Following my outreach to Josh Reitsma, Fisheries & Aquaculture Specialist with Woods Hole Sea Grant and Cape Cod Cooperative Extension, I was informed that my seaweed experiment would be much easier to realize if I partnered with an existing shellfish grower – rather than go it alone. Partnering with a shellfish grower would “simply” entail getting approval to add a kelp growline to the growers shellfishing site; more or less, an amendment to an approved aquaculture plan that had already been deemed safe, sound, and in accordance with boat traffic, marine recreation, and endangered/protected species.
Going solo, on the other hand, would necessitate starting from scratch at the beginning of a time consuming process. Every aspect of the site and usage plan would need to be reviewed in full, by a suite of regulatory bodies. Basically, more criteria, text and details to review = more time required for the review process. Years versus months.
With a sound recommendation and intent to maximize the project's likelihood of happening, I opted to partner up. Fortunately, Josh Reitsma had a person in mind who was curious about seaweed and close to where I was based. Enter, Patrick. Patrick is an oyster grower with two lease sites – sites permitted for his shellfish cultivation activities. Patrick is also aware of the seaweed's intrigue, including its key role in integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA).
<aside> 💡 A definition of IMTA, from The University of Maine: Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture, or IMTA, is similar to polyculture, where two or more organisms are farmed together. In IMTA, multiple aquatic species from different trophic levels are farmed in an integrated fashion to improve efficiency, reduce waste, and provide ecosystem services, such as bio-remediation.
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Note: I'm not implying that simply adding some seaweed lines near Patrick's shellfish cages is full on IMTA. Rather, Patrick had heard of the benefits of multi-organism farming and this information had opened his mind to seaweed cultivation.
A week later, Patrick and I got on the phone, shared our enthusiasm for a kelp pilot project, and decided to get to work on the amendment paperwork – which I'll just refer to as the "application." Making the situation further fortunate (really, I was lucky to be introduced to someone, right off the bat, who was down to help move the project forward), Patrick had previously looked into the amendment requirements and had a list of questions we’d need to answer:
(1) Detailed site plan including latitude and longitude of corners
(2) Geophysical site characteristics
(3) Benthic habitat conditions
(4) Proposed species, source, quantities, and densities
(5) Proposed physical structures
(6) Detailed operational plan (species, density, feeding rates, etc.)
(7) Anticipated habitat degradation issues and plan to minimize
(8) Disposal plan for culls and gear
Some of the amendment info, such as site location and characteristics, was already available from Patrick’s previous applications to get his shellfish sites permitted in the first place. However, it was unclear whether both of Patrick’s sites would actually work for sugar kelp. One site was in shallow water – approximately 24”/60cm at low tide – and I had read that sugar kelp was usually grown at 6-10 times that depth. Patrick recommended a novel project led by Stony Brook University that demonstrated shallow water kelp cultivation with stellar results.
Stony Brook University: Is Kelp the New Kale for Long Island?
I contacted Michael Doall, Associate Director for Bivalve Restoration at Stony Brook University, and a lead on the aforementioned project. He graciously provided additional info, including a video that detailed how exactly SBU set up the shallow water growlines.