Drew Farwell on Unsplash
Alaska’s newest gold rush: Seaweed
Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post Fisheries & Aquaculture
CORDOVA, Alaska — Dune Lankard piloted the gleaming gill-net fishing boat to Simpson Bay, where eight buoys bobbed in the sunlight. The bright orange inflatables, connected by lines and spread out across five acres, provided the only indication of the ocean farm that lay beneath the water’s surface.
Lankard, 64, spent decades fishing while running the Native Conservancy and the Eyak Preservation Council, nonprofits that have preserved a millionacres of land in this part of Alaska. But now, he raises kelp, a type of seaweed, as a way of buffering his communities and others from the dwindling numbers of wild salmon and other species they catch and hunt.
“I realized when the climate started changing, we didn’t have an answer for ocean acidification, and ocean warming, and ocean rise,” said Lankard, who holds back his long, slightly graying hair with a batik bandanna. “We had to figure out how to grow things on the land and in the sea.”
Read the full article here.
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