Sustainable aquaculture: Efforts to Develop a Seaweed Aquaculture Industry in New England

Speaker: Lindsay Green, Postdoctoral researcher, University of Rhode Island

Seaweed aquaculture is a growing field of interest worldwide and in the Northeast United States. Concerns over declining wild fisheries and the environmental impacts of intensive fish aquaculture have lead researchers to look into extractive crops (e.g. seaweed and shellfish) that can be grown in unison with fish. In these systems, known as integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) systems, the nutrients required for the growth of the extractive crop are provided by the effluent of the fed crop (e.g. fish). This talk examines the aquaculture industry, why seaweeds are good candidates for aquaculture, research conducted to develop seaweeds as potential crops in New England, and the current status of the New England seaweed aquaculture industry.

Dr. Lindsay Green received her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of New Hampshire in 2014. Her research is focused on seaweed physiology, aquaculture, and ecology. Her work has included the development of new seaweed crops for aquaculture in New England. She was a co-author on a publicly available manual on how to set up a seaweed nursery for four species of economically important seaweeds titled "New England Seaweed Culture Handbook: Nursery Systems" which has been downloaded over 1200 times. More recently her research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Rhode Island has focused on the ecology of harmful macroalgal bloom in Narragansett Bay.