It’s Growing Season At Chatham Kelp

CHATHAM – Maybe Chatham’s kelp farmers aren’t yet rolling in the green. But they’re learning the ins and outs of a promising new industry that holds great nutritional, environmental and economic potential.

 While harvest time has passed at most New England farms, it’s the start of the new growing season at Chatham Kelp, a small kelp farm off Harding’s Beach that has developed into a niche business in recent years. Co-owner Jamie Bassett recently provided a primer on kelp farming for the South Coastal Harbor Plan Committee, and said he and his team have learned a great deal since they first proposed the idea in 2017.

 “It’s been great. Nobody’s really running out the door to buy kelp like they’re buying lobsters,” Bassett said. “But we’ve learned a lot, so it’s been wonderful.” 

 Sugar kelp, Saccharina latissima, is grown on submerged ropes that hang from a horizontal line suspended seven feet below the surface of the water, held in place by mushroom anchors and marked by buoys. Chatham Kelp uses a grant issued by the town for a patch of muddy sea bottom designated as a repository for dredge spoils.

 “Kelp is a coldwater crop. It’s only grown between the months of November and the end of April, and then everything’s pulled,” Bassett said. The result is that all of the gear is out of the water by the time warm weather arrives, reducing the potential for conflicts with boaters. The kelp seed comes from a grower in Connecticut and is attached to what is essentially kite string, he said. When the growing season begins, the seed string is wound around the ropes and placed in the water; a month later, the new kelp leaves are already visible, and by February, they’re several inches long. By early April, the lines are lush with kelp and are loaded aboard a skiff and brought ashore.

 With a slightly sweet taste, the kelp is an important food crop in some parts of the world and is the center of the dried kelp snack market, which generates about $250 million in sales in the U.S. annually, Bassett said. Fresh kelp, like a small amount provided to Chatham Bars Inn, can be used to boost flavor in dishes or as a garnish, but “a little bit of kelp goes a long way,” he said. It became clear that there were many creative uses for kelp.

 “We first thought, let’s do a soap,” he said. Kelp can also be added to all kinds of edible products from hard cider to hot sauce to veggie burgers, or added to moisturizer or even surf wax. His team lacked the expertise to make these products, “but all these other people do,” Bassett said. The business now focuses on partnerships with other companies — local and national — adding kelp to make those products unique. The potential is great. 

“We’ve been approached by many, many people asking could we use some of your kelp in our products? Which has been great,” he said. “We have been speaking with a company that’s trying to replace plastics,” he added. 

 Kelp aquaculture has a host of environmental benefits. While the plants are growing, they remove nitrogen and phosphorus from the water and capture carbon; kelp beds also buffer wave energy, reducing erosion on shore. Kelp fights local ocean acidification and can be grown without the need for fertilizer, pesticides or fresh water. Growing naturally, as it does in local waters, kelp also provides habitat for other marine species.

 “Kelp is very temperature sensitive,” Bassett said. If it is left in the water too long, it quickly becomes “biophiled,” or covered in other kinds of marine life, from tiny mussels to skeleton shrimp. The kelp will continue to grow in warm water but cannot be eaten; at this stage, it is harvested to make fertilizer.

 “We put the biophiled kelp in these 250-gallon vats, and made fertilizer juice out of it,” Bassett said. But even this was a learning process. “We didn’t realize that we needed to leave the top just ajar,” he said with a laugh. The decomposing kelp built up pressure in the vat, blowing the top 30 feet in the air. “It sounded like a cannon went off in Commerce Park,” Bassett chuckled. That fertilizer can be used to make rich compost, as is being done in a partnership with the Robert B. Our Co., which is bagging the rich kelp compost and selling it to garden centers. 

 For the time being, Chatham Kelp has no need for additional growing space, since demand remains low. The market is not without its challenges; a major kelp operation in Maine recently saw its price per pound plummet. “It’s not a huge moneymaker, but it’s slowly gaining some traction,” Bassett said. 

 Locally, Bassett is planning a presentation for the town’s energy and climate action committee to discuss the potential for using kelp as a tool to remove nitrogen from area waterways.

 “There may be some interest in putting some kelp lines in some of the terminal ponds like Oyster Pond or Crow’s Pond or Taylor’s Pond,” he said. The growing plants would absorb nutrients from the water, and then would be harvested at the end of the season to make fertilizer.

 “There’s a lot of opportunity, I think, still with kelp,” Bassett said. “We’ve learned so much between the time that we first started and now.”