Chef Jacob Harth demonstrates how to harvest and cook seaweeds right at the beach!

Erizo restaurant located in Portland Oregon offers an extensive 20-course tasting menu featuring impeccable and sustainably sourced seafood prepared over a wood fire. They say that only the highest quality products are hand-selected by their chefs for their menu each week. Many of their local ingredients are foraged by their own chefs.

Chef Jacob Harth demonstrates how he selects a variety of seaweeds straight from the ocean and turns it into a world-class broth right at the beach.

This video was originally featured on Eater.com

Kampachi Farms LLC sets out to attain off shore permits for offshore seaweed

Kampachi Farms LLC, a company in Hawaii that primarily farms king kampachi is now setting out to farm seaweeds. The company is working to attain the permits for a site more than a mile off Kaiwi Point near Kailua on Hawaii Island. The farm would be about 4,300 square feet and 10 meters below the water’s surface. The farm would produce four endemic species, limu manuea or ogo (Gracilaria parvispora), limu kohu (Asparagopsis taxiformis), limu kala (Sargassum echinocarpum) and sea grapes (Caulerpa lentillifera).

Limu is used as an ingredient in poke, a traditional Hawaiian dish of raw fish. The company aims to produce limu in quantities large enough for animal feed and biofuel applications.

A great way to clean oceans and feed people.

Read more here

A new book, “Enzymatic Technologies for Marine Polysaccharides” contains an interesting chapter on seaweeds called, “The manufacture, characterization, and uses of fucoidans from macroalgae.“

Fucoidans are sulfated, complex, fucose-rich, polymers found in brown seaweeds, most notably the order Fucales known as the fucoids. The chapter details extraction methods and uses in food supplements, pharmaceuticals, bio-materials, cosmetics, and animal/ agricultural applications.

The authors claim that most fucoidan available on the market are for dietary supplementation, however, they admit that the molecule species is hard to identify and robust identification assays should be employed in any bioactive study. There is a new interest in animal health relating to fucoidan, and could be an emerging market.

Focoidans are considered safe and have a variety of uses, again showing how a completely sustainable resource (seaweeds) have a variety of revenue streams.

Seaweed in your garden: a good fertilizer and potential pest control

Many people around the world for centuries have known that seaweeds are an excellent fertilizer. Recently people have been reporting another benefit of using seaweeds in their garden, pest control.

When these reports started rolling in, researchers began experimenting on apple orchards, and so far have some conflicting data. One experiment in Washington found mite populations reduced when seaweed extracts were applied to the apples. However, in Vermont, another team found no difference in mite population but did report a reduction of maggots.

While the research remains inconclusive, many garden enthusiasts swear by it. Some claim that the timing of application is important, depending on where you are geographically and the type of pests you encounter.

Liquid seaweed is a common store item that can be used as fertilizer and pest control.

Further research into the mechanisms of these deterrents is needed. If conclusive, seaweeds could be an excellent organic pesticide for home or industrial use.