by Rhianna Rees
YAS made its debut at Seagriculture EU 2024, the leading European seaweed conference, held this year in the Faroe Islands. While the Faroes have a long history and economic reliance on salmon farming, the seaweed sector has received significant investment in recent years, diversifying the use of its marine resources and creating economic opportunities. Ocean Rainforest is one of Europe’s largest seaweed farms, and inspired the transition for this small island nation. Seaweed production, often linked to both regenerative agriculture and aquaculture, suits the Faroes, where steep ridges and rocky expanses make farming immensely difficult. Ocean Rainforest is also using innovative cultivation and coppicing techniques, due to the unique geography of this northern archipelago.
Seaweed farming faces several challenges, and Ocean Rainforest is innovating to overcome them. Drying, a well-known bottleneck in production, is one area they are working to improve. They are also exploring alternative processing methods such as fermentation. The conference featured multiple presentations on the emerging benefits of seaweed, including bridging borders between seaweed in Alaska, China, and the wider world, the use of seaweed in innovative products and product lines, novel seeding technologies, and new species being introduced into the production cycle.
I had the pleasure to chair a panel discussing the current state and challenges of the European seaweed industry. Key takeaways included Europe's efforts to support the sector through regulation, novel classification assistance, and cross-country collaboration. However, the industry faces challenges like inconsistencies across European countries, lack of regulation for food, feed, and fertilizer, and space constraints in coastal regions. The panellists acknowledged these issues and emphasized ongoing efforts to address them.
The Faroes' proximity to Edinburgh was evident from the typical 'dreich' weather, but fortunately, the weather cleared up enough for visitors to tour the seaweed farm and explore the islands. YAS extends its gratitude to the organizers of Seagriculture for providing space for our stand - we hope our presence at leading conferences related to seaweed, molluscs, and finfish will continue to amplify the voices of young people in the UK aquaculture sector.
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