Opportunity, just below the surface
In the cold waters of Casco Bay, a new business venture spawns hope of access to a $7 billion-a-year industry.
By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer
October 18, 2009
Paul Dobbins, kelp farmer and co-owner of Ocean Approved LLC, carries a net bag of sugar kelp seedlings across a raft near Bangs Island in Casco Bay. Dobbins and business partner Tollef Olson have what is believed to be the first kelp farm in the United States.
Photos by Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer
Paul Dobbins monitors the growth of his sugar kelp crop near Bangs Island. Kelp is a staple of the Asian diet, Dobbins says, and kelp products are common at natural food markets.
Consumers can find slaw cut kelp harvested and packaged by Ocean Approved in local stores and fish markets.
Paul Dobbins inserts a tag into a net bag of kelp that is being grown on a raft, along with rope mussels, near Bangs Island in Casco Bay.
CASCO BAY — Tollef Olson and Paul Dobbins poke the roots of young kelp plants into a mesh sleeve.
The brown seaweed hangs off the sleeve like boiled lasagna noodles as Dobbins lowers it into the cool water west of Chebeague Island.
"These plants, by the spring, will be six to eight feet long," said Olson.
It's planting time at what is believed to be the first kelp farm in the United States. In a few months, if all goes according to plan, the grown plants will be harvested, cut, cooked and turned into, well, kelp noodles. And kelp salad. And kelp slaw.
Olson and Dobbins own Ocean Approved LLC, a Portland-based company that already markets ready-to-eat kelp products made from wild plants cut by hand from the sea floor. Ocean Approved also is the producer of Bangs Island Mussels, which Olson began cultivating in Casco Bay 10 years ago.
The company's wild-harvested kelp has started to build a local following, especially among fans of Asian-style seaweed salads and locally produced natural foods.
But Olson and Dobbins have bigger plans, ones that involve sneaking kelp into mainstream recipes and, eventually, cultivating a company with lots of employees and annual sales in the millions of dollars.
"It's such a large market, and the U.S. doesn't even have a share right now," Olson said.
Kelp is a $7 billion-a-year industry worldwide, and almost all of it is harvested and dried in Asia, where kelp farms spread across entire coastal bays. It is a staple of the Asian diet, a nutritious vegetable that doesn't require any land, fresh water irrigation or fertilizer to produce.
While once a more common part of the western diet as well, U.S. kelp sales – about $1 billion a year, according to Dobbins – now are limited mostly to health food and natural food markets and sushi restaurants.
Maine Coast Sea Vegetables in Franklin has been harvesting wild kelp and other seaweeds for more than 30 years. It uses kelp to make Kelp Krunch bars and Sea Chips, which it sells through natural food stores and online.
Ocean Approved does not dry its kelp and, unlike other kelp on the market, it doesn't have to be reconstituted and cooked. Its kelp products are cleaned and cooked and ready to eat, or ready to add to whatever is on the menu.
The company is actually growing three varieties of kelp – they're commonly called sugar kelp, edible kelp and horsetail kelp – for its different products. Olson said he started cooking with the sea vegetable years ago, and is still discovering new uses for the "mellow vegetable," such as with seafood, pasta dishes or in good old-fashioned cole slaw.
"I love it," said Colleen Francke, who works on the company's boats and mussel rafts in Casco Bay. "It's really versatile."
Once cooked and packaged, the kelp is deep green, has a mild taste and a firm texture similar to "al dente" pasta.
The kelp is sold frozen in clear plastic bags labeled with one of the world's shortest list of ingredients: "kelp." The sea vegetable contains dietary fiber, sodium, vitamin A and calcium, according to the label. Kelp also is considered a good source of iron, potassium and iodine.
While pasta-like in most ways, it doesn't compare price-wise.
A four-ounce package of Ocean Approved's kelp noodles is sold for $3.99 at Harbor Fish Market in Portland. The products also are sold at other local fish markets and at Whole Foods stores in Portland and in Massachusetts.
The price, according Dobbins and Olson, is comparable to the dried varieties once you take into account the difference in volume. And it is in the price range of other natural, locally produced vegetables, they said. The entrepreneurs say they've tested the taste, and the market, on 4,000 consumers.
"There's demand for it," Dobbins said.
Leslie Oster, a chef who manages Aurora Provisions, a gourmet retail and catering business in Portland, has served the company's kelp with salads and as a garnish on top of poached mussels. She recently invited Olson to serve the company's kelp at the 20-Mile Meal, an annual local foods event held earlier this month in Cape Elizabeth.
"We support him wholeheartedly," Oster said. "I think people are more interested in eating locally and then when you start eating locally, you change your habits."
Another big supporter is Charles Yarish, a biology professor at the University of Connecticut and a U.S. expert on cultivating seaweed. "They've developed some very nice high-quality products," he said.
Yarish has been working to develop seaweed aquaculture for decades and plans to help Ocean Approved become a model for a new domestic kelp industry.
"Ocean Approved will be the first one," Yarish said. "I'm really enthusiastic about Paul and Tollef's abilities and ... they understand you just don't develop a company doing this overnight."
Yarish is helping to start an independent research project to cultivate kelp in a laboratory. Ocean Approved is now planting kelp seedlings collected from its rafts and mussel ropes, but it hopes to eventually start plants from seeds as the business grows.
Yarish also believes there is a profitable food market for the kelp. But he is excited for other reasons, too.
Kelp can actually make coastal waters cleaner by taking up excessive nitrogen and other nutrients, he said.
The nutrients are pollutants when too much washes off lawns or drifts away from fish farms. But they are beneficial fertilizers for the kelp. Yarish said he believes kelp growers eventually will be paid, in effect, for reversing the effects of coastal pollution.
While Ocean Approved is sticking to the food market for now, it plans to take advantage of the environmental benefits, too.
The company doesn't kill any wild kelp, according to Olson and Dobbins. Wild harvesting is done by a diver who cuts off about two-thirds of the plant, allowing it to grow back like grass. Workers will do the same thing with the cultivated plants, so that they keep producing.
And the company plans to eventually use every byproduct of its farming operation. The water used to boil the kelp, for example, is great for soaking feet and hands, according to Olson.
Olson and Dobbins also think they may have a solution to what has been a common challenge for coastal aquaculture in Maine – conflicts with fishermen, boaters or neighbors who don't want their views disturbed.
This week, Olson and Dobbins plan to install a submerged kelp-growing raft near Little Chebeague Island, where they say it will be out of the way of boat traffic and lobstermen. The state granted the company an experimental three-year lease for nearly an acre of the bay there, and Maine Technology Institute provided a $12,000 grant to help develop the technology.
Olson has been harvesting wild kelp in that area for years. And, as he steered the company's boat past the island one afternoon last week, the two kelp farmers said they were anxious to "plant" the first crop there.
"I'm pretty confident this is going to be a good site," Olson said.
Staff Writer John Richardson can be contacted at 791-6324 or at: jrichardson@pressherald.com