Seaweed Aquaculture's Untapped Potential

Seaweed aquaculture is the world’s fastest-growing food sector, with its yearly production volume growing at a rate of 8-10%. More people are discovering that farming seaweed is a viable livelihood, and the number of its applications is growing as the body of research on its uses expands into food, feed, fertilizer, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals, textiles, pigments, plastics, construction materials, and more. As the world frantically seeks to decarbonize, seaweeds have increasingly been touted by scientists and entrepreneurs alike as a critical piece of the puzzle.

Meanwhile, in the alternative protein space, it’s the potential of microalgae that has thus far received the majority of the attention. These microscopic biological cousins of seaweed (itself a macroalgae) are currently being explored by a number of startups working on cell-culture media for cultivated meat, and as ingredients in plant-based meat products, animal feed, and other food applications. 

But controlled cultivation of microalgae often requires expensive facilities with…