Navigating the Rising Tide of Kelp

If you live in Juneau, Alaska, then you may have been to a kelp salsa-making party.

“It’s almost like an initiation…Everybody comes over and gets the music going, the blenders whizzing, and the cutting boards chopping,” says Matt Kern, Co-Founder of Barnacle Foods. “By the end of the night, probably 2:00 AM, you’ve created dozens of cases of kelp salsa, and everyone leaves with a couple to go home with.”

There is no road system leading into Juneau. The city is isolated from its surrounding region by glaciers, mountains, and the ocean. It has limited flat ground for farming traditional vegetable crops, so any food supplies that aren’t hunted or harvested locally need to enter on a barge or plane. But there are many miles of coastline with intricate bays and waterways—and an abundance of kelp.

Having grown up in Juneau, preserving the ocean’s bounty was a way of life for Matt and his partner Lia Heifetz. Pantries of preserves progressed into pallet-sized batches of food products. They started to see their hobby as an opportunity to bring value to their hometown. 

Kelp, which is a type of seaweed, is an incredibly nutritious source of protein, fiber, and omega-3 fatty acids, containing important vitamins and minerals like iron, potassium, calcium, vitamin B12, magnesium, and iodine. Kelp provides vital ecosystem services for its surrounding ocean waters. And it can be cultivated on farms with no inputs, thriving on the nutrients of the water and sunlight. 

“If people can make a living by planting kelp farms that are having positive impacts on the ocean and our climate, that’s a pretty unique food source that has this double benefit of providing quality, nutrient-dense food,” says Matt. 

Matt and Lia co-founded Barnacle Foods, a kelp-based food company, in 2016 to bring this win-win local food to their community in Alaska. They see an opportunity for kelp as an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable food source—one that nourishes customers, workers, their local community, and the ocean alike. 

Now, global interest in kelp and seaweeds is rising, and Barnacle Foods is serving as a model for this new industry to avoid the mistakes of conventional food production. 

In 2023, The Washington Post dubbed seaweed “Alaska’s newest gold rush,” “uncharted territory,” and a way to “harness the sea’s power for regeneration.” 

Global seaweed production has traditionally come from Asia, which has more than 95 percent of the market share. But in 2021, the seaweed industry outside Asia experienced twice the number of investments than the previous year. Globally, seaweed production has grown by nearly 75 percent in the past decade alone. Tech companies like Amazon, global NGOs like the World Wildlife Fund, and even the European Union have made commitments to develop an industry for seaweed and kelp, with uses spanning from food to biofuel, plastic substitutes, utensils, soap, and clothing.

Much of this interest stems from seaweed’s role in climate mitigation: According to the World Bank, planting seaweed in five percent of U.S. territorial waters would be equivalent to removing the carbon emissions of 20 million cars.

“Kelp is made up of big carbon chains, and because kelp grows so fast, it’s pulling carbon out of the water as fast as it grows,” says Matt.

Seaweed is also critically important to ocean ecosystems. The ocean absorbs one-third of the human population’s carbon emissions—so as carbon dioxide levels rise in the atmosphere, they also rise in the ocean. This leads to a reduction of ocean water pH, called ocean acidification, and can make it difficult for marine life like oysters, clams, lobsters, shrimp, and coral reefs to build their shells and skeletons. Kelp combats this by fixing carbon into its structure, pulling it from the ocean water. 

“Research is being done to explore how kelp can buffer the effects of ocean acidification, and therefore create a safe water environment for the organisms that need a very steady acidity in the water,” says Matt.

Amid a global race to sequester carbon—and lay claim to the profits of doing so—investors are betting big on seaweed and kelp. 

But there is no playbook for kelp farming in America, and especially not in the Alaskan waters: The first Alaskan-farmed kelp was harvested in 2017. Matt and Lia, alongside farmers, are learning by trial and error with each season while trying to keep up with demand.

“There is a common narrative that kelp farming is easy, and that you just put it out in the ocean and it grows. That’s not the case,” says Lia.

The main species that Barnacle Foods works with is called bullwhip kelp, or simply bull kelp. In the wild, bull kelp anchors to rocky substrates on the ocean floor up to 80 feet deep. It grows a long and thick stalk, or stipe, that terminates in a buoyant bulb on the ocean’s surface, from which grow long, leaf-like blades, called fronds. The bulb and fronds rise and fall with the ocean’s tide while collecting energy from the sun. 

Bull kelp can grow from a mature spore to a hundred-foot-long plant in a single growing season, says Matt. It grows in relatively high densities, forming kelp forests that provide habitat to other marine species. Each fall season, bull kelp naturally regenerates by releasing billions of spores to the ocean floor.

This is when the farming process begins: every year, kelp farmers source fertile tissues from wild native kelp beds, bring them back to a nursery, and cultivate them in a lab setting. With as few as five adult kelp plants, a farmer has enough spore material to plant a 100-acre kelp farm and produce up to a million pounds of kelp, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. 

The farms aim to mimic what’s happening in the wild. Kelp are typically planted on trellised horizontal lines about 25 feet deep in the ocean. But getting the conditions right for a healthy crop is important, and so far, Matt and Lia are learning alongside farmers.

“The industry is in its infancy right now,” says Matt in a 2022 interview. “We’ve had three years now of kelp cultivation and three different results from the different farms… There’s so much cultivation and site selection that is being learned on the fly right now with how to farm kelp.”

The timing of planting, ocean temperature, winter season weather, salinity, and other ocean conditions all may impact harvest. In recent years, a number of farms that Barnacle Foods has worked with have had difficulties growing this new species of kelp.

“Similar to growing a vegetable, it’s not as simple as putting a seed in the soil,” says Matt.

Meanwhile, the permitting and lease allocation process is creating a bottleneck for Alaskan kelp farming. Right now, a farmer must put in an application for the area they would like to farm. Permits are issued through the Alaska Department of Fish & Game, Alaska Department of Natural Resources, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration only if the site meets a number of factors, including approval through stakeholder input and a “public comment” period.

“Here in Alaska, a lot of our regulation is conservative and with a long timeline, because there’s a lot of research and science that needs to be done to understand the impacts of kelp farms and kelp harvesting on our oceans and coastline,” says Lia. “You can’t isolate a kelp farm from the rest of the ocean. So the policies currently in place are out of an abundance of caution.”

Barnacle Foods serves as an intermediary between farmers and the public. This means learning from farmers about the opportunities and challenges they are facing while advocating for industry growth that can benefit farmers, consumers, and the ocean alike. 

But this is only one part of Barnacle Foods’ work. While Barnacle’s Instagram profile is peppered with photos of staff donning rain gear and pulling bull kelp from the ocean, against an idyllic backdrop of Alaskan snow-capped peaks, the day-to-day work of the company is much more than that.

“The heartbeat of Barnacle is turning that ingredient into something that people want,” says Lia. “And that can be less glamorous.”

Kelp is very perishable. It can only be in transit for up to 36 hours, and then in refrigeration for another 48–72 hours. So once kelp is pulled from the water, Barnacle Foods has to be ready. 

“We really have only two to three days to stabilize it as either a frozen, dried, or acidified end product,” says Matt. “We work really closely on the logistics, and it’s not easy…we’re developing every step of this supply chain.”

Barnacle Foods is committed to sourcing its key ingredients and producing its food products in Alaska to maximize the value that remains in the community. This poses unique challenges, given Juneau’s lack of road access to the continental United States. Barnacle works with farmers and harvesters in rural, remote communities with limited transportation resources. For many farmers, Barnacle’s products are the only market within reach. 

But with new industry comes new opportunity: Alaskan fisheries have seen consistent volatility in both stock numbers and prices in recent years, and kelp harvest is helping to support local fishermen. These fishermen already have the boats, equipment, skills, and experience necessary to harvest or farm kelp, gaining supplemental income during an uncertain time, says Lia. 

“Really, the only way this works is if you already have a fishing vessel. And so kelp harvest is a great way to buffer what’s happening with conventional fisheries,” says Lia. “We see a lot of overlap there. And it makes a lot of sense, because the know-how and skills that are necessary to operate on the water exist already within that group of people.”

As Barnacle’s team receives kelp on the docks, they use cranes to move it directly from boat to trucks, and the crop is typically frozen at their production facility shortly after. That’s where the work begins.

“We know that most consumer packaged goods companies that exist don’t manufacture  their own products,” says Lia. “We have the ultimate control over what comes out of our kitchen, so we can be sure that it’s the quality that we want, but it comes with some challenges for sure…Our production facility is a little factory, and it has to adhere to very strict protocols for food safety and quality considerations.

The production facility is where the team at Barnacle Foods can unleash their creativity: Barnacle’s best sellers include Kelp Chili Crisp, Bullwhip Kelp Hot Sauce, Kelp Salsa, and Everything Kelp Seasoning. They partner with a local distillery to barrel-age their hot sauce in repurposed single-malt whiskey barrels. And the Barnacle Foods website has pages of recipes for how to use their kelp products, from a crispy furikake fish burger to kelp chili crisp caramel and bullwhip egg salad.

“Kelp is versatile …It can be turned into almost any type of delicious food,” says Matt. “We see ourselves playing that role around kelp as being a bridge for people to taste it and begin to understand how to use it and get excited about it.”

For Barnacle Foods, an important part of understanding kelp is understanding and sharing the story of the place where it’s from. The team works to make sure that a growing market for kelp does not threaten those who have relied on it for millennia.

“We don’t take harvesting wild kelp lightly. It comes with a lot of responsibility,” says Lia.

Indigenous communities of Southeast Alaska have relied on the coasts and healthy oceans for generations. They have sustainably harvested seaweed for food, medicine, fishing lines, and even storage. As the team at Barnacle Foods grows their business—and the kelp industry at large expands—they’ve recognized it’s important to rely on this local Indigenous knowledge to ensure they are working in harmony with the ocean ecosystems. 

In fact, Barnacle Foods is partially owned by a Seaaska, an Alaska Native Corporation, consisting of 26,000 Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian shareholders: “Our business essentially is owned by the people who have stewarded the Southeast Alaska coast since time immemorial,” says Matt.

Amid a period of growth for the business, Matt and Lia continue to pause and ask questions—of Indigenous communities as well as scientists, researchers, and other stakeholders—to ensure they are continuing to protect the long-term health of wild kelp beds and ocean ecosystems.

“If we were ever feeling like this was moving too fast, or there isn’t enough information to support our practices…then it is our operational protocol to stop and engage with other community members who are involved in those activities,” says Matt.

In 2021, Barnacle Foods started mapping Alaskan kelp beds using aerial drone surveys. With this growing database of information—which is made public—Barnacle’s team along with other researchers, regulators, and stakeholders can monitor changes from one year to the next. This can help to correlate any changes in wild populations to the emerging kelp industry, climate change, or other ecological relationships, and then adjust accordingly. 

“It’s one step that we’ve taken to double down on our mission of being stewards to our ocean and our coasts,” says Lia.

Barnacle Foods partnered with the Hakai Institute, a scientific research institution in British Columbia, to develop an open-source computer program called KelPy, which automates data analysis to estimate biomass and the distribution of kelp beds in the region. The program’s user-friendly interface encourages more stakeholders—not only in Juneau—to get involved with mapping and caring for the resource.

Barnacle is going against the food system’s status quo. It is built on a foundation of regeneration—of the ocean, climate, consumer health, and local communities—rather than extraction. This model prioritizes more than just profit. 

“We have an opportunity to build this supply chain and ‘industry’ around kelp, in a way that makes sense for our communities,” says Lia. But “going about business in that way is often at odds with really fast growth, or your bottom line, or the greatest margins.”

The Barnacle Foods team is working to generate a market for kelp farming, through which stable and economically viable businesses can emerge throughout the supply chain. In the meantime, each time a customer opens a jar of salsa or hot sauce and tries kelp for the first time, “that is the ultimate reward,” says Lia.

“We’re in a small, isolated community in Alaska. We have a small team that’s putting a lot of care into each one of these products. We have a network of harvesters and farmers that all are part of this equation,” says Lia. “We really think of what we’re doing as this gateway to introduce new eaters to this really special ingredient…Everyone eats, so there’s a lot of opportunity that remains there, and that’s what drives us, fuels us.”

“Kelp, as an ingredient and as an emerging industry, can really bring some good to the people and communities, and the oceans.”