Water We Doing?

Deep Dive: Mike Williamson, CEO of Cascadia Seaweed

April 30, 2021 David Evans / Mike Williamson Season 1 Episode 7
Water We Doing?
Deep Dive: Mike Williamson, CEO of Cascadia Seaweed
Show Notes Transcript

As the global population grows to 10 billion by 2050 we will need to find new ways to feed everyone. As our water resources and productive agricultural land get stretched thinner and thinner we will need to find new and innovative ways to produce food! In today's episode we are discussing two innovative approaches to producing food which are very water conscious and that could be providing our food sooner than you might think!

Today we're discussing Seaweed Cultivation! The world bank thinks that Seaweed could make up 10% of the food for the world by that point! Think about it you just need an ocean and sunlight and there you go!

You'll hear from Mike Williamson the CEO of  Cascadia Seaweed!  You'll hear all about the health benefits, ecosystems services and how seaweed can be integrated into the North American Diet!


Check out Cascadia Seaweeds website here for more information about Seaweed farming and their new innovative products! Do you live near Sydney, British Columbia? You should mark your calendars for Seaweed Days from May 17-23rd, where Cascadia Seaweed will be launching their new products!

The Aquatic Bisophere Project
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

David Evans:

Welcome to today's deep dive episode. Today, we're gonna learn all about seaweed, and how there's a new industry in Canada, where we're actually starting to cultivate our own seaweed and put it into so many different new products. The blue economy is really where our world is going towards with sustainable products that are good for our environment. But also good for us. plant based foods is taking off. And I always find it interesting that we eat a lot of seafood. But we don't often eat a lot of sea vegetables. Today, you'll be hearing from Mike Williamson, the CEO of Cascadia seaweed, and we'll be learning about how Cascadia seaweed is setting itself up to be a huge player in so many different markets. So sit back, relax, and get ready to learn a little bit about how you grow seaweed. And why we should be looking for it in our grocery stores. water we doing? And how can we do better? your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water to use and the organisms that depend on it for all the global issues that you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? How can we do better? Awesome, and welcome to another deep dive episode. I'm so excited. Today we are going to be learning everything about seaweed that you ever wanted to know. So I was just hoping, Mike, if you could introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit about what you do.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

Sure. And I can tell you a lot about seaweed. And I can give you a one hour version or a one week version because there's so many wonderful aspects of it. My name is Mike Williamson, and I'm president and chief executive officer of Cascadia seaweed. We're located in Sydney, British Columbia, which is very close to Victoria BC. And we are an ocean cultivator of quality seaweed, and we're growing in the coastal waters all around British Columbia.

David Evans:

fascinating, fascinating. And what gave you the idea to start a seaweed farm? I mean, it doesn't seem to come across the mind for agriculture as as the typical farming operation.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

No, it doesn't. But at the end of the day, it actually is quite typical. And we produce high quality, nutritious food. One of my business partners and co founder was doing some work for Vancouver Island economic Alliance looking at potential business cases, mostly in the natural resource sector on Vancouver Island, and one of them was seaweed cultivation. I have about 30 years background in the marine environment. And my two business partners had about the same in various sectors. I was in the Navy and then did a lot of shipbuilding and ship repair and build it a lot of Oceanography. And Tony did a lot of marine construction. And we looked at seaweed farming and two things came up. The first one is globally, demand exceeds supply, which is a great place to start for a business. And the second one was a World Bank document that said in the next 25 years to feed the growing global population, up to 10% of the global food mass could come from seaweed, and I said Hmm, I've never really thought of that. So we did a deep dive and researched where most of the seaweed comes from in the world, and that is Asia, China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, and how much seaweed currently does not form part of our diet in North America. We said Well, there's something we can bridge there to other factors put wind in our sails. Just to follow along with the marine analogy was climate change. Everybody wanted to do things or be involved in projects or companies. That were good for the planet, at least did no harm. And if they improve the environment, then all the better. And the second one was plant based food and all your listeners will realize with beyond meat impossible foods, very good butchers. There's a lot of folks that are producing food that consumers want now, not necessarily as vegans, but maybe as flexitarians, reducing the amount of meat and increasing the amount of plant based foods. So those four things came together and gave us a reason to start the company, which we did in June of 2019.

David Evans:

Wow, those are some really strong reasons to start this company. And I think a lot of people will be kicking themselves for not thinking of it first. So you mentioned that there's such an uptick demand, what is CBD actually being used for? Is there really that much demand for sushi? Or is it other things that I'm not considering? Sure,

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

so all good questions. So in the world, there's over 10,000 different species or varieties of seaweed. Seaweed are broadly broken down into three groups, browns, greens, and reds. If I said things like kelp, sugar, Cal bull kelp, that's a brown. If I say things like Dulce, which is a very common seaweed on the East Coast, that's a red and Nori, which is what they wrap sushi in is a green. So there's a wide variety in British Columbia. We have 630 native species in the ocean. So we cultivate only seaweeds that are native to BC you don't want to bring in any invasive species, and you don't want to disrupt the ecosystem. There's also another distinction you have to make right off at the start. And that is that there's cultivators and there's harvesters. harvesters get licenses from the province and in a responsible manner. They go out and they cut existing seaweed. Usually they leave enough on the plant so it regenerates season after season. But the problem with that is you can only get a certain amount, maybe a ton or two. It's difficult to scale. And it's difficult to produce a product that you know is going to be there year after year after year. Right What we do is cultivate we put a farm in the water and for firm imagine a rope ladder on its side. So we license a 10 year like a Hector of a water lot. We put one of these farms in the water with floats and ropes and anchors. And then we put a seeded line onto the farm you planted in December and you harvest it in April that's the growing season. So the food uses in North America are predominantly as you've said, as sushi wrap the nori wrap on on your rice rolls, but increasingly in the big box stores many many people buy those plastic packs of seaweed snacks very, very thin sheets of Nori kids love them. Adults love them. They're very tasty. They all come from Korea, so we're looking to disrupt part of that market, as well. There's a fresh seaweed salad market you can go into any Whole Foods Costco, any health food store, and they sell plastic containers of ready made seaweed salad. It has a sesame flavor, and a little bit of a watery mouthfeel. That's a traditional Japanese seaweed salad. So our goal is to turn it into North American food. Right now we're working on seaweed jerky, our own snack sheets and protein crisps. So what we're doing is we're taking advantage of the natural nutrition and seaweed has more potassium than bananas, more calcium than milk, a wide variety of fiber and minerals and elements. For example, our seaweed is the only vegan source of vitamin B 12, which is very important for vegan diets. And if you want to stay truly vegan, you've got to get it from seaweed. So along with the shelf stable snack products, we're also looking at other products in our development pipeline, seaweed burgers that will either be fully vegan, mimicking meat or fish burgers or 5050 burgers, half seaweed, half meat or half seaweed, half fish, frozen smoothie cubes, you know, to get a little extra boost in the morning, and a large variety of other innovations like that. So we're going across the spectrum and our goal is to roll out initially direct to consumer and then hopefully on a store near you.

David Evans:

Very cool, very cool. I love that idea of like the frozen smoothie cubes and those all sound really, really interesting.

Unknown:

Yeah, it

David Evans:

seems to me that we typically associate seafood with fish from the ocean, but we don't often eat sea vegetables. It doesn't seem to make up much of the North American diet. So I assume you think that kelp is the new Kale.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

Well, people use that expression. And we actively avoid that type of comparison. And we don't use the word superfoods because when you tend to put a label on it, it becomes stuck with it. But if you look at the science and you look at the analysis of it, it is very healthy. It's loaded with a number of nutrition and essential elements. There's obviously the big division between aquaculture and agriculture. When folks talk of aquaculture they predominantly think of finfish, like you talked about and also shellfish. In some respects, seaweed is the third side of the triangle of aquaculture. But on the other hand, we grow our seed on land. It's in tanks, but it's very much like hydroponics or any nursery. We plant it and our plants only used the power of the sun and fertilizer or nutrition that's in the ocean nothing else is added. And it grows like a plant it has a root like structure, which is called a holdfast. It has a trunk like structure called a Stipe. And it has a leaf late structure called a fraud. Now seaweeds, otherwise known as LG is not exactly a plant, but it is way more closely aligned to being a plant than it is an animal like fin fish or shellfish. So the short answer is we're constantly with both feet in the camps are our feet in both camps, the agriculture camp and the aquaculture camp. And we don't often call ourselves a seafood, but a food from the sea. So there is a bit of a distinction there.

David Evans:

Yeah, there's a bit of a distinction. And that's a really good point of making sure it's not a gimmicky like superfood or anything, this is just a different way of getting those nutritious elements that you need in your life. And it's it's something that maybe hasn't historically been brought to the market in new and innovative ways that can take hold.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

For sure. There's lots of seaweed that comes into North America. Now in frozen and powdered format. Seaweed has a broad spectrum of use, the highest and best value is for nutraceuticals. Or pharmaceuticals, people are taking extracts from seaweed, and doing some wonderful things down through food, fresh, frozen shelf stable, down through other extracts, and then you get down into industrial extracts, like carageenan and agere agere, which are constituent components of a lot of dishes that we have today. And then further on downstream into fertilizer. Seaweed as a fertilizer is a wonderful product. And somewhere in that spectrum is also bovine feed or feed for cows, there's a lot of work being done right now. Cows can be a large source of greenhouse gases, methane, and we're working on a scientifically research project, where by adding a very small percentage of the daily diet of a cow with seaweed, you can reduce the amount of methane emissions up to 90%. So it's important because you know, cows will be around for a long time they do form part of our diet and our ecosystem. And if we can help farmers reduce their impacts on the environment, then it's a win for everybody. So we're doing research on that as well. So it's all all corners of the of this food food spectrum.

David Evans:

yet so many different uses. And I learned quite a bit from your your website. And that surprised me and I'm sure will surprise a lot of listeners to know that you might already be using seaweed in your daily life but have never maybe recognized that.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

No, and there are quite a few products with it in it. As you pointed out earlier, people use the term seaweed, kelp and algae interchangeably. That's like saying, What did you have for supper last night and somebody saying I had meat? Okay, any particular type of meat? Was it beef? Was it pork? Was it chicken and that's the same thing as saying I had seaweed there's, as I mentioned, a 10,000 varieties. And of course being in the industry we tend to get a little more specific. We're focusing on browns and reds. We have sugar kelp, malaria, we're working on giant kelp and bull kelp. And then we're doing in tanks Dulce or red seaweed. That's the one with the high vitamin B 12 content. But it also has two other things. It has a flavor called umami, which is the fifth flavor group. We know all about sweet and sour, salty, bitter, and umami, which is similar to the MSG taste is the fifth flavor group. And as well about three or four years ago it was heavily publicized as The seaweed that tastes like bacon. Last night, it's been a bit of a stretch. So far, we haven't quite perfected that. But you can use it dried or you can fry it. And there's just wonderful flavor and nutrients that come out of it. So our focus four or five species of browns, mainly kelps, and one species of Dulce. And we're continuing our investigation into some of the other 630 native species here in BC,

David Evans:

something I was really interested in, how do you even pick a species to focus on? How many can you actually grow? Or do they grow? Well together? What has the most commercial value? Yeah, how have you worked through that process?

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

So and I'm going to stop saying Great question, because they're all great questions. So seaweeds grow obviously, in a variety of different environmental conditions in the ocean, some like to grow in deep water, some like to grow in fast moving currents, some like to grow rate on the shore, where the tide is constantly crashing, and there's high energy and some like to be intertidal, that is to say, for half the day, they're high and dry in Iraq, and the other half the day. They're underwater. So as farmers, as I mentioned earlier, we have a rope infrastructure in the water. So we like to pick the species that prefer to grow in two to five meters of depth in relatively nutrient rich, but not high energy conditions. And and that's led us to the sugar kelps or the kelps. And the Dulce. The second consideration, as you said, is, is there a need for seaweed, there's some gnarly seaweeds out there that you know, have fought Mother Nature, and they've been around for 1000s of years. And they're they form some very important component in the web of nature, but there's very little value you can extract from them. And then of course, how long it grows, we wouldn't want to cultivate a seaweed that only comes to maturity once every four or five years that wouldn't be economically viable. We never want to grow in invasive species. So we only grow seaweeds, right

Unknown:

locally,

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

that occur locally. And then the last point is, is to walk in the footsteps of the folks we're working with both indigenous and coastal communities that have said, you know, 400 years species x is growing There we go. Well, that's a great place to start because why try to grow something that just won't grow. So that's that's how we do this selection. There seaweeds and other parts of the world Sargassum gums and ascophyllum. And things like that, that grow well on the East Coast, or the grow well in warm climates. And they all have great uses, but they don't grow in BC, so we don't focus on them.

David Evans:

Yeah, we have an episode coming out about Asian carp and and the invasive species threat that they pose to throughout Canada and throughout the United States. So invasive species is something that, yeah, we never want to bring something into new body of water, regardless of what it might bring to us beneficially. So right. That's, that's really great to hear.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

That's the same as with seaweed cultivation. And it's controlled two ways. One is the provincial licensing mechanism, with some oversight by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. And the other one is just being a responsible company. As I mentioned, we work very closely with First Nations and coastal communities were their partners. They're our partners. And we have social licence to cultivate seaweed and territorial and community waters. And at the end of the day, we've got to be accountable for it, and have practices that make us good neighbors.

David Evans:

Absolutely. And that's so great to hear. That's so great to hear. So you mentioned earlier as well, that these lines are seated and that they're originally some of them are cultivated on land within tanks. So how does the process work? So how, how do you get a seed from a seaweed and be able to attach it to a line? I'm so curious about this, the whole farming process?

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

Right, there's a couple of methods but I'll only concentrate on the one we're doing. So see what seaweed has a reproductive cycle. And in the early fall, it produces spores or sporophytes. And it releases it into the water and these little sporophytes or gmita fight swim around and they find surfaces to grow on to reproduce for the following year. So what we do is we gather up some healthy looking plants in that cycle. And the seed patches are very dark brown or dark black seed patches, so they're really ripe to produce a little baby seaweed. We bring them into our nursery, which is like a couple of 40 foot containers. In fact, they're exactly a couple of 40 foot containers with insulation and cooling and lighting and all kinds of extra things. teachers. And in these aquariums, we have plastic pipes, maybe a two foot long plastic pipe like you'd see in the plumbing in your house. wrapped around the plastic pipe is something the thickness of kite string. So in an aquarium may be 12 of these spools and each spool may have 100 meters of kite string around it. Now they've all been disinfected and cleaned. So it's very pristine environment. into that, we put the outcome of these seed patches so basically little baby, swimming seaweed looking for a home and the baby swimming seaweed swim around the aquarium and they go oh, look at all this wonderful white twine, and they alight on the white twine. We do this in the middle of October and over the next 45 days, these little seedlings attach their little hold fast to the twine, and then the whole beautiful white spool starts to turn brown. And then it starts to turn fuzzy. And you know that your seaweed is now growing on this twine. What we then do is get in boats and go out to our farm. And if you recall, I said it's like a rope ladder on its side where each rung of the ladder is a cultivation line at about two meters depth. So we unclip one of these cultivation lines and pass it through the center of the spool. And then we run this spool along the cultivation line. And as the spool runs along this seeded twine, slowly unwraps itself from the spool and wraps itself onto the cultivation line. So now what you've effectively done is transferred your seeded line from a spool in an aquarium to a line in the ocean, you're mimicking the bottom of the ocean, but line after line after line after line. And then you lower the farm back to the growing depth, which is about two and a half meters. You do this before the middle of December, and then you go away. And through the winter months, it sits there very quiet, slowly absorbing nutrients washing back and forth by the seat. And then in the spring. When the days get longer, the sun gets stronger and nutrients, the flow of ocean currents comes, these things start to grow very, very rapidly. So we check them in January. We check them in February, we check them in March. And our harvest starts the first week of April where you get out, lift the lineup again and cut off what you've done. Timing is important because if the water gets too warm, then predators will go well, there's no nutrition left in the ocean. Oh look, a big seaweed farm, I think I'll go land on that. And your crop gets fouled. biofouling. So we like to harvest it. And it's a bit of a dance between letting it grow until the leaves or the fronds or the seaweeds long enough versus getting it before it starts to get fold. So that's a one season seaweed farm planted December harvest in April. We're now working with some crops in development that naturally occur in the other season. They actually start growing in the spring, and you harvest them in the fall. And that way, we'll be able to use our firm infrastructure year round. So that's that's the new development for this year.

David Evans:

That's very interesting. Yeah, it's that agricultural dilemma of do I harvest yet? Or do I wait for the first biofouling? Or do I wait for the first frost or something? Yeah,

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

exactly. So we've opted to go for a slightly smaller plant, but very, very clean and pristine. And it very much is like agriculture. In fact, you you've sort of keyed that in my mind, in agriculture, you put your seeds in a trench in the dirt, and then you cover it over. Well, our trench in the dirt is actually just a rope in the ocean. And instead of covering it over with dirt, we just lowered back into the water. And instead of a tractor, we have a boat. Other than that the parallels are similar. We're under regulation by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. We follow best practices when we process the seaweed and it's sold as a food product under the same sets of regulations that any quality safe crop would require.

David Evans:

Yeah, exactly. And is most of it dried at the end or what is the processing I guess it depends on the intended product that would be put into but do you have a huge drying facility or what is your processing plant look like?

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

So the intention is to stabilize the seaweed as quickly as possible. Seaweed loves to grow in the ocean which is saltwater about 10 degrees centigrade and sunlight soon as you pull it out of the water it starts to complain and it starts to deteriorate rapidly. So within four to eight hours, we like to get it into a food processing facility in our case We have the food hub provincially sponsored food hub in Port Alberni on beautiful Vancouver Island. And what we do is we wash it. So to take any foreign matter, seeds, weeds, anything we wash the seaweed, then we blanch it, which is a very fast boil. And that's known as a kill step in the food process. So it kills pathogens and new biological agents. And it turns the seaweed bright delicious green, what we're doing with it this year is then flash freezing it in 25 kilogram blocks, and then that stabilizes it. Once it's stabilized, then you can do it. Anything you want with it, you can thought you can dry it, which is the second step we're going to look at, you can turn it into a powder, or you can keep it frozen for things like smoothie cubes, one of the amazing properties of seaweed. And I'll tell you why it's an amazing property of seaweed. If you think about seaweed growing in its life, it could be four feet out of the water, four feet under the water in the middle of summer or the middle of winter. So it goes its natural life cycle is a wide range of conditions. Because of that, you can freeze seaweed, and thought and freeze it and thought and it doesn't deteriorate like some land vegetables do. The other thing you can do. And it's really a fun product that we're going to be bringing to market, you can dehydrate it, so that it's like a tissue paper. And then when you want fresh salad, yes, simply stick it in water, you rehydrate it. And it's as good as it was when it dehydrated because it's used to that. So think of the concept of dehydrated salads. And you say to your family, let's have some healthy, nutritious seaweed salad tonight, you don't have to go to the fridge to go to the shelf, pull off flakes, rehydrate it to the level you want. And you can use it in a variety of dishes. And the other thing it does depending on the liquid in which you rehydrate it, it takes up the flavor of what you're rehydrating it in. So a wide variety of products. And as you said, depending on the end use, we either focus more on the freezing, more on the drying or more on the on other uses of it.

David Evans:

That's really interesting. Yeah, that sparks for me many memories of camping in wild areas, and having the freeze dried meals. And I'm sure you're familiar. Having a military background.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

That's a really interesting aspect of looking at this as a food product. Sure, and our line is fresh frozen or shelf stable for home and away for for families that want a healthy source local product. And when we started a few years ago, the company folks didn't talk about the blue economy. And folks didn't talk about seaweed in terms of plant based food. Fast forward three years to today 2021 there's a large number of companies now looking at seaweed products, bringing them to consumers in the frozen in the dried format, fermented like a kimchi type of thing. And everyone's talking about the blue economy and the positive impact that seaweed cultivation has on the ecosystems. There's a number of ecosystem services it provides it sequesters carbon, it uptakes excess nutrients, it reduces ocean acidification, and it creates habitat, which are all very positive things. And it's one of the few agricultural processes that the more you do, the better it is for the planet. Other agricultural processes, the more you do, sometimes it can stress parts of the environment. Most of it's done in a very responsible manner. But seaweed farming has room to be greater in scope and thus providing greater positive ecosystem services. And that contributes to the story when you're eating it. Not only is it good for you, it's good for the planet.

David Evans:

Absolutely, absolutely. So I know with some aquaculture products, primarily, when you're looking at oysters and mussels and other shellfish, red tide can become a concern. Is that a concern with seaweed is it does it act as sort of the filter feeder similar to those muscles?

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

No, it's it's not a filter feeder and it's not a bio accumulator. So the shellfish that are subject to red tide, suspensions or warning or closures are bio accumulators. They'll take anything in their environment. And over time, they build up that the bio toxins in their systems, seaweed doesn't interact with the environment. That way it can take up minerals and nutrients in the environment in which it exists. But it doesn't take up the components that cause the trouble with red tide. It's not in the water long enough. It's typically In and out before red tide is common in an area. And we obviously take all the practices when we harvest as well to make sure that the fronds are completely washed, so anything on the surface is not present. And finally, we do a lot of testing of the seaweed before it goes into the food system. There's some pretty solid scientific lab work with lasers and mass spectrometers to check for things like heavy metal contamination, and other things that wouldn't be allowed in the food system. And of course, we have to be doubly sure that anything we produce and sell is food safe and completely in the recommended daily allotment of of all of the all of the components.

David Evans:

That's really great to hear. I didn't think it was but I just wanted to make sure, yeah, we've

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

we've got some very well qualified scientists on staff. And we've done a deep dive again, pardon the pun, but we've done a dive on all of these to ensure that we're fully compliant.

David Evans:

Absolutely. So it seems from our conversation so far, that there really aren't any negatives. With aquaculture, it doesn't always get the best feedback on its environmental impacts. But this seems to be as we said, it's not agriculture, it's not agriculture, it's kind of a bit of both. And it seems to have more benefits to its environmental impacts. Would you agree with that, are there any things that that are really taking away from an environment or it's predominantly providing more habitat more surface area for, for things to grow, and in providing more, I guess, diversity in the landscape underwater?

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

I think any human activity can, in its extreme have negative impact on on the earth. So the idea is always to minimize that. I mentioned that seaweed provides a number of positive ecosystem services. If you were to dig fairly deeply and say, what's wrong with seaweed farming, I suppose if you had a very, very large Bay and covered every square inch of it with a seaweed farm, two things would happen. One is it wood shade the bottom, so whatever naturally lives on the bottom would not get the sunlight that it normally did. And again, if you had a seaweed on a mass farm on a massive scale, the nutrients that would normally flow through the ocean and reach the shoreline would all be uptaken by your seaweed farm. So the way we mitigate both of those is by having reasonable size farms like up to 10, or 20 hectares in a bay that's 10s of 1000s of hectares. So it really doesn't have the impact. We're putting a gear in the water floats, cement anchors and ropes. And the way we mitigate against that is we use the same equipment that the fishing industry uses or has used for decades. So minimal impact in terms of chafing, or bits that can break off. They're all proven systems that don't leave debris in the ocean. The other things that we check before putting in a farm is to ensure that we're not in an area where there's heavy marine traffic, you obviously wouldn't put a farm across a route where there's a lot of ships going by. And the same thing for migrating species of fish and ocean mammals were typically in areas where they don't naturally occur, so we wouldn't want to impede with that. So, like any responsible producer, we have to make sure that the risks are mitigated, that the risks are understood and mitigated. And if they can't be minimized to an acceptable level, we don't put a farm in a particular location.

David Evans:

Well, that's really good to hear there are there are risks with anything that we are doing. So is this a new industry for Canada? It seems that I haven't heard much about this in the past.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

It's it's a growing industry in Canada, there's one company on the East Coast operating out of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that's been around for maybe 15 or 20 years. They have predominantly produced fresh salads for the Japanese market. They're very large supplier there, and for the industrial market, that is to say people that use seaweed in other value added industrial products, so they're not a household name. In the last two to three years, there's been a couple of companies growing in Alaska and growing in Maine, that have been able to start to penetrate the markets and their local areas. Were the first company of scale in Western Canada. Our goal is to become the largest ocean cultivator of quality seaweed in North America. And the reason why size is important is because when you start to produce a mainstream product where there's uptake by consumers, stores and online retailers are going to want to make sure when they order 500 boxes that you can sell 500 boxes to meet the demand. See You really do have to scale to get to a size where you can reliably provide the same product year after year after year. Globally, apart from Asia, there's a growing industry in Norway and in the Faroe Islands, and that's about it. So it's a fairly new industry. But we think, as I mentioned earlier with climate change, folks wanting to achieve United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, climate positive and plant based food that there will be increasing demand year on year for it.

David Evans:

Nice, that's wonderful. And does Canada have a lot of capacity to farm the seaweed? Is it Are we limited by distance from from a port or something like that is what our limitations.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

So in British Columbia, there are a few limitations. The aquaculture industry on Vancouver Island alone is worth something like$1.3 billion. So in British Columbia with fin fish and shellfish, there is a history of using wharfs, jetties, and harbors and boats. And with indigenous and coastal communities, lots of people have experienced working on the water. And there's lots of fish processing plants. Unfortunately, some of the natural occurring harvest has dropped, you know, it's always very seasonal. So there is capacity for processing seaweed. It's easy to nothing's easy, it's straightforward, to turn into a shelf stable, transportable product. And there's 1000s of kilometers of coastline in British Columbia, where one could put seaweed farms in and produce a lot of positive benefits. So with respect to growing the industry of British Columbia, there's lots and lots of opportunity on the East Coast, I would have to imagine there is we haven't done a full deep dive study around Newfoundland or Nova Scotia. But many of the similar conditions occur there that occur here. And I know there's a few proponents starting businesses in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, exactly like we are responsibly growing ocean cultivating and harvesting seaweed making products. So I think these are the early days of a big industry. And yeah, it's a good space to watch.

David Evans:

It's a really exciting thing to watch. Yeah, this is I'm getting so excited about trying out your products and really jumping in on on seaweed for anyone who's listening to this and they get really excited about your products or about seaweed, whether it be greens or reds, or browns, where can they find out more about these products. And once you do get to direct to consumer sales, where can listeners find out where to actually purchase something like this?

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

So Our website is www dot Cascadia seaweed.com. Named after the Cascadia region where we are Cascadia seaweed.com. Our food brand is Cove with a K k o ve, or Cove ocean, we're doing a big launch of our brand in May, we're hosting something called seven days of seaweed, here in Sydney, British Columbia, which will be both online and in person. And over seven days, we hope to educate consumers. There's artists components, there's professional development components, and that's where the cove brand will be fully launched. And then all the information about how to purchase direct to consumer will be on our website after our launch in May. It's interesting to note, there's been a number of seaweed professional development activities over the last year, all of them online, most of them from either the US or overseas. And one thing that's very interesting to me is all of the events are attended by folks from all over the Western world. So a seaweed event in Holland will have other Europeans and North Americans and South Americans. And that speaks to the growing interest globally. We're expecting the same thing for our professional series components of siwi days. And we started to get registration for seminars and online talks from all over the world. So if any of the listeners are around middle of May 17 to 23rd, I think. And the website for that is seaweed. days.com.

David Evans:

Very, very cool. And they'll be leaving links in the show notes for listeners so they can go down there and just click and they'll take you straight over there. Yeah, so fascinating. And Mike, I was hoping to talk about your background and how you found your career path that led you eventually to this place with Cascadia.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

So, you've got to be an entrepreneur to do this because we're pioneers in this sector, and we realize that all the components of a good solid business are there, and we put them together. That being said, two of my partners, as I mentioned earlier, have decades and decades working on the ocean. So it's an environment with which we are familiar. And our other partners have backgrounds in food and consumer packaged goods and financing. We now have 20 team members and partners in our company. And the majority of them are people that have had some attachment to the sea. A seaweed biologist is called a fire ecologist, not a psychologist, but a fight colleges. So obviously, the fight call it just we have working with us all have studied marine biology, and marine plants for their career. So it was a natural extension, we have a couple of engineers that have worked in and around the world are not necessarily on aquaculture or agriculture. And their skill sets are relatively easily transferable to the ocean. But once you get past the basics of boat safety and, and marine navigation, we're always within sight of land, and you'll learn some of the do's and don'ts and how to wear a life jacket. Then the rest of it is just good old fashioned Canadian innovation, hard work and entrepreneurial spirit with respect to the food processing side of it. A lot of commonality with other foodstuffs. So there is a bit of a natural overlap there. I've got to tell one quick story. When we started harvesting, I had to buy some equipment, and it was in December, and my hands were gonna be in the water. So I needed some kind of glove waterproof or near pre and I wasn't sure. And I went to one of my local adventure Outfitters which sells you know, kayaks and wind surfers. And a young lady came over as I was staring blankly at this vast display of gloves. And I said, I need some gloves. And she goes, Okay, what would you like them for? And I said, I'm a seaweed farmer. And she goes, Okay, well, seaweed farmers usually go over to this section, knowing for sure, they had never been a seaweed farmer in her store. But he did, she did very well. And that is only used to illustrate that, you know, it's not that alien in industry. And there's always some kind of ties to other things people have either done in biology, with the ocean, or with food.

David Evans:

That's fantastic. That's, that's a great little side story there. And I'm curious, do you have a personal favorite just from the taste alone? Or, or just from your personal experience with going out in the ocean and and harvesting it? Do you have a favorite seaweed whether it be brown, red or green?

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

We took out a Japanese investor on one of our vessels in February of last year. And we pulled the line out of the water and interesting thing about seaweed is it's not salty, if you shake off the excess surface water. It's not salty at all. And the Japanese gentlemen pulled off the seaweed having had I mean, he was, as I said, a Japanese citizen had lots of experience with seaweed, and tasted some of our British Columbia seaweed. And he said, this is really good. And that's the same reaction when anyone pulls seaweed right out of the ocean or right out of the water in the case of the Dulce and tastes it. So I would have to say that, like a good father, all of my seaweeds are tasty and nutritious. And I don't really have a favorite natural product. When it's and again, we've done a test turning it into dried snack sheets. We've done tests with the smoothie cubes, we've made lasagna out of it. We've made burgers out of it. It really enhances the flavor and taste great in whatever its format. It's in so long answer to say no, I don't have I don't have a personal favorite. They're all pretty darn good. And we have a brand on Vancouver Island called Island. Good. So I'd have to say that all of our seaweeds are truly Island. Good.

David Evans:

That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much this has been I've learned so much about seaweed that I never thought I would never know. And yeah, I'm really excited to eventually try the product once it comes out to market.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

And and we look forward to getting it to as many consumers in Canada and the states and globally as we can. As you said you've got the links to our website. So I hope your listeners dive in. Pardon the pun again, dive in and look around and see what seaweed is all about and perhaps tune in to some of seaweed days. We've got A great video we did on our site. There's FA Q's. And of course, there's info at Cascadia siwi.com. If anyone wants to reach out for any questions or clarification of anything they may have heard or read. Wonderful, thank

David Evans:

you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Mike Williamson, Cascadia Seaweed:

Thanks for your time and interest.

David Evans:

Thanks for tuning in to today's deep dive episode all about seaweed. Thanks so much to Mike Williamson from Cascadia seaweed. I learned so much and it was a great conversation. If you want to learn more about what Cascadia seaweed is doing and what seaweed farming even looks like, check them out at Cascadia seaweed.com. And also check them out at seaweed days.com as well for their new introduction to the COVID line of products. Seaweed days is Cascadia seaweed reach out event for their new line of products. It will be happening from May 17 to the 23rd in Sydney, British Columbia. Be sure to check it out. I wish I could be there, stupid COVID Be sure to check out the show notes as there will be links directly to those sites right there. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I would just like to thank the rest of the team from the aquatic biosphere project, specifically to Paula Polman, Sophie cervera, and Anna Bettini. Thanks for all of your help. To learn more about the aquatic biosphere project and what we're doing here in Alberta telling the story of water. Check us out at aquatic biosphere.ca. And if you have any questions or comments about the show, we'd love to hear them. Email us at conservation at aquatic biosphere.org. Please don't forget to like, subscribe and leave us a review. It really helps us out. Get excited for next week's episode as we take on microplastics I feel like almost everything has an element of plastic in it these days. And it's infiltrated everything everywhere around the world from the bottom of the Marianas Trench to the top of every mountain and it's even in our food. We're eating about a credit cards worth of plastic every week, just within our own food. Make sure you check out next week's episode. You won't want to miss it. Thanks and it's been a splash