how seaweed can play a role in addressing climate change, and how a fisherman named Bren Smith became kelp’s unlikely evangelist.

Calls to action: 

• Check out Bren Smith's book called “Eat Like a Fish”

• Check out Bren’s nonprofit GreenWave: A simple and direct way to help is to support GreenWave’s work, whose team is building 10 reefs and sponsoring 500 farms in the next five years.

• Start your own hatchery, farm, or underwater garden: Check out the University of Connecticut and Ocean Approved manuals and GreenWave’s Regenerative Ocean Farming toolkit. 

• Study ocean agriculture through the Algae Technology Education Consortium (ATEC) at the community college level or through Coursera courses Intro to Algae and Algae Biotechnology.

Check out our Calls to Action archive here for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. And if you take any of the actions we recommend, tell us about it! Send us your voice message, ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. We might use it in an upcoming episode. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram.

Special thanks to our guests: Bren Smith and Casey Emmett

This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by our senior producer Lauren Silverman. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rachel Waldholz and Anna Ladd. Our intern is Ayo Oti. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Emma Munger.

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