Can it help mitigate climate change?
I used to think kelp was some huge, ugly seaweed strands growing in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California. The only time I ever paid attention to kelp was when I watched television shows of scientists studying Great White Sharks hunting seals in the kelp forests. But in school I learned a lot more about the tremendous benefits of Kelp. Experts believe these underwater kelp forests could help mitigate the environment from the impacts of climate change. What is kelp and how does it help the environment? Kelp is a large brown algae or seaweed growing in shallow oceans. Kelp is a nutrient-rich species that grows quickly, and that helps it to absorb carbon dioxide at a higher rate than other ecosystems. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“N.O.A.A.”), kelp absorbs all the carbon dioxide “released from eelgrass, salt marshes and mangroves combined …” Kelp is also “able to pluck the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere,” which is one reason kelp is being identified as a potential solution to climate change. Another benefit of kelp is that it requires no freshwater or fertilizer to grow, “making it nearly 100% sustainable.”
Sue Wicks is a kelp farmer and oyster farmer in the Moriches Bay on Long Island, N.Y. “There are about 35 oyster farms on Long Island, but Wicks is the only farm permitted to grow sugar kelp, a species that Wicks is using as a soil amendment -- a more sustainable form of fertilizer without the dangerous chemicals, she said.” She also says that "[k]elp is an environmental powerhouse." But aquaculture is not easy and there are many challenges. "Pollutants, septic runoff, lawns, fertilizers -- and that's nitrogen getting in the water, which is an explosive growth accelerant for the algae," Wicks said. Once the algal blooms spread, it "chokes the life out of the water" and can cause thousands of fish to wash up dead, she added. In the 1980’s, brown tides decimated Long Island’s aquaculture industry and algal blooms caused the collapse of Long Island’s scallop fishery. But Wicks also said that a “1-acre kelp farm in the Moriches Bay can remove as much nitrogen as 20 advanced septic systems.”
Christopher Gobler, a researcher at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University on Long Island, said that “[a]nthropogenic, or human-caused, climate change threatens to worsen those algal blooms as well as add other heat-related issues, such as acidification -- a process that is already killing off coral reefs …” And [m]ore CO2 into the ocean, lowers the pH of the ocean seawater and makes it more acidic, and that is a danger to a lot of marine life." Wicks said “[t]he acidification doesn't allow oysters, clams, or mussels to form properly because the acidity eats their little shells when they're so vulnerable,” and that is why “the region rarely gets naturally propagating native oysters anymore.” “Gobler began incorporating seaweed into his labs about a decade before kelp. When researchers put the kelp into water, they observed it taking carbon dioxide and nitrogen out of the water and replacing it with oxygen…”
Kelp farming is another example of new technology and processes in so many different fields and applications, helping to combat and alleviate the damage of climate change. These incredible people with their innovative ideas are surely the heroes of tomorrow.
Sources:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/kelp-farms-environmental-powerhouse-mitigate-climate-change/story?id=109824230
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/aquaculture/seaweed-aquaculture
