00:01:23.360Hello, this is Ayanna Young, and I welcome you to For the Wild podcast.
00:01:43.520Today we are speaking with Bren Smith.
00:01:46.280Bren is the owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm and the executive director of Green Wave.
00:01:52.160He's pioneered the development of restorative 3D ocean farming.
00:01:57.380Called a visionary by Barton Seaver, director of Harvard's Healthy and Sustainable Food Program,
00:02:03.020Bren's farming model is designed to restore ocean ecosystems, mitigate climate change,
00:02:08.840and create blue-green jobs for fishermen, while ensuring healthy local food for communities.
00:02:14.800In 2015, he was awarded the Buckminster Fuller Prize for ecological design.
00:02:20.020In 2013, Smith was chosen as one of six Ocean Heroes by Oceana and Future of Fish's Ocean Entrepreneur of the Year.
00:02:30.800He is an Ashoka Fellow and Echoing Green Climate Fellow.
00:02:35.040After dropping out of school at age 14, Smith worked a wide array of jobs in the commercial fisheries, ranging from longlining from McDonald's on the Bering Sea and sliming in the canneries of Bristol Bay, Alaska, to lobstering in Lynn, Massachusetts.
00:02:50.020and aquaculture farming in Newfoundland, Canada.
00:02:53.940After years of exploration and experimentation with new restorative forms of ocean farming,
00:02:59.820he transformed himself into the nation's first 3D ocean farmer.
00:03:05.480Oh, welcome, Bren. We are so excited to have you on the show today.
00:03:09.420Thanks so much. It's an honor to be on. It's exciting.
00:03:12.720Well, great. I'd love to begin with talking about the state of the oceans.
00:03:19.320I'm wondering if you could take us through what the oceans were like when you first started spending time on the waters compared to what you see now.
00:03:27.820Yeah, so, you know, I was born and raised in a little fishing village in Newfoundland, Canada, and really been fishing my whole life.
00:03:35.240And when I was a kid, it was, you know, I grew up next to a fisherman's co-op.
00:03:39.220It was what we think of now as sort of small-scale family-run, very sustainable fisheries from my town, guys going out jigging for cod, small boats, going after squid.
00:03:51.080And at the same time, you know, I grew up in towns where there were a lot of folks going on seal hunts and things like that.
00:03:57.300So, you know, kids my age were selling cod tongues door-to-door, really romantic time for the oceans.
00:04:03.280then I mean my life is tracked in many ways the the rise and fall of the oceans from a fisherman's
00:04:12.860perspective after working in the ocean for a while that environmental crises whether it's
00:04:19.000climate change whether it's overfishing collapse of the cod stocks are really an economic issue
00:04:24.820more than an environmental issue you know the way we relate I make my job out on the ocean
00:04:30.640and it's the way i make my living and every time our oceans have been threatened environmentally
00:04:36.300it's really been a threat to my to my livelihood so we always say you know there won't be any jobs
00:04:40.740on a dead planet but i um so grew up in a little vibrant fishing village and then i was uh i fished
00:04:47.660in alaska right at the height of industrialized fishing as you said in the intro most of my fish
00:04:53.760was going to mcdonald's it was these images that i think a lot of people have now of you know huge
00:04:58.900trawls ripping up ecosystems, boats surrounded by dead, bycatch, and ever more sophisticated
00:05:06.720technology chasing fewer and fewer fish out to sea. That was what I was as a kid. That's where
00:05:12.520I worked. And I didn't know it. I mean, I loved my job and the thrill of chasing things around
00:05:17.920the globe, of the solidarity of working in the belly of a boat with, you know, 13 other people
00:05:23.060and, you know, the humility that comes with being out in the ocean, I really miss.
00:05:28.180And I think even more, another important element that I got young was just the sense of meaning
00:05:32.980of having a job with so much substance that filled my soul of really helping feed my country.
00:05:40.120And like you were touching on, you know, commercial fishing has been a large cause of ocean species decline.
00:05:48.620and I'm wondering if you could shed some light on what commercial fisheries operations look like
00:05:54.760and why are they so destructive to a variety of ocean ecosystems?
00:06:00.660I mean, it's, you know, the story of humans, we get too efficient at things too quickly.
00:06:06.720And I mean, commercial fishing now, it's amazing how it's not about fish, it's just about a raw
00:06:13.620commodity. So for example, 40% of Peru's fish stocks are owned by the second biggest private
00:06:20.200equity firm in the US. And this is, you know, and I guarantee these guys have never been on a fishing
00:06:24.800boat in their lives. And that's really, I think, where there's a deep disconnect between us on the
00:06:32.780boats fishing and then the owners of the boats and then where our fish are going in an industrialized
00:06:40.980system. And I think that's what we've been. My journey has been not only one of ecological
00:06:45.300redemption, but trying to get closer and closer to the both to the ocean and to the folks that
00:06:50.760are eating my food. And when you were I mean, that's actually really interesting. The privatization
00:06:58.040of the fishing industry, many of the corporations or people who own the boats have never even spent
00:07:05.800time on the boats in the water to even understand the process or what's really going on on the
00:07:12.360on the water and you know you had just touched on the trawling and the different types of
00:07:18.920commercial fishing processes so I'm just wondering if you could kind of visually explain to us you
00:07:24.920know imagine we were out on a boat and you know what what is trawling what are some of these
00:07:29.780techniques that are being used in commercial fishing?
00:07:34.020So I was, you know, the big factory trawls we were on would throw literally miles of
00:07:48.960And you just pull up entire ecosystems and then they come, the fish come up on the boat
00:07:54.680and you only have permits for a couple types of fish.
00:07:58.260So you have to throw tens of thousands of pounds overboard, and that's what we call bycatch.
00:08:05.040And it's really heartbreaking to see these seas of death surrounding you as a fisherman.
00:08:10.660And then on the long liners, we put long, long ropes that go for miles and miles with 40, 50, 60,000 hooks per line.
00:08:20.280And that generally is a more sustainable, like a better way of fishing.
00:08:24.000But again, you're catching all sorts of different species, whether it's octopus, whether it's, you know, seals, whether any kind of endangered species were coming up and we'd only pluck the gray and black cod.
00:08:38.920And then on all our boats, we were factory boats, so we'd also got a process and freeze the fish into blocks and pallets, and then big, huge tender boats, you know, five, six, seven hundred feet long would come up to us in the middle of the ocean, tie up, and we'd offload whatever we'd caught onto the big tender boats and then keep fishing.
00:09:02.780So it was continual. We were working 20 to 30-hour shifts, three to six months at a time, and just really, really churning it out.
00:09:13.380another thought i was having is with the collapse of so many of the commercial fisheries in the
00:09:22.280recent decades such as the north atlantic cod in the 1990s this other technique called aquaculture
00:09:28.560emerged as the promising solution that would relieve pressures of declining wild fish populations
00:09:36.040and allow us to continue increasing our seafood consumption.
00:09:41.260I read that people actually eat four times as much fish as they did in 1950 now.
00:09:47.360Rather than a sustainable panacea, aquaculture is more akin to the monoculture farming of corn and wheat.
00:09:55.420I wonder if you could describe aquaculture and the issue that the system is wrought with.
00:10:00.960I mean, when I was when I was on the the big fleets in the Bering Sea and we knew it wasn't sustainable.
00:10:10.020And when the cod stocks crashed back in my home in Newfoundland in the early 90s, that was really a wake up call for my generation because, you know, the captains of industry, they wanted to just fish for 10 more years, fish the last fish.
00:10:25.500But younger folks, we really wanted to spend our lives at sea.
00:10:28.820The big question is, you know, how do we make a living and die on our boats one day?
00:10:33.240That was going to be the measure of success.
00:10:49.760It's going to reduce pressure on fish while also create millions of jobs and help feed the planet.
00:10:55.500Instead, what happened was the same set of values and the same industrial system that had been used on land and had been used in the wild fisheries was just transported over to agriculture.
00:11:08.240And I think back and really what we were doing, we're running Iowa pig farms at sea, pumping fish full of antibiotics, using pesticides, polluting local waterways and really growing terrible tasting and low quality seafood.
00:11:22.620And let alone, as you mentioned, concentrating on monoculture. And just when land-based farming is beginning to unpack and think through the mistakes it has made and make efforts to become more sustainable, organic, things like that, agriculture simply made all the same errors.
00:11:38.980And core to that is agriculture tried to grow around what people already wanted to eat.
00:11:45.580So like salmon, tuna, things like that.
00:11:48.040And the taste, the plate and palate of salmon and tuna were developed by a wild industrial fisheries.
00:11:56.540It's easy, it seems like, just to grow things that people already want to eat.
00:12:00.440But instead what we need to do in the new face of ocean farming is really ask the oceans, okay, what can the oceans provide?
00:12:07.160What does it make sense to grow there and then shift consumer tastes towards that?
00:12:13.000And I think that's the future of moving beyond sustainability into areas of real restoration and protection of the planet.
00:12:19.900Well, to start moving our conversation to this future of feeding the planet in a beyond sustainable way, I'm wanting to now discuss this innovative 3D ocean farming and how it takes a different approach from the short-sighted industrial methods of commercial fisheries or aquaculture.
00:12:44.700So could you start to explain to us what one of your farms look like, the structural setup, and what species are present?
00:12:55.900So think of an underwater garden in your mind.
00:13:00.920And what you have is these hurricane-proof anchors along the edges of the farm, connected to buoys at the surface,
00:13:07.960and then just horizontal ropes about 10 feet below running between those two buoy systems.
00:13:15.900And from there, we're growing seaweeds and shellfish.
00:13:18.880So we grow our kelp vertically downwards on those ropes next to scallops in lantern nets,
00:13:27.340And then below that on the seafloor, we have oysters in cages and clams down in the mud.
00:13:33.000And the idea, I mean, we've been playing around with this for 15 years and finally settled on a model
00:13:37.920that worked after a lot of many, many failures is to grow as much food in small areas as possible.
00:13:46.620So right now we're two kinds of seaweed, four kinds of shellfish, and we're harvesting salt
00:13:51.000as well. But we didn't pick just any species that we could grow. We only pick restorative species,
00:13:58.460so species that require no fresh water, no feed, no fertilizer, and of course no arable land.
00:14:04.960And when you begin thinking about growing the right things in the right way in the ocean, you enter into this place where we're actually growing the most sustainable, affordable food on the planet.
00:14:16.060Because if you're growing zero input food, it requires no resources.
00:14:21.460And then because it's so easy to grow, it's really affordable to grow.
00:14:25.480It's cheap for the farmer and therefore we can pass those sort of savings on to the consumer.
00:14:30.360And in the era of climate change, as food prices go up, feed water prices go up on land, which they are, our food, our seaweeds and shellfish is going to be the most affordable food on the planet.
00:14:42.700So from our perspective, we're all going to be eating this new supper plate.
00:14:47.460It's just going to be a question about whether it's delicious or being force fed cod liver oil.
00:16:17.800that 3D ocean farming is the most sustainable source of food in the world. And you started
00:16:24.140to touch on it, but can you elaborate on the notion and give listeners an idea of how ocean
00:16:30.260farming can also connect to sustainable farming on the land? Yeah. So, I mean, there are a couple
00:16:38.300elements of the restorative aspects of the farms. First is that it's zero input. So we don't know
00:16:46.080fresh water no no feed no fertilizer and that makes it the most sustainable food on the planet
00:16:51.920at the same time all our crops are restoring rather than depleting ecosystems so our kelp
00:16:57.520soaks up five times more carbon than land-based plants it's called the sukoi of the sea the new
00:17:02.320yorker recently called our farm the culinary equivalent of the electric car our shellfish
00:17:08.800filter up to 50 gallons of water a day pulling nitrogen out of the water column and of course
00:17:13.840over nitrification is the root cause of dead zones that are spreading around the globe.
00:17:19.020And then the farm structures themselves function as both artificial reef systems and storm surge
00:17:24.620protectors. So my farm, you know, it used to be this barren patch of ocean, and now it attracts
00:17:29.220over 150 species that come to, you know, eat, thrive in our area. So we've really tried to
00:17:36.180move beyond sustainability into a new climate farming to create a climate cuisine that, you
00:17:43.820own small part in helping save the planet. And how much food could you say you could produce per
00:17:53.480acre? So we can do, you know, I would say this isn't some cute little Brooklyn bee farm on the
00:18:00.360roof. We can just create incredible amounts of food in small areas. So 250,000 shellfish, 10 to
00:18:06.92030 tons of seaweed per acre. If you were to take a network of our farms totaling the size of
00:18:13.120Washington state, you could feed the world. I mean, this has a potential to really scale.
00:18:18.400And importantly, we were leading with kelp and a couple of different kinds of shellfish,
00:18:22.420but we've barely broken the surface. There are over 10,000 edible plants in the ocean and a
00:18:28.080couple hundred kinds of shellfish. So this is inventing this new climate cuisine, not around
00:18:33.440a wild pallet of salmon and tuna, but really rearranging it to move bivalves and sea plants
00:18:38.640to the center and wild fish to the edges. And I think that's going to be an exciting journey.
00:18:43.620I mean, imagine being a chef and finding out there are 10,000 vegetables you've never
00:18:47.640seen or cooked with before. I mean, it's going to be challenging to make this delicious and
00:18:53.020beautiful food, but that's the role of our chefs now who have in a way been training for decades
00:18:57.900for this moment of making restorative food delicious.
00:19:02.380Well, yeah, it's just as we are running out of arable land and, you know, droughts are going
00:19:07.620to become increasingly prevalent and they already are and the population continues to increase
00:19:13.740feeding the world can turn to this form of ocean farming and i think it's absolutely brilliant
00:19:19.020and what you were saying about you know go ahead no no you you you absolutely i was just gonna say
00:19:27.240it's like it's really interesting deal talking to land-based people who really care about food
00:19:32.220it's wonderful but too often our thinking about the food system as a whole stops at the water's
00:19:37.240So we have both a crisis in our oceans where we have 700 growing dead zones. One out of four species are faced with extinction. We have acidification at rates we haven't seen in like hundreds of millions of years. And then on land, you know, climate change is expected to drive up corn prices up 140 percent in the next 15 years.
00:19:57.220the carbon and methane footprint is absolutely terrifying. And then, as you mentioned, you have
00:20:02.440population rise and inequality, and food insecurity essentially is going to become the new normal.
00:20:08.120And with 85% of fish stocks overexploited, I mean, there's no way our oceans can bear that burden.
00:20:16.040But our food system will be pushed out to sea. The droughts in California and the water wars have
00:20:21.300really, I think, shown that. The question is, what are our oceans going to look like? Are they
00:20:25.960going to look like industrial soy farms, or are they going to be some sort of new model that we
00:20:32.300can build from the bottom up? And I think that's what's exciting for the space we're in as fishermen,
00:20:37.920as ocean farmers, is really how not to repeat the errors of former food systems and really
00:20:43.520do food right this time. I love that thought process of how do we not only grow food in the
00:20:54.300oceans, but not in this monocropped, input-intensive way, but something that's organic
00:21:00.680and restorative and, like you said, a garden underwater. From what I understand, most of the
00:21:07.040farms in operation currently are in the New England region, in addition to one in California.
00:21:13.200So I'm wondering how easily are the farms replicated? And with the wide diversity of
00:21:18.760kelp and shellfish species like you've mentioned in existence, there seems to be a large potential
00:21:25.040for diversification in the type of species farmed. As it took you 15 years to establish a strong
00:21:33.060design for your farm, do you think there will be any significant challenges for people in a climate
00:21:39.200much different than New England, say, in the tropics, starting their own farms?
00:21:44.620so we really have three levels three sets of goals you know one we want to transform the
00:21:53.220ocean plate make kelp the new kale figure out the climate cuisine i think two really transform
00:21:59.180fishermen and others into restorative farmers that are stewards of the sea and then the third
00:22:05.100is really build this blue green economy like let's have this be a viable economic engine for jobs i
00:22:11.720on land right now, 91% of land-based farms lost money last year. I mean, it's just stunning. That
00:22:19.080is not a viable source of jobs and income. Farmers are just struggling. They're making all their
00:22:24.660money off-farm, part-time jobs. How are we going to get over that? One of the things we did was
00:22:30.020first was open source our model. So anybody with 20 acres and a boat and $10,000 now can start
00:22:37.900their own farm and be running the first year. The idea for us was designed around simplicity
00:22:43.740and, quite honestly, just being as cheap as possible because we believe that's the secret
00:22:48.560to replication. Think of it as a nail salon model of the sea where it requires minimal capital costs,
00:22:54.040minimal skill requirements. Farms will pop up all over the place and they're profitable. So you can
00:22:59.380net between $130,000 and $150,000 a year and create five to seven jobs on top of that. Again,
00:23:06.160that's net, not gross. And so we have 12 farms up and running. We'll have another 20 in the
00:23:14.860pipeline. And the model for scale here is what I think of as a green wave reef, which is 25 to 50
00:23:21.640farms in an area, a seafood hub and a hatchery on land based in communities in need, sort of poor
00:23:28.620and working class communities. And then a ring of institutional buyers. We work with Google,
00:23:32.980work with universities, different folks like that. And then a ring of entrepreneurs doing
00:23:37.760value-added products. The beautiful thing about seaweeds, it's like the soy of the sea,
00:23:41.960especially kelp. It can be used for biofuels, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, animal feed. You
00:23:47.760can weave it throughout the agricultural economy. And then you take this green wave reef and you
00:23:53.480replicate it every 200 miles. And that's how you have networked production that grows into scale
00:24:00.500rather than gigantic monofarms now the question about down in other areas no one has ever gone
00:24:07.600every region and asked what are all the things what are all the shellfish that we can build a
00:24:12.440farm around so there is something we can there are species of sea plants and bivalves we go in
00:24:19.420every region in the country and as long as we keep the farm design really cheap then it can
00:24:26.040be replicated in all different economic and environmental conditions according to a study
00:24:32.460by the world wildlife fund 90 percent of large fish have disappeared from the ocean since 1950
00:24:38.780which was the onset of the industrial fishing with populations continuing to steadily decline
00:24:45.340the iucn warns that the current acidification warming deoxidization are a deadly trio creating
00:24:53.180mass extinction. And then many have heard recently that the Great Barrier Reef has suffered its most
00:24:59.140devastating die-off on record. In just nine months, bleaching caused by warmer water has killed around
00:25:04.94067% of the coral in previously pristine parts of the reef. How would you build a buffer for
00:25:14.460warming temperatures and acidifying waters into your design? Yeah, so it's a great question,
00:25:21.680and it's a really scary question for farmers and land and sea. I mean, there's so much variability
00:25:26.480year to year, and it's going to be a tough era to grow food in. We're really thinking now about
00:25:35.120how do we work with the right sets of scientists to stay ahead of the climate curve. I mean,
00:25:39.760the good thing about sea plants is they're more resilient to, many of them are more resilient to
00:25:44.700acidification and effects on climate change. And then because there's such a wide range of different
00:25:50.560crops we can grow. We'll need to switch in new crops as conditions change. We're going to need
00:25:56.760excellent science to do that. I mean, if I had an endless set of resources, I'd do a Manhattan-style
00:26:04.840project on seaweeds right now. No one's ever done a nutritional analysis of 500 seaweeds in the
00:26:12.020ocean. We need to do all 10,000. We need to figure out how to grow them all. Because it's zero-input
00:26:17.180food. They are the vegetables we need to eat as we enter the era of climate change. We just need
00:26:22.080a lot of scientific advancement to be knowing how to grow them and grow them consistently.
00:26:27.580I think at GreenWave, we're structured two ways. I have my own farm, a Thimble Island Ocean farm,
00:26:33.860but then we created GreenWave, which is the NGO whose role is to train a new generation of farmers,
00:26:40.220do the policy work, and then do a lot of R&D with the scientific community. And then I have
00:26:46.160Seagreen Farms, which is a for-profit entity that does the capital-intensive processing
00:26:51.800infrastructure and the market development. And sort of these organizations work in concert and
00:26:58.440in parallel in order to push markets, increase supply by working and training farmers, and then
00:27:06.200doing the R&D and the science necessary to keep this ecosystem alive. What's exciting for us is
00:27:12.440really trying to take on this idea of how to do food right. And of course, food justice is a huge
00:27:17.440part of this for us. Too often people have been, you know, you can have very successful businesses
00:27:22.160and industries, but people and communities are left behind. So what we're trying to do is weave
00:27:26.880social and justice DNA of this new, I don't care if you're an undocumented immigrant, I don't care
00:27:34.300if you're a former felon, we're going to figure out a way to work together. But we're working to
00:27:39.460go beyond that, which this isn't just about folks working for us, but working for themselves. So
00:27:44.140we're starting to go into low income communities and find people who want to start their own farms
00:27:50.300because, you know, the beautiful thing about being a fisherman, being a farmer is you're your own
00:27:54.900boss. You get to work on the sea of a self-directed life. You succeed and fail on your own terms and
00:28:00.420you get this sense of meaning that is so important to me of helping feed my country. And that's a
00:28:07.200new form of sort of social economic justice that we need in the new economy, which is,
00:28:12.000you know, giving people autonomy and agency over their own lives.
00:28:18.040I just want to kind of dive in a little deeper to what you were saying, you know, being able
00:28:21.440to go into these working class poor communities that perhaps were once thriving when the fishing
00:28:29.500industry was thriving and now are impoverished.
00:28:32.860So if somebody wants to start a farm, what are the steps that they need to take to do it?
00:28:39.660Maybe if you could take us through how this economic process can help strengthen and diversify coastal economies again.
00:28:48.700Absolutely. We have requests to start farms in every coastal state in North America and 20 countries around the world.
00:28:54.480Like the demand is, this is like a tsunami of interest and we have low capacity and it's heartbreaking how often we can't help folks.
00:29:03.660The other thing is we have in our training programs, 11th generation fishermen, lobstermen that, you know, third generation lobstermen, there are no lobsters anymore.
00:29:12.920So we have the fishing community. But what I didn't expect was we have tons and tons of young land based farmers who can't afford land and can't afford their own farms on land.
00:29:23.600but it's so affordable in the ocean that they're coming to start farms. I've got a new guy.
00:29:28.000He worked on a dairy farm for eight years. It'd been forever when he started his own farm. He
00:29:32.180came to us. It's $25 an acre per year. He gave his $10,000 to start his farm and he's, he's up and
00:29:38.500going. So we're getting interest both from sea, from land. And then we also have, you know,
00:29:42.980Iraq veterans in our training program, indigenous folks. So it's a whole wide mix, which, you know,
00:29:48.400It makes me happy. It's close to my heart. The way you set up a farm is people come to GreenWave
00:29:54.520and we do a long intake process. And the first thing people do is to try to figure out the
00:30:00.700permitting process. Our training program offers a couple of things. One is you get two years of
00:30:07.580consulting support. You get permitting support from our legal teams. You get gear from Patagonia,
00:30:13.460who's a wonderful sponsor of ours. And we agree to buy up to 80% of what you grow for three to
00:30:21.240five years at triple the market rate. And that allows farmers to just have this package to ensure
00:30:26.940that they're successful economically and they become great growers in the process.
00:30:32.800So first thing they do is, you know, find a lease, a water lease, and then they come out to our
00:30:38.680farms and they from floating classrooms and see what we do and then we go with them and we actually
00:30:44.860help set up a farm on their sites and then sort of over a two-year period where we're going to
00:30:50.940them and they're coming to us and just learning along the way there's so many latent skills along
00:30:56.700our coastlines and people just know so much about the ocean know so much about machinery and food
00:31:02.620and growing that it's not taking a lot to train people it's really about giving them an outlet
00:31:08.960to use all their skills and their creativity and we just feel really lucky to do that
00:37:28.000People pay all this money and there's kind of nothing to see.
00:37:30.800I say it's the biggest ripoff in the ecotourism sector because we're underwater.
00:37:36.860You just see a few floating buoys on the surface and anybody can boat and fish and swim over the farm.
00:37:42.420We're creating communal places rather than privatized spaces.
00:37:45.280So it's so different than traditional forms of farming in that way.
00:37:50.280You know, people can kayak and swim through our kelp forests and gill netters and commercial fishermen set their gill nets around our farms because the best fishing in the entire area are on these artificial reefs we've created.
00:38:01.580So it's been, although there's not much to see, it's really been a really great way to reintroduce people to the future of ocean farming and the future of food in this era of climate change.
00:38:12.620Yeah, well, you explain more about protecting the commons. I know that's a piece of the philosophical underpinnings of this project, building this community and protecting the commons of the ocean.
00:38:27.120There's two ways to, I mean, there's kind of three ways to do it. There's one, you know, making sure that we keep our oceans beautiful and pristine by having a very low aesthetic impact.
00:38:36.600second make sure our footprints are very small so and that's why being vertical is great my farm
00:38:42.520used to be 100 acres now it's down to 20 acres and i grow way more food than before so small
00:38:47.480footprint and then property rights so we don't own our water what we own is the right to grow
00:38:54.160shellfish and seaweed in those waters anybody can do whatever they want you know they can lobster
00:38:59.680they can recreational fish whatever we only own the process not the property and then our leases
00:39:05.180are up for review every five years, which is so the community has a lever of democratic control
00:39:10.760over what we're doing. And then after I start farming, once I successfully drown on my boat
00:39:16.280in the next 20 years, then the farm just reverts back to the town or state. To me, it's a really
00:39:22.660nice model. And again, it tries to chart a different course than traditional agriculture
00:39:27.660you know, in the 80s and 90s. And a part of these ocean communities, I've heard you discuss the
00:39:37.180transformation that occurs after the establishment of a 3D ocean farm. You know, a once vapid space
00:39:43.580turns into a thriving ecosystem with kelp and shellfish providing forage and shelter for a
00:39:52.020multitude of species. So I'm wondering what types of species have you seen return to these reclaimed
00:39:58.640spaces? Yeah, so we're actually about to do a study where we systematically count and catalog
00:40:06.120all the different species. I'm really looking forward to that. But we get, you know, we get
00:40:10.100seahorses, we get tons of ducks and seals. It's funny, we had some duck hunters opposing one of
00:40:16.760our farms. And we met with him and explained, like, listen, our farms have way more ducks than
00:40:23.100anywhere else you could go. You can actually get drunker earlier in the morning and shoot more
00:40:27.380ducks. This is your dream as a duck hunter. And, you know, of course, you know, tons of bluefish,
00:40:33.440stripers, you name it, eels, they're just teeming. And the farms are just teeming because on the
00:40:39.260east coast, the foundation of the ecosystem was always oyster reefs. There were literally trillions
00:40:44.120and trillions of oysters up along our coast. You had to navigate your boat around the oyster reefs.
00:40:49.500Well, those are gone. And so our farms function now as those reef systems. So all the species just
00:40:55.140word gets out and they come and find us because that's the place to go. And I think this points
00:41:01.340to an issue that I think is key, which is ocean conservationists are very obsessed and I'm very
00:41:09.320sympathetic to marine parks and conservation zones. And it's really important. The trouble is
00:41:16.000we can set aside our entire oceans as a marine park and they're still going to die in the era
00:41:20.800of climate change. A strategy that's conservation alone in a way is its own form of climate denial
00:41:27.440because it's not a strategy to, you know, it's not going to keep our oceans alive as we enter
00:41:32.980this new era what you need is conservation zones with our 3d ocean farms embedded breathing life
00:41:39.900back into the marine parks and that's where we get to this really wonderful sort of nexus the
00:41:46.600new face of environmentalism where you do conservation you do restoration while also
00:41:51.540you're helping feed the planet and create jobs and i think for my generation and generation
00:41:56.420younger the folks doing urban gardens in detroit doing solar in the navajo reservations or in the
00:42:02.280you know, haulers of Kentucky, we're all coming together around this new, new era of a new version
00:42:08.920of environmentalism that I think is much more dynamic and exciting. And it's, it's not just
00:42:13.840about stopping pipelines. It's about saying yes to something. So we need to fight back and stop
00:42:18.500destructive forms of development while we build a better and more beautiful world and an economy
00:42:23.560that we all want to participate in. That's been fun. I'm actually looking forward to going to
00:42:27.680the climate march in April in D.C. because it's a chance that, you know, my little piece of the
00:42:32.820puzzle joins with all the other pieces of the puzzle of all these folks fighting for a new
00:42:37.340climate safe community. I'm hoping to take my boat again this year. I took my boat there
00:42:41.320two years, two or three years ago, whenever the march was in New York. So this time I'm
00:42:46.120hoping to make it all the way down to D.C.
00:44:52.780I am just amazed with all of the moving pieces of this vision and it just makes so much sense
00:45:13.440every time you explain it I think yes well of course this is just brilliant how it's tying in
00:45:19.820and weaving so many different parts of what is needed to mitigate climate change to rebuild
00:45:26.620communities human and otherwise and i'm also wondering you know as the ocean climate continues
00:45:34.960to change species are expected to continue to move northward and ecosystem assemblages will
00:45:42.080likely reshape do you see ocean farms as refuges for migrating species and do you think the
00:45:49.600specific species fostered in the farm will also have to shift according to the changing ocean
00:45:55.400environment. Yeah, so I do think we can, I mean, you know, there's all this interest in the food
00:46:03.040world about eating invasive species. And I think it's great. And there are some types of species
00:46:07.460that should be eaten, but invasive species can also be seen just as climate refugees, right?0.95
00:46:13.640Just trying to find better waters, better places to, you know, land or sea to live and exist.0.99
00:46:19.020I think our farms can be refuges. I think also we can buttress because the secret to the future of ocean farming is overproduction and underharvesting. So if every oyster, you know, mussel, clam, kelp that we grow, we plant it and that sends millions of spores and seed out into our oceans to rebuild the ecosystem, create wild reefs, and then we just harvest what we've originally planted.
00:46:47.300And so I think ocean farmers of the future are going to be the ones rebuilding that ecosystem.
00:46:54.200So not only soaking up carbon and nitrogen, trying to keep climate change and acidification at bay, but also continually feeding and seeding natural ecosystems to keep the species thriving.
00:47:05.840But eventually, I mean, eventually we're all going to drown and burn unless we get a handle on this.
00:47:10.980if that doesn't happen, if climate change isn't really the end of the world, then all of us will
00:47:16.640be growing different species on different farms. And that's why my collaborating with scientists
00:47:21.040is just so, so important. And when we're talking about the kelp, for instance, being able to
00:47:28.760sequester carbon, I love that the sequoia of the seas, I work with redwoods and their carbon
00:47:35.620sequestration potential. Of course, we should be protecting what's there and getting involved in
00:47:41.500regrowing more so that we can sequester more of this carbon out of the atmosphere. It's the second
00:47:47.620fastest growing plant on the planet. It's also brimming with nutrients. And then there's a
00:47:54.040potential for biofuels. So in terms of biofuels, for instance, what is the potential for this or
00:48:01.440what's the progress on biofuel with kelp? So I actually just got back from Copenhagen meeting
00:48:09.020with some folks at the wind farms who are interested in can we do kelp-based biofuel
00:48:13.920and wind in the same areas because you have these structures, the wind turbines, and let's grow some
00:48:19.080kelp in between them. There's been a lot of research from the Department of Energy over
00:48:23.240the years there. There's actually some statistics out there. If you were to take the area half the
00:48:27.600size of Maine, a network of farms half the size of Maine, you could replace all the oil in the
00:48:32.280United States. Now, I think there needs to be a lot more rigor and science and research brought
00:48:37.560to that. The Department of Energy has a new kelp czar and is working on a big kelp program. We're
00:48:42.800actually been part of that process. What's really interesting, think of this pyramid, we have
00:48:48.200high value food at the top, like we do kelp noodles. And one of our best selling meals in
00:48:53.880New York City is barbecue kelp noodles with parsnips and breadcrumbs. It's just absolutely
00:48:58.520delicious. It's done by Brooks Headley at Superiority Burger. We have food, then you can
00:49:02.980do the pharmaceuticals, then you do animal feeds. If you feed cattle, a majority diet of seaweeds,
00:49:10.040you get up to a 90% reduction in methane output. You can do fertilizers. Really, this is about
00:49:15.360closing the nitrogen loop and using our seaweeds as the inputs for land-based farming. But anything
00:49:22.420that's left over the waste can go to biofuel and even where i want to go next is what i think of
00:49:28.780as pollution farming so where we have our farms and beautiful pristine waters most traceable food
00:49:33.820in the u.s food system at this point but then also uh farming in the bronch river and you know
00:49:39.800bridgefoot harbor in long beach harbor places like that um just to soak up nitrogen carbon heavy
00:49:45.740metals things like that just to be technologies of remediation and we don't eat that but we put
00:49:50.560that into the biofuel system. And that just becomes exciting that we can, you know, imagine
00:49:55.940being a fisherman, you become a pollution farmer growing biofuel. Sounds kind of fun.
00:50:01.740That just makes me giddy, honestly. You know, you have the ocean farming for food,
00:50:08.080food for humans, food for sea life, for species on land. And then you have pollution farming. I
00:50:15.680mean, it's absolutely incredible. Of course, I mean, we should be doing this, we should be
00:50:20.040finding ways to support this new era of ideas and really regenerative and restorative processes and
00:50:28.300talking about the pollution farming a big thing out here on the west coast is fukushima you know
00:50:34.500they were just finding this hoping to find the spent fuel rods and just the immense amount of
00:50:39.900radiation that's coming out that's going into the pacific ocean they're finding it and salmon
00:50:44.220species. So is that another opportunity for ocean farming is to be able to also soak up
00:50:51.520radiation in the water and cesium and heavy metals and other toxic substances?
00:50:58.820Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I've never looked into it. What I know is heavy metals
00:51:02.500extraction that seaweed can pull out in polluted waters, but it's a fascinating question.
00:51:07.620radioactive sponges out there and surround quickly dropping in a seaweed farm whenever
00:51:14.500a spill happens. I mean, I don't want to encourage, you know, we don't need nuclear power.
00:51:20.220It's an extremely expensive way to simply boil water. So I don't want to help support the
00:51:24.980industry so much. But it's a great idea. Well, right. It just seems like the
00:51:30.100bioremediation possibilities are endless because in the world we live in at this point we're
00:51:38.060dealing with spills of toxicity and fossil fuel extraction all over the world and you know we're
00:51:47.100not seeing these bioremediative methods put in as much as they should be and so I'm you know very
00:51:55.180interested in being able to support that and how do people support green wave how can people
00:52:02.580on any level whether that's becoming a farmer themselves or supporting the movement or supporting
00:52:08.080the scientific measures you know how can people get involved from a number of different levels
00:52:12.620to start building and supporting the regenerative world really we need help at all like we need all
00:52:21.200hands on deck right now not only because of the climate crisis but there's just this really
00:52:25.380exciting opportunity to build a food system from the bottom up out on our oceans and just like0.59
00:52:30.500you know ensure that low-income farmers have access to property to make sure we just don't0.94
00:52:36.200make all the mistakes we've made in land and sea and i and you know create these new occupations
00:52:41.540new disciplines that both feed the planet and lift communities out of poverty so we need everybody
00:52:46.760I think one way you go to greenwave.org and we have programs for we have fellowship programs we've got volunteer internship programs whether it's you know diving to map kelp forests there are all these different components of course we all we're we're just a small organization and we need resources because the demand is just huge we have a farmer sign up where you can write in and we can connect you like if you're in a pocket of other farmers that want to start farms we link people up and then provide
00:53:16.760support so you know we're working on a open source manual right now online manual called
00:53:22.840the underwater gardener so anyone can start their own farms i mean my goal here is not to be the
00:53:27.760center of this i i hope you know five six seven years from now i disappear you find me just happy
00:53:33.600floating around on my farm farming that this isn't about me but rather it's about thousands
00:53:37.780of other people both telling the story taking my system and making it better innovating i can't
00:53:42.640wait to come to a farm in 10 years and barely recognize it because someone's brought their
00:53:47.200brilliance to it. And yeah, it's just a, I think it's a great moment for the oceans and it's
00:53:53.600exciting. So come join us. Well, thank you so much, Bren. This has been mentally so stimulating
00:54:00.920to stretch the imagination to rebuild this broken system that we're living in and have it be
00:54:08.980beautiful, sustainable, and regenerative and help every species to thrive. So I'm so appreciative
00:54:17.780of you and your ambition in the world and for your work and your passion. Thank you.
00:54:25.000No, thank you so much. Really honored to be on. And yeah, this might be, strangely enough,
00:54:30.220in the darkest of times, this might be the beginning of a story of hope. I think there
00:54:34.300are people all over the world trying to come up with solutions and trying to fight back and
00:54:38.880build a better world. So let's hope history is on our side.
00:54:52.940Thank you for listening to Bren Smith of Green Wave on For the Wild podcast. I'm Ayanna Young.
00:55:00.780The music you heard today was Bonnie Prince Billy,
00:55:04.080harem scarum and alex nielsen with is it the sea nico case with red tide gordon bach with the banks
00:55:13.920of newfoundland then helen ward with benny goodman the devil and the deep blue sea and our theme
00:55:20.740music is like a river by kate wolf the production and editing of the show is by myself and march