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Bren Smith is the founder of GreenWave, an organization dedicated to restoring oceans, mitigating climate change and creating jobs via ocean farming of sea greens and shellfish. We spoke with Bren and his newest board member Mike Shim about why a ‘blue-green economy’ is so important and why it represents an enormous investment opportunity.

Ashoka: Let’s start by quickly going through a few fun seaweed facts that people might not know.

Bren Smith: Absolutely! But before we get going, I want to introduce some new vocabulary. Part of our mission here at GreenWave is to change people’s perception of seaweeds, and we are doing that by referring to seaweed and other macroalgae as ‘sea greens.’ Because that’s closer to what they really are – vital food from the ocean, and not nuisance ‘weed.’ For one, kelp is one of the fastest growing plants in the world – in ideal conditions it can grow two feet a day. When you’re farming it, you can go from seed to harvest in just two weeks. It’s also one of the most carbon absorbing plants, which is obviously important as carbon in our atmosphere and oceans has surpassed dangerous levels. And from a nutritional standpoint, kelp is high in protein, low in fat, and loaded with good vitamins and minerals including hard-to-find Vitamin B-12 and Omega-3 fatty acids. A lot of the good nutrients you get from fish actually come from sea greens.

Ashoka: Ok, you got it – sea greens from here on! You talk about reimagining the seafood plate and even the dinner plate to make room for all kinds of sea greens. Is that realistic?

But when I talk about reimagining the seafood plate, the main point here is that people keep tweaking our unsustainable food system in small ways, but they’re not yet reimagining the plate based on what our planet can provide. This is where the promise of 3D Ocean Farming comes in: We can grow nutritious food with zero inputs – no water, no land, nofertilizers. Just oceans and the sun. It’s the most sustainable form of food production on the planet, and in fact, it improves our oceans, which is why we call it restorative farming.

Ashoka: What’s it going to take to grow this market from niche to mainstream? What are the barriers?

Bren: Well, we’ve already proven that with 20 acres, a boat, and $20,000 you can get started as a small ocean farmer. That is a godsend for a fishing industry that is in decline and for fishermen who are increasingly finding themselves out of work. This represents a reboot, a new chance.

Ashoka: And a chance to be ‘climate farmers’ as you call them.

Bren: Exactly. What’s beautiful is this is a way that a single person can do something about the planet. It doesn’t require you to be a Google or the US government or have billions in capital.

Ashoka: What do these climate farmers need to succeed?

Bren: What GreenWave has done is provide farmers with early support and best practices – and we’ve also become an education and evangelizing platform. We’ve built the largest network of sea greens hatcheries in the US to supply our farmers with reliable seed. But the industry needs some major infrastructure investment to take off, and the time is now.