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

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.

Comments

Re:Love eating seaweed

[vlm]

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"