The Johnny Appleseed of Sugar Kelp
Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:
When Michael Doall was a teenager, he hated seaweed, and so did everybody else he knew on Long Island. It was an icky nuisance that brushed against your legs at the beach, fouled your fishing hook and got tangled around the propeller of your boat. Only later, as a marine scientist and oyster farmer, did he develop a love for sugar kelp, a disappearing native species that is one of the most useful seaweeds. Now he is on a mission to bring it back to the waters of New York.
He grew up on, and in the waters of, the South Shore of Long Island with a mother who considered a beautiful day a fine excuse to take him to the beach instead of school. He helped his family with an ambitious home garden in Massapequa Park and got a master’s degree in marine environmental science before becoming a shellfish specialist at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.
From there, his passions steered him into sustainable aquaculture and oyster farming, which began as a side gig to his academic pursuits. Seaweed farming is a kind of happy accident. “I love being on the water, and I like to grow things that help the environment,” he said. “Kelp farming lets me do both.”
Sugar kelp has become the seaweed of choice for New York aquaculture, though it is still in an experimental phase. In addition to being a native plant and a tasty vegetable, it cleans the oceans, capturing carbon and nitrogen from the water and helping to prevent ocean acidification and harmful algae blooms. Every acre of kelp planted removes nitrogen (a pollutant from human waste) from the water at 10 times the rate of the nitrogen-reducing septic systems now mandated for new homes in all of Suffolk County. Farming kelp doesn’t interfere with recreation because its growing season begins in December and ends with a dramatic burst of growth in May, just in time for it to be harvested and out of the water ahead of boating season.