Seaweed cultivation above the Arctic Circle

In the future, there will be an increased demand for human food, animal feed and biofuels as well as a need for new cultivation areas. Kelp cultivation offers a potential for all three products, without needing fresh water, land areas and fertilizers. At the same time, kelps have one of the highest growth rates in the world. The MACROSEA project is a Norwegian Research Council-funded 4-year project designed to build a knowledge platform for industrial macroalgae cultivation in Norway that is combining biology, technology and modelling tasks. As part of the MACROSEA project, we have been collaborating with local kelp farmers to explore the potential for Saccharina latissima cultivation along the Norwegian coast at a total of ten sites from 58 °N to 69 °N. We used local genetic material pre-cultivated at the same lab, transferred to all study sites at the same time and cultivated in similar rig set-ups in the sea. Here growth and biofouling were quantified each 2nd to 3rd week throughout the whole growth season of 2017. S. latissima produced highest biomass furthest north due to a combination of later settlement of biofouling organisms settling or grazing on the biomass and good growth conditions. The preliminary results from this co-operation show that there is a good prospect for biomass production along the Norwegian coast, with an extended growth season north of the Arctic Circle.