The waters of Southeast Alaska are an ideal environment to grow species ranging from Pacific oysters to ribbon kelp. But growing them successfully requires in-depth knowledge of dozens of species — where they grow, when they grow, and under what conditions.
A new tool aims to make that easier.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a new guide earlier this month that chronicles more than 100 species of seaweed commonly found in Alaska.
“To grow it for the kelp industry, you need to know where you can find those spores, what time of year,” said Jordan Hollarsmith, a mariculture-focused research biologist with NOAA. “Or if you want to harvest it, to eat it, you need to know what you’re looking for, where you can find that species.”
The guide aims to advance the state’s budding mariculture industry at a time when global demand for kelp products is on the rise. Alaska mariculture is still tiny compared to other coastal states, like California, Oregon and Washington. But it is steadily gaining ground. All told, the state boasts more than 1,300 acres permitted for mariculture, according to a NOAA report from last year.
And more mariculture farms are coming. On average, Alaska received more than a dozen applications for new sites each year between 2019 and 2023. That’s more than double the average for the five years prior.
“A decade ago, I don’t know if there was a single farm,” Hollarsmith said. “And now we see multiple around Kodiak, some pretty small-scale ones in Kachemak Bay and in Prince William Sound, and then a few smaller, medium-sized ones and a large one as well in Southeast Alaska.”
Hollarsmith didn’t author the updated guide. But she says it will be a crucial tool as the industry develops across the state. Right now, the highest concentration of mariculture is in Southeast, with forty permitted farms, according to the 2024 report.
NOAA is also exploring where other farms might thrive. At one point that included the waters around Haines. But the agency later dropped Haines from the list because the area is near several state marine parks, which cannot overlap with farm lease applications, Alicia Bishop, a regional coordinator for NOAA Fisheries, said in an email.
Siting new farms is one of the key obstacles to growth. That’s because new sites have to meet several key criteria, including the right environmental conditions and limited overlap with other marine activities.
“You can’t set your farm where there’s already a fishery, where there’s military installations, a ferry route, those sorts of things,” Hollarsmith said.
Still, the industry is growing – and fast.
That’s largely due to a $49 million federal grant awarded in 2022 to a coalition of companies, agencies, tribes and researchers working to boost the industry. NOAA said at the time that the grant could help grow the industry to be worth nearly $2 billion within the next decade. A state task force, meanwhile, set a goal in 2016 to develop mariculture into a $100 million industry by 2040.
Driving the state’s interest in part is the industry’s potential to boost Alaska’s coastal economies. Hollarsmith thinks mariculture could offer more opportunities for people already working on Alaska’s waterfronts.
“We see a lot of people that participate in commercial fisheries also participating in the mariculture industry,” she said.
Hollarsmith says untapped opportunities for Alaskan oyster farms could also fuel growth. Kelp, meanwhile, is becoming an increasingly popular health food, and can also be used for other purposes. The industry is exploring how different species can be used as a strengthening ingredient in concrete, or in fertilizer to boost crop production.
While the new field guide doesn’t focus on the quickly growing industry, it does provide detailed information about dozens of seaweed species commonly found in Alaska. That was made possible in part by new genetic techniques, like DNA sequencing, that have allowed researchers to better classify seaweed and identify new species over the last decade.
“It’s really important that we’re all using the same name to describe a given species,” Hollarsmith said. “Especially in this time of kelp industry growth, when farmers are experimenting with new species and trying to understand what species are out there and what kind of benefits they might have.”
