This “ocean farmer” could make you hopeful about the future of the sea

The online journal Grist published an article by Bren Smith in February in which he describes how he has come to develop “Vertical underwater farming”, an idea that just might be of great importance for coastal and island communities such as ours here on Arran. He begins

“I’m a fisherman who dropped out of high school in 1986 at the age of 14. Over my lifetime, I’ve spent many nights in jail. I’m an epileptic. I’m asthmatic. I don’t even know how to swim. This is my story. It’s a story of ecological redemption.”

After many adventures and trying to make a living from the sea in a number of different ways, Bren’s brainwave was to create a sustainable low-impact vertical underwater farm:

“Imagine a vertical underwater garden with hurricane-proof anchors on the edges connected by floating horizontal ropes across the surface. From these lines kelp and Gracilaria and other kinds of seaweeds grow vertically downward next to scallops in hanging nets that look like Japanese lanterns and mussels held in suspension in mesh socks. Staked below the vertical garden are oysters in cages and then clams buried in the sea floor.”

“If you look for my farm from ashore, there’s almost nothing to see, which is a good thing. Our underwater farms have a low aesthetic impact. That’s important because our oceans are beautiful pristine places, and we want to keep them that way. Because the farm is vertical, it has a small footprint. My farm used to be 100 acres; now it’s down to 20 acres, but it produces much more food than before. If you want “small is beautiful,” here it is. We want ocean agriculture to tread lightly.

Our 3D farms are designed to address three major challenges: First, to bring to the table a delicious new seafood plate in this era of overfishing and food insecurity; second, to transform fishermen into restorative ocean farmers; and third, to build the foundation for a new blue-green economy that doesn’t recreate the injustices of the old industrial economy.”

The full text of Bren’s inspiring article can be found here. It is well worth reading in full. The article itself is a condensed version of Bren Smith’s 35th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lecture entitled Ecological Redemption: Ocean Farming in the Era of Climate Change presented in October 2015 and available online at http://www.centerforneweconomics.org/publications/ecological-redemption-ocean-farming-era-climate-change.

Meanwhile the Guardian has reported that Bren and his nonprofit company GreenWave have won the 2015 Fuller Challenge, one of the most important prizes in sustainability, worth $100,000, for his 3D ocean farming model, designed to address overfishing, mitigate climate change, restore marine ecosystems and provide jobs for fishermen. Announced by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, the prize is reserved for designers, scientists and students developing whole systems solutions to humanity’s most pressing problems. The Guardian article is at http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/oct/22/greenwave-ocean-farming-bren-smith-fuller-challenge-sustainability-climate-change.