How the Smith Lab at Scripps Institution of Oceanography is expanding tastes and possibilities at the intersection of cuisine and conservation.
With eyes on the horizon and your plate, seaweed aquaculture is taking place daily in La Jolla, an intersection of conservation and cuisine that addresses a growing array of goals from tackling environmental issues to pleasing your taste buds.
The Smith Lab at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, run by Jennifer Smith, PhD, focuses on “all things related to seaweed,” Smith said, engaging in seaweed aquaculture for a few reasons.
Culinary seaweed: Goals and growth
One reason is the culinary project, exploring the potential uses of a variety of local seaweeds for kitchen-related applications.
Most people think of eating seaweed as related to sushi or other foods tied to Asian cultures because “seaweeds are much more readily integrated into the diets in … countries like Japan, Korea and China,” Smith said.
The reality is that in California alone there are more than 500 species of native seaweeds, Smith said, most of them edible.
Image courtesy of Scripps Institution of Oceanography
“People have been recognizing how immensely valuable they are … as a superfood,” Smith added, as seaweeds are high in protein and fiber and more nutritionally dense than “any leafy green we can grow on land.”
The US imports more than 98% of its consumed seaweed from Asia, a number that presents “a unique opportunity for us to explore using some of our local native species” to meet the demand, Smith said.
Exploration in Smith’s lab means discovering what local seaweed species taste good or have unique properties that interest chefs and nutritionists, she said, which has led to the team cultivating a number of native species in captivity.
The team also delves into how seaweeds are processed for purchase, whether dried or preserved; Smith’s lab is interested in how to package fresh seaweed, she said.
Another aim of the culinary project: creating a seaweed salad from native species that differs from the traditional seaweed salads available in restaurants that are noticeably “identical to one another” due to the way they are packaged and shipped from Asia.
The lab is also working with Indigenous communities to learn how local tribes “traditionally used seaweeds in their diets and how they harvested them to make sure that they were not overharvesting or not harvesting at the wrong time of year,” Smith said.
Shifting seaweed to the kitchen
All of these efforts point to “a huge opportunity” to amplify the nutritional value of local species, Smith said.
Some seaweeds would surprise people with the strength of their flavor profiles, Smith said, like a species called pepper dulse that, in a tiny amount, delivers a “crazy pungent truffle flavor.”
There are also a myriad number of species unknown, she said, “because they’re essentially lying underneath the surface of the ocean, waiting to be tested and discovered.”
What species are known become subjects of culinary experimentation, Smith’s key to understanding the breadth of potential.
In April, the Smith Lab hosted its first “Seaweed Recipe Development Workshop” at the Kwok Family Innovation Kitchen at SIO’s Ted and Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility.
On the menu: seaweed scientists and chefs collaborating in a sustainable seafood test kitchen, Smith said.
Live cooking demonstrations – led by chef Rob Ruiz of Ensō Omakase; chef Christina Ng, personal chef and foundation cultivator of the Berry Good Food Foundation; chef Marcus Twilegar and his team from Cherryfish and Dockside Fish; and Ellyse Briand, events and culinary program manager for Olivewood Gardens & Learning Center – incorporated seaweed species grown or collected by the Smith Lab.
The chefs were chosen to engage with Smith’s lab because they are in San Diego and “at the forefront of highlighting sustainability and locally-caught seafood,” Smith said.
The workshops also featured participants from NOAA Fisheries, the Beyster Foundation, Builders Vision, CA SeaGrant and San Diego Bay Aquaculture, ensuring a range of perspectives.
The purpose of the event was not only to allow the chefs to experiment with different types of seaweeds but also to have the Smith Lab’s scientists educate the chefs about the diverse seaweeds and their characteristics.
“It was awesome,” Smith said, with plated results of sashimi topped with seaweed sprinkles, seaweed sourdough with seaweed clarified butter, seaweed pickles, dashi and a handful of seaweed desserts.
The workshop was the first of what the Smith Lab hopes will be many, fusing creativity and science to amplify the seaweeds’ potential uses.
“There’s no point in doing local seaweed aquaculture for human consumption if there’s not a demand for it, and there’s not going to be a demand without education and sampling, tasting and cooking,” Smith said.
Demand and commercialization possibilities
Smith provides the chefs with seaweed for recipes when requested, but isn’t in a position to be cultivating products for sale: Her lab is a research facility with no ability to produce at a scale to meet restaurant demand.
Smith’s aquaculture takes place in an outdoor cultivation facility on the Scripps campus using filtered seawater and natural sunlight, without additives.
“It’s just taking advantage of what naturally exists here,” she said.
The water is pumped from the end of the Scripps Pier, running through a series of filters once on land to remove particles including sediment and sand.
The tanks have bubble jets, making them resemble jacuzzis, Smith said. “The seaweed swirls around and grows in these big tubs.”
Larger, commercial aquaculture spaces are lacking in San Diego, Smith said, as there are obstacles to finding a location.
Performing aquaculture in the open ocean offshore is “challenging from a permitting and regulatory framework,” she said.
California hasn’t issued a new offshore aquaculture permit in more than 25 years and there’s multiple agencies involved in permitting offshore farms, she added.
“So unless you have multiple millions of dollars, it’s not even worth thinking about trying to do that right now.”
Expanding seaweed aquaculture is an eventual goal, Smith said – especially with ideal conditions locally.
“Seaweeds are some of our most underutilized resources. We have so much coastline,” she said, noting La Jolla’s submarine canyons grant “access to some of the cleanest seawater around.”
Leveraging aquaculture to address giant kelp loss
In addition to the culinary program, the Smith Lab uses aquaculture to study how seaweed could mitigate methane production in livestock, among other projects.
One undertaking: investigating aquaculture’s place in tackling giant kelp forest loss, a subject gaining growing concern in La Jolla with rising ocean temperatures.
“We know kelp is sensitive to elevated temperature,” Smith said. “We know that it doesn’t do well when you get warm water and you get low nutrients.”
Smith’s lab has a number of sites in La Jolla devoted to tracking temperature in the water and in the kelp forests, she said, adding the team is currently prepared to capture the local effects of the upcoming El Niño, a weather event bringing warmer waters to the West Coast.
Smith is also looking at whether certain species of kelp are better adapted to warm water than others and has collected 100 individuals of giant kelp currently growing in large incubators in the lab.
“We run thermal tolerance experiments on them,” she said, to see whether certain genotypes are more heat tolerant than others and why.
The team has “definitely found that there is variation in their performance when exposed to high temperatures,” which offers Smith “a lot of optimism” for the potential use of heat-tolerant kelp for restoration, she said.
Whether culinary or otherwise, the experiments on one subset of these living cultures inform the others, with the hope that unfettered seaweed growth can happen off the coast in imminent eras.
After all, though the inclusion of “weed” in the name implies an ability to grow anywhere, “you can’t just go plant a bunch of seeds underwater,” Smith said.
