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Seaweed is Good for You and Can Be Tasty, Too (Video)

Posted by timothy on from the how-is-it-with-sauerkraut? dept.

When you think of garage-based tech start-ups, hardware makers like Apple or data-manipulators like Google probably spring to mind before biotech, and way before farming. Lewis Weil, though, has for the last several years been perfecting the art of growing seaweed in central Texas, and his Austin Sea Veggies have garnered interest from gourmets and restaurants across the U.S. In large part, that's because seaweed is so useful for industrial purposes, it's getting harder to find eating seaweed these days. Lewis says there's nothing stopping anyone with an interest in aquaculture in emulating his success as an inland ocean farmer, but has some cautions, too -- when small things go wrong, or a record heatwave overcomes humans' puny air conditioning systems, your seaweed harvest can fail just like any other crop. Update: 09/19 16:40 GMT by T : Now with transcript! If video's too slow and linear, click below to read what Lewis had to say.

5 of 109 comments (clear)

  1. Love eating seaweed by kraln · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I make a point to grab a box of "Laver", which is roasted seaweed in salt and oil, every time I go to the local Asian grocer. It's delicious, and way better than corn chips, while still taking care of my need for crunch.

    1. Re:Love eating seaweed by vlm · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I make a point to grab a box of "Laver", which is roasted seaweed in salt and oil, every time I go to the local Asian grocer. It's delicious, and way better than corn chips, while still taking care of my need for crunch.

      This makes the point that aquaculture "seaweed" is Big Business in Asia, so your best strategy to learn how to grow it is to start by learning to read Japanese and/or Korean and import some of their books / visit their websites.

      Despite the article vibe, what they're doing is conceptually a heck of a lot more like farmers starting to grow Ginko plants in Wisconsin, than its like the HP guys inventing their first oscillator in their garage.

      Another rather important point is there is no "seaweed plant". There are a zillion plants grown in seawater that are then processed as much as plants grown in dirt. So much as some "dirt plants" get turned into caesar salad, others into egg rolls, and others into chocolate chip cookies, "seaweed" can be a heck of a lot more than sushi roll wrappers and fried chips.

      A final weird situation is you'll hear or read people who don't know anything claim that most freshwater algae is toxic in comparison to seaweed. Not so. My freshwater tropical fish tank is hardly a toxic waste dump. Yes I would not eat the algae from the industrial waste dump of a river that passes thru my home town, but that is because anything touching that water is tainted... I wouldn't eat a fish from that river, that does not mean all fish are toxic. For a example of a toxic seaweed try some "red tide". Simply plucking green things out of the ocean and eating them is probably not a recipe for success, anymore than eating random dirt plants is a good idea. "Here, try some green organic vegan fair trade hippy approved recyclable biodegradable freshly brewed hemlock tea"

      --
      "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  2. Fukushima-contaminated seaweed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    How much of the world's seaweed has been and will be contaminated by the Fukushima disaster?

    The authorities who handled the Fukushima disaster pumped a lot of radioactive waste water directly in to the ocean. Seaweed is an excellent absorber of iodine, and huge amounts of radioactive iodine were dumped from Fukushima.

    So how much of the world's edible seaweed is at risk of radioactive contamination from Fukushima? Much of the world's edible seaweed supply comes from the Asia-Pacific region, does it not? And therefore it is especially vulnerable to contamination from Fukushima.

  3. Re:Aquaculture in Central Texas by Whorhay · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I can see how a catfish farm wouldn't necessarily be using water efficiently, simply because those ponds are great for evaporation. And you said they were draining them and just dumping the water? That is pretty wasteful.

    I have been reading up on aquaponics as a means of both gardening and raising fish. Basically you have a tank where you raise fish, they turn their food into fertilizer and deposit it in the water. The water is then pumped through a series of filters and grow beds where bacteria and plants breakdown and filter out the fishes waste. The cleaned water is then drained back into the fish tank to start the process over. It is apparently a very efficient use of water so far as farming goes because the only water leaving the system is actually in plant matter, which will be eaten or composted, and some evaporation. I wouldn't be suprised if you could grow seaweed in a similiar way and actually conserve water in comparison to more traditional farming methods.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics

  4. Good source of iodine, but. by Theovon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Japanese eat a heck of a lot of seaweed, which puts an unusually high amount of iodine in their diet, which has some health benefits. The problem for this farmed seaweed is that I can't find any indication that this grower is adding any form of iodine to the under-water soil, let alone a form that is easy to absorb.

    I saw a video from one of these "prepper" people who pointed out that you don't need to take multivitamins as long as you eat a balanced diet of vegetables grown in virgin soil. We have to supplement because most farmland is depleated of trace nutrients, and the organics are only marginally better. So maybe his seaweed tastes good, but I doubt it's a good source of iodine.

    Don't be fooled by imitations.