By Will Grunewald
Photograph by Danielle Sykes
From our July 2022 issue
In 2019, 14 sea farmers along the Maine coast raised 250,000 pounds of rope-grown kelp for Atlantic Sea Farms. Now, 27 farmers — mostly lobstermen looking to diversify — harvest about a million pounds a year for the Biddeford company to turn into shredded kelp, kelp kimchee, kelp sauerkraut, fermented kelp salad, and frozen cubes of pureed kelp. At first, the frozen cubes only came in pure kelp form, an umami addition to sauces, soups, and smoothies. A few months ago, two new smoothie-friendly kelp cubes joined the lineup: One adds cranberries from Massachusetts-based juice maker Ocean Spray. The other, blueberry ginger, uses wild Maine blueberries from Milbridge-based Wyman’s.
Seaweed smoothies are good for you and for the environment: Farmed kelp sequesters carbon and requires little in the way of inputs or maintenance — just motoring out to check on the lines from time to time. And between the kelp and berries, that’s a lot of fiber, omega-3 fatty acids, essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals. It’s a sort of herbivorous surf and turf, mighty refreshing on a hot summer day.
