The Weekly Anthropocene Interviews: Jesse Baines of Atlantic Sea Farms, Kelp-Growing Climate Warriors
Our second interview with Atlantic Sea Farms, America's leading kelp farmers!
The Weekly Anthropocene has previously interviewed Zoe Croft of Atlantic Sea Farms, America’s leading kelp farmers. Now, in a sequel of sorts, we interview Jesse Baines of Atlantic Sea Farms to hear more about this mission-driven aquaculture company.
Atlantic Sea Farms is an innovative Maine company growing edible kelp with independent partner sea farmers across the Maine coast. In this interview, we hear more about the company, their social and environmental mission, and the rise of aquaculture in Maine from Jesse Baines, CMO at Atlantic Sea Farms.
For more on Atlantic Sea Farms, see atlanticseafarms.com/.
Yay, a financial disclosure! This is one of The Weekly Anthropocene’s first-ever sponsored posts, thanks to Jason Ingle of Third Nature Investments (who we interviewed recently) and his work to support plant-based food and textile companies.
 A lightly edited transcript of this exclusive interview follows. This writer’s questions and remarks are in bold, Ms. Baines’ responses are in regular type. Bold italics are clarifications and extra information added after the interview.
Can you tell me about Atlantic Sea Farms?
We're a mission-based company. We're really using seaweed farming as a tool to not only provide coastal livelihood opportunities for generations to come, keep people working on the water for generations to come, but also to actively tackle effects of climate change in the process.
And so regenerative seaweed farming is really just the mechanism for those goals, right? We need to feed people from the ocean, but how can we do it so it improves things for people and the planet in the process? So that's what we're always asking and working towards with this company. Over the last five years we've gone from 30,000 pounds harvested in one season to almost one million, and from five partner farmers to 40 partner farmers.
All of those things are really exciting but only if it's also improving the health of our oceans. We’ve learned some really exciting things through studies run by Bigelow Laboratories for Ocean Sciences.
One is that cultivating seaweed actively improves the health of our ocean by deacidifying, by balancing the pH of our oceans. As we know, ocean acidification is a real problem. It's due to the excess carbon in the atmosphere interacting with the ocean, the ocean absorbing that excess carbon and upping the pH.
And so what that does is it creates a less hospitable ecosystem for shell bearing organisms in particular. So what I am really excited about with this work Bigelow Laboratories is doing is that they're demonstrating that the kelp farms absorb that excess carbon, lower the pH of the water, and within that health halo of the kelp farm, we're seeing improved ocean quality in the form of stronger mussels, stronger phytoplankton, all of those sorts of things. And that's exciting for two reasons.
One, because it's doing good for the ocean. It's mitigating effects of climate change while the kelp is in the water.
But also, it's making for a better product. And the better product that I'm talking about is kelp, but also mussels. So by working with one of our partner farmers, Bangs Island Mussels, who's also, you know, primarily a mussel grower and harvester and farmer, we're seeing that the mussel product is improved by planting kelp near the mussel farms.
And so that interchangeable positive benefit to the kelp and to the mussels is really exciting, because then what we're creating is a business case for climate action. Here taking action against ocean acidification makes for a better product that people want to eat and want to consume more of. Everything we're doing at Atlantic Sea Farms is thinking along those lines. That's a really great example of an ecosystem service that's providing a business case for regenerative kelp farming and mussel farming as well.
I'm glad you said that. One thing I’ve found is that it’s very important for companies that want to make a difference on climate change to have a really good reason to exist even if people aren't going to pay them to work on climate change. Like, you guys have a tangible product to sell that also has huge climate benefits. So you get a funding stream regardless of what carbon credit law or regulation is like. And I think that's really important because, I'm sure you've seen like over 80% of all carbon credits being sold tend to be some form of fraud, right? The market towards directly paying people for just climate benefits is terrible. The things that tend to work, like renewable energy, are things that produce a valuable product, like electricity or in your case seaweed. A more sustainable, in an economic sense, business.
Yeah. Exactly. It's all about creating opportunities for a sustained effort. And so by working with small family farmers, for example, what we're looking at is an opportunity for people to get in for a very low amount of money because they already have the boats. They already have the infrastructure they need. They already have the access to moorings and landing infrastructure and the working waterfront that they need, the trucks, all of it. They've got it all ready, right?
And so the cost for a lobster fisherman to get into seaweed farming is very low, which means that they're going to make a profit within their first or second season, which in aquaculture or in any sort of business is almost unheard of, right?
So what we're doing is really finding that balance of what market can we drive?
How do we drive a market that sustains growth and creates that sustained effort towards fighting climate change?
And it's a balance, right?
We need to make sure that we're growing a market that's appropriate for the partner farmers who we have in the water now, but then also looking to the future.
Our goal is to grow. We have 40 partner farmers now in three states.
Oh, really? Last I saw it was only Maine and Rhode Island.
It was, yeah. We're actually adding three groups in Alaska this year too!
Spectacular! That is great.
Yeah, that is great. Because Alaska needs it too, right? So we're seeing things like this happen all over the country, like Alaska just had that big snow crab die off, which is tied directly to warming waters. Maine's lobster fishery, the juvenile lobster population has dropped by almost 40%. There’s a timeliness to this, right? And I think the time is right now for us to put the people in the water who can make it profitable, make a living, utilize their existing infrastructure.
People have invested a lot of money in these fishing businesses. Wouldn't it be great if they could also use that investment towards something that's also helping improve the oceans for everybody, but really positively impacting the local ecosystem of the oceans that they rely so heavily on? So that's what we're doing in Alaska, what we're doing in Maine, what we're doing in Rhode Island.
That is spectacular. You guys are providing an extremely valuable economic resilience opportunity in a time of rapidly changing waters.
Exactly. That's exactly it, Sam. Through no fault of their own, the lobster industry is backed up against a wall and they're kind of swinging right now because they have a lot of things coming at them all at one time and almost all are due to climate change.
Now, they have been notoriously good stewards of their resource and of the Gulf of Maine for almost 200 years, right? The first sustainability measures taken by the industry happened in 1890. That's when they started implementing sustainability measures in the lobster industry. That's amazing. They also have these really cool co-op models up and down the coast, which is so forward thinking, and most of these were established in the early 80s. So all of these things, they've just been so thoughtful and so deliberate about the growth of the industry. And right now fishing is good. Their catch is overall strong, but they can't change that the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 97% of oceans in the world. They can't change the migratory patterns of large mammals. They can’t change that it's getting really hard to source bait. There's all these things that they really can't control.
But what they can control is thinking about ways to diversify.
And they have the resources, and they're over skilled and underutilized in this really exciting new thing that we can do in Maine in particular.
And I use Maine as the example because Maine is amazingly well positioned to lead in aquaculture.
We have more working waterfront than any other state in the country. I will advocate forever that we need to preserve our working waterfront access, and grandfathering in that access to working waterfront infrastructure, doesn't just serve lobstermen, it also increasingly serves aquaculture.
The ocean is completely underutilized as a resource for feeding people, but it needs to be done well.
Mussels, oysters, seaweed, there's so many beautiful ways that we can continue to feed people from the ocean and do it right. So I'm just really excited about the opportunity overall. And I think we're just scratching the surface.
That is a very eloquent way of putting it. Thank you so much. In my informal conversations with people worried about the future of Maine's waterfront, that is what I do say. Like, you guys are the way that there will continue to be a working waterfront in Maine once all the lobsters grow up in Nova Scotia. You guys do offer that lifeline and I'm really grateful that you're doing that.
I think that the thing about that is I come from a fishing family in Midcoast Maine, and actually my dad's one of our partner farmers, and he has been working on the sustainability of the lobster fishery for decades. And I think what's forgotten sometimes is that lobster fishermen used to not just be lobster fishermen, right?
They used to do all kinds of different things. They used to do shrimp. They used to do scallops. They used to do all kinds of different things, right?
And now because lobstering has been so good, many of them have focused on the one space where they can make the most money in the shortest period of time, which is, of course, lobster.
Thinking about aquaculture as an option is really just a diversification strategy that we've had in Maine forever, right? Thinking about ways that we can put our skills and our infrastructure and everything to work year round and really get the most out of this deep connection that we have to our natural resources in Maine.
And so I see that the fishing community, it doesn't take much for them to start thinking along those lines again, because of course, that's what they've been doing for decades. They just took a pause from it and really focused on lobster. But that doesn't mean we can't really gear those skills and that ethic of sustainability that's built into the industry over to other species. It's the same.
So I think that they're really eager to get on board. We have a wait list of partner farmers who want to join. And we're working diligently to create a market so that we can get as many people in the water as possible.
They're all small family farmers. What I want to point out is that you can combine all of the aquaculture, the acreage of aquaculture in Maine, and I think it's now a little bit bigger than the Portland jet port, but not much. By working with small family farmers to scale and then drive a market for them, we're able to serve many different coastal communities from Casco Bay all the way up to Eastport. And a lot of the communities that we're working with like Bremen, Spruce Head, and Steuben, are so thoroughly working waterfront communities. They're excited, because this is an opportunity for them to do what they've always done.
Yeah, this is spectacular! This is the way that it’ll work. This is how you manage to keep traditional cultural life ways while the climate changes around you, you find something else that sort of occupies that slot, but works in the new climate. I've talked about you guys a lot, actually, just with a lot of people in Maine since my last interview. You guys are one of the most exciting things happening in the state. Like, you got the Governor’s Award for Business Excellence in the Heritage Industry category last year. You've sort of seeded this whole kelp-growing agricultural entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Yeah, absolutely. And there's so much room for growth. My big point of pride is that what we've built works best for the fisher-farmers who we work with, and as long as that's always true, we're doing our job.
I hope that this concept works for other companies in other industries too, because that just means more diversification and resilience in our food system. It really is a close partnership. We provide our partner farmers with free seed every season, and work with them directly in their application process with the Department of Marine Resources to ensure that where they site their farm is the best place for them and is in line with all of the really important regulations.
We guarantee price per pound and we work with them on that and it's only increased year over year since we started. And then we guarantee purchase of every pound of kelp that they grow at the dock. We pick up from them and often we'll go out and harvest with them too if they need an extra set of hands. So we're training them, we're working on standard operating practices together, we're doing farm checks together, all of these things. This is so important because if you're really working with the farmers’ best interest in mind, this is what you do. You make sure that they're successful first. And then everything else will follow.
Absolutely. You guys sound like just an incredibly awesome company. If I had a boat and a patch of waterfront, I would love to go work for you. I have a laptop, not a boat, but it sounds amazing. It sounds like exactly what I'd want to do if I was living in Stonington or another fishing community or even just waterfront Portland and looking for places to expand my business.
Yeah, well, we always say Sam, you don't have to be a farmer to grow kelp. So you're growing kelp, I'm growing kelp, everybody on our team is growing kelp. We’re all contributing in our own way, and so it's all important.
Thank you. Incidentally, Alaska is notably not in the Atlantic, are you going to change the name to, maybe, American Sea Farms?
I don't know what we're gonna do! We'll see how it goes. But yeah, as far as branding goes, it's a little tricky, but that's all right.
You get to keep the ASF logo and it works for anywhere you expand in the same country.
There you go! That's the answer.
Do you have any further areas for expansion you’re looking at? There's a lot of potential kelp going areas of the country, like the rest of New England, maybe further south in, like, Long Island, or on the other coast, Puget Sound. Do you have any other potential states to expand to beyond the three that you have now? Are you looking at other potential partners in other areas of the country?
Not right now, we're not.
I think we kind of have our hands full with Maine and Alaska in particular, Alaska is a big state. Also, I will say that the state government in Alaska is really excited about kelp farming. So what we're seeing is a lot of support out that way for this endeavor, which is important. And we work with some great partner farmers down in Rhode Island that have been awesome. They're mussel farmers, family mussel farmers down there. And that's exciting. But outside of that, we don't really have plans to expand at this time.
But like you said, there's plenty of room to expand in Maine and Alaska, those are big, big, big spaces.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're not even occupying much space. All aquaculture isn't even occupying much more space than the Portland jet port. And we have more coastline than the state of California right here [in Maine]. And 4,000-plus lobster license holders who are more than qualified for kelp farming.
And as for Alaska-it's kind of expansive.
So yeah, you're good. You guys have an amazing future ahead of you.
So, let's talk about what's going to happen to all this kelp, because I think most people know kelp as like a very sort of niche, small component in food, like maybe just in Japanese miso soup or something, maybe in a salad. But there's so much more you can do with it! There's textiles, there's food additives, there's a company called Keel Labs that's working on a yarn made from kelp. Tell me about all the potential for the other side of the equation. Once you've grown all this kelp, all the cool stuff that can be done with kelp.
Absolutely. So I think more and more companies to your point, whether they're in food, the food space, or they're in other alternative uses are really looking at their sourcing strategy, right. Like big, massive companies, that's going to take some time, but there are smaller companies that are really looking at scaling these solutions quicker.
Everything from our own products, which are in 3000 stores across the country, which definitely moves the needle as far as seaweed goes. But then also like companies like Navitas, they are incorporating our kelp into a superfood sea greens blend, which is great. That is really helpful and really moves quite a bit of seaweed.
Pet food. We work with a company called Polkadog, who put out this product called Green Monstah, and it's green crabs and kelp combined into a dog treat. Think about how much of an impact pet food alone can have.
That is great. That one dog treat is helping the Gulf of Maine on a number of levels.
Yeah, exactly! And there's Keel Labs like you mentioned. They're doing incredibly important work by thinking about that full lifecycle of textiles. Fast fashion has just created a massive amount of opportunity for the fossil fuel industry. What if, instead, they were using regeneratively grown kelp?
We also have a partnership with a company called Sway that is making a plastic film replacement out of seaweed that's designed to be a replacement for single-use packaging, single-use bags. Primarily in the fashion space. Think of all of those dust jackets, and if you get a t-shirt, it's in a plastic bag, right? All of these things. They're really looking at tackling that with sustainably sourced seaweed.
Loliware is another one. They are replacing plastic straws and cutlery with a seaweed based solution. Biostimulants and animal feed are additional opportunities. All of these things are there.
I think what we need to always keep in mind is that seaweed isn't the solution. It's a solution, but it only really works if we're not making the same mistakes of terrestrial agriculture on the ocean and making sure that our practices are not extractive, but they're actually additive and regenerative. And that's what kelp farming is. And so I think there's a lot of opportunity to grow there in all of these different spaces. And we are already doing it, which is exciting. Now we just need to scale it up and keep people moving.
So talk about scaling up. What is your hope for how fast you can scale up? Do you have like targets for like 2025 or 2040 in terms of like number of farmers or amount of seaweed or stuff like that?
Yeah, we do. We have goals for sure. All of them aredependent on a lot of different inputs, right? So first and foremost, we need to make sure that our growth matches the growth of our partner farmers, so that we're not getting people into the water and then not having a market for their seaweed, which has happened in the past in seaweed farming a lot.
We’re really ambitious with our growth goals, but they are also, always, centered around the success of the farmers. We are going to guarantee to buy every pound of kelp that they grow, And we're going to drive a market on their behalf.Â
Honestly, Sam, our goal is creating this opportunity for as many partner farmers as we can for as soon as we can, because lobster babies are down 40%, snow crabs are dying off in Alaska. We need to move on this. But to move, we need food companies at scale to step up and choose domestically grown seaweed as the option for their input in their products. We need consumers to keep buying Atlantic Sea Farms at their local grocery store. And we’re confident all of these things are happening and will continue to grow.
So is there any federal support for this? Because I know Chellie Pingree, my representative, possibly yours too, in Maine, has been a big supporter of aquaculture. Is there anything for you guys included in recent Farm Bills, USDA grants, stuff like that?
Funding like that generally goes to the actual farmer, as it should, but we do apply for grants and look to non-dilutive ways to support the level of innovation required for our nursery and product development operations. There is no majority owner of our company, and we work with impact investors to move forward and grow. It’s important for people to realize the level of investment required to scale solutions like this. I think it's really important to understand that for us to be able to attain the processing component, food safety, which is a hugely important thing to scale a market, the nursery, the storage, all of these things, the facility that we work in, we've invested $9 million in this effort.
Scale is so important for the success of these partner farmers and these fishermen, and that requires investment. What I want to see are the people who are already working on the water, who have that generational understanding of working on the water, to use this as a diversification strategy, fish a little bit, seaweed farm, you know, do all of these things kind of together in this beautiful ecosystem of working on the water year round, and really just making our whole coastline healthier for it.
But it doesn't come without investment to get those products to market.
I see. Well, thank you so much for doing this. As a Mainer and as a human, I really appreciate that you're doing this amazing work to help our oceans and produce some great plant-based food. So thank you so much.
I really enjoyed this interview, Sam. You're great. Obviously have a really keen eye for what's going on out there. So thank you so much for taking the time to tell our story. It helps. Thank you so much.
Thank you!
Like what Ella said, I'll be on the lookout as well! You Mainers really have your act together- making virtues out of the necessities that a warning Gulf is imposing. The Alaskan fisheries are starting to face similar warming.. so it's good that the Gulf kelp people at ASF are starting to form partnerships with their Alaskan compatriots.
I’ll be looking for ASF products now. Good on ya!