I’m an enthusiast for ocean farming, but I’m aware that I’m not the best person to talk about it. I live about as far inland as you can get in this small country, and I don’t have any great connection to the oceans. So take it from a fisherman instead, someone who actually knows whether or not it might work.
Bren Smith began as a fisherman, saw the effects of fish stock collapses firsthand, and switched to ocean farming instead. He calls his approach 3D farming, because it highlights the way that you can grow upwards through the water column. Where land farmers get one layer of crops on the surface of the soil, ocean farmers can place different things at different heights, with weighted ropes growing vertically.
The video also shows some of the challenges of ocean farming, and how early pioneers are learning and already having to adapt to climate change.
We need case studies like these, because the potential of ocean farming is vast. As the recent book The Seaweed Revolution described, in the west we’re still hunter gatherers when it comes to the sea, and people like Bren Smith might be the forerunners of an enormous new industry.
Video from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.
The Earthbound Report 