Lobstering is a half-billion-dollar industry in Maine, but doom is on the horizon if the coastal waters continue to heat up. In recent years, the Gulf of Maine has been setting temperature records and warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans.
Atlantic Sea Farms, based in Saco, Maine, is fast at work to turn the tide, fostering an underwater, regenerative crop that reduces the acidity of local waters and absorbs significant amounts of carbon. The business is the first commercially viable one to introduce domestic, fresh seaweed products to the marketplace. Before, the only kind available was imported and dried, from sometimes murky sources.
“Kelp is super nutrient-dense and also delicious, with great umami flavor,” says Briana (Bri) Warner, 36, Atlantic Sea Farms’ president and CEO. Five specialty food products launched in 2019: Fermented Seaweed Salad, Sea-Chi (kelp kimchi), Sea-Beet Kraut, frozen kelp cubes for juicing up smoothies and soup, and ready-cut frozen kelp. Foodservice partnerships, retail outlets, and meal kit companies like Daily Harvest and The Little Beet soon signed on.
Maine-grown seaweed is more rediscovered than new, having been a popular staple through World War II. Kelp is even found in 200-year-old recipes for New England baked beans, Warner points out.
“When the food system got industrialized, seaweed fell out of vogue,” she says. “All that institutional knowledge was lost.”
Education is part of Atlantic Sea Farms’ mission, providing lobstermen with free seed from two species (sugar kelp and skinny kelp) to harvest in their off-season. In 2020, the aquaculture company contracted with 24 of them, hauling in roughly one million pounds.
“We had to make a significant pivot over the last few months,” Warner says, referring to restaurant shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They had just collaborated with chef David Chang for a Tingly Sweet Potato and Kelp Bowl to be sold at the fast-casual chain Sweetgreen.
Pivoting is familiar to Warner. Her prior careers include working as a diplomat in Africa and Europe and opening a pie company in Maine featuring international flavors and employing newly resettled refugees.
“We were heading into what could have been a very turbulent time, but never once did we consider not honoring our contracts with those farmers,” she says. “We bought back and processed every bit of that kelp. Nobody gave up.”
Retail sales took off at hundreds of grocers. By next April, she expects the kelp products to be carried in 1,800 outlets. As Americans’ appetite for kelp grows, the Maine coast will become less dependent on the volatile lobster industry.
“So often with collapses we wait until the thing happens and the industry is gone, and people go bankrupt and sell their boats,” Warner says. “Investing now to diversify their incomes and mitigate climate change means there will be a speed bump instead of a colossal wreck.”
Timeline
— 2007 Briana Warner enters the U.S. Foreign Service, working as a diplomat in Guinea, Libya, and U.S Mission to the EU in Brussels, making friends everywhere with her home-baked pastry
— 2009 The first domestic, commercially viable seaweed farm, Ocean Approved, is planted in Maine
— 2013 Warner moves to Maine and starts the Maine Pie Line, a wholesale bakery featuring pies with an international flair and employing newly resettled refugees
— 2015 Warner is hired as the first economic development director at the nonprofit Island Institute in Rockland, Maine
— 2018 She is named CEO of Ocean Approved, and reorients the mission to focus on helping fishermen adapt to, and mitigate the effects of, climate change by farming kelp in their off-season
— 2019 She rebrands the company as Atlantic Sea Farms and works to train and get 16 fishermen turned kelp farmers in the water; launches several first-to-market products including seaweed salad, Sea-Chi (kelp kimchi), frozen kelp cubes, and ready-cut frozen kelp
— 2020 Atlantic Sea Farms Fermented Seaweed Salad wins the SFA sofi™ New Product Award in the Pickles & Olives category; number of seaweed farmers grows to 24 and the company removes nearly 80,000 pounds of carbon from the water through kelp farming
Julie Besonen writes for The New York Times and is a restaurant columnist for nycgo.com.
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