It’s here!!! It’s the single most interesting approach to the climate catastrophe I’ve heard about, ever. It’s called “integrated multitrophic aquaculture” (IMTA) by researchers and “regenerative ocean farming” (RGO) by basically everybody else. The article talks a little bit about it (and GreenWave, the non-profit org working to get more independent aquafarmers on board), but I wish they’d put more emphasis on the potential impact!

The long and the short of it is that eating protein derived from shellfish and seaweed grown this way is better for the environment than veganism. Let that sink in: we can do a lot less environmental damage than we would growing vegetables! Seaweed is an incredibly overlooked crop. Growing it takes labor, equipment, and some power (like driving boats and whatever specialized equipment an aquafarm uses), but EVERYTHING else is provided by the natural environment through sunlight, tides, currents, and the shellfish grown alongside the seaweeds themselves. There’s no fertilizer or freshwater input at all in this system, avoiding two massive and unavoidable sources of environmental damage in agriculture (and fish farming, ugh), and greatly reducing the environmental footprint of an aquafarm. You set up lines of seaweed, and you hang vertical columns of baskets with shellfish like oysters, clams, or mussels. The shellfish produce waste as they multiply, and the seaweed uses that waste as fertilizer (in addition to a lot of other human-generated contaminants in the water). The presence of an aquafarm like this improves water quality–the shellfish are great filters and have been used to clean up the water around New York City for decades while still providing a safe source of food–and the benefits are even greater when the aquafarm is located downstream of a landfarm. The highly contaminated farm runoff (fertilizer washed out by rain, animal shit, you name it) is basically more fertilizer for the aquafarm, and the aquafarm stops all that nastiness from spreading farther. We shouldn’t ever see “sustainability” issues with IMTA/RGO because it’s designed to be better than “no additional environmental harm.” It remediates the area it’s in.

Who the fuck wants seaweed? Aside from being a food for humans, adding it to cow feed significantly reduces their methane output compared to typical cow feed. Seaweed is also the hotshit new miracle ingredient in a lot of luxury skin care products. Seaweeds in biofuels. Shit, even if we just harvested and left it in the middle of the ocean, it would still be a fantastic carbon sink. (Aquatic plants LOVE carbon dioxide!) Who else wants seaweed? Sea creatures! These aquafarms also create viable habitat for the local aquatic wildlife because the goal of IMTA is to functionally mimic the natural ecosystem.

What are the drawbacks? Setting up a farm means disrupting the local environment, no two ways about it. What was once unobstructed water becomes a farm with lots of equipment hanging around. It’s going to push out some aquatic wildlife that relies on prey found in open waters. Boats powered by fossil fuels will continue to pollute. It can be risky: adverse weather throwing farm gear around can damage the area and wipe out a farmer’s season. I also don’t know how well this practice scales. If Green Giant wanted to get in on the seaweed business and set up a gigantic farm vs. a lot of small, independent farms, the environmental impact might not be proportional to the size. And because we’re humans and humans are kind of shitty, we have to build in a lot of leeway for stuff like bad legislation (i.e. legislation actively fighting against taking climate action) getting in the way of our best efforts.

Regenerative ocean farming has the potential to address so many of the major problems we’re facing in this climate catastrophe. Too much carbon? Carbon sinks. Environmental damage from agriculture? Grow food that doesn’t take the fertilizer and freshwater ag does, and provides a better protein source. Also clean up the damage done while we’re at it. Reliance on non-renewable, polluting fossil fuels? Supplement or replace with biofuels. We’re looking at modern magic!