Lesson 2

Lesson 2: Finding the right spot

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Introduction

This lesson will inspire you to find the best location for your future ocean farm. You need a place where your crops will thrive, but you also want easy access to your plot and the support of the people who live in your area and use the ocean.

One of the very first things you’ll want to consider when you begin your search for a potential farm site is where commercial ocean farming is allowed. Most European countries have a marine spatial plan (MSP) with zones pre-designated for different types of activities. Specific crops may even be allowed or disallowed in the area, where you plan to set up your farm. Reach out to your Cool Blue Future country facilitator for more information about what is possible and where.

Access

After you’ve determined where kelp or mussel farming is permitted in your area, then you’ll want to consider how you might access these waters.

Keep in mind that most types of seaweed, including kelp, are winter crops, and winter can bring with it hard weather and strong winds. Even experienced mariners should take extra safety precautions when venturing out in the winter. Will you be able to safely access your farm in January with the boat you have available? If you get weathered in, do you have a place to find shelter? If you’ll need to hire a boat or barge to help deploy your anchors, is there one in the region of your chosen site?

You’ll also want to consider the physical proximity of your site to the nearest harbour or port. How much fuel will you burn traveling to and from your site several times a week during the growing season? Calculate this cost and use it as one of your decision-making factors. Traveling time and distance also impact the quality of your harvested material. If you’re considering a remote site, you’ll also need to consider how you’ll maintain the quality of your crops post-harvest. Can you get your kelp to a place to be stabilized within 24 hours? Is it possible to have your mussels or oysters refrigerated when you reach the dock?

Choosing your site requires balancing selecting an area that will give your crops the best chance to grow with picking a place that isn’t inconvenient to access. If you spend all your time commuting to your site rather than farming it, farm visits can become tedious, and you’ll be less inclined to do them. If it’s easy to check on your site, you’ll be more inspired to perform routine monitoring and maintenance, which will ultimately produce a better product.

Social license

As you start to narrow in on a specific site, it’s critical to consider the social and cultural context of that location. Who lives or works nearby and uses the surrounding waters for recreation, industry, or subsistence? How will your farm impact those activities?

When you farm the ocean, you’re operating in the public commons. Because of this, ocean farms are held to a high standard and asked to demonstrate that farming activities will not negatively impact shared marine and coastal resources.

The more you can do to minimize the potential negative impacts of your farm—such as reducing visual and noise nuisance, clearly marking site boundaries in popular boating areas, and just generally being a good neighbour—the more public support there will be for your farm and the industry as a whole. This is sometimes referred to as social license to operate and is an intangible and valuable asset for any ocean farmer.

Some of the potential conflicts you can identify on a map, but most you learn by talking to people and spending time on and around your prospective site. Some farmers find they face a steep, uphill battle of convincing nearby homeowners to support their plans, while others receive broad community support. The more you can do to ease the concerns of different stakeholders early on, the easier your permitting—and, ultimately, farming—journey will be.

We strongly suggest proactively reaching out to all local stakeholders well in advance of selecting a site or sending in applications. A possibility is to host a citizen’s assembly where you can communicate the benefits your project. You need to hear all voices and will most likely find that by inviting your community to take part in your project from the earliest stages will establish local support and create understanding for what you are trying to accomplish. If you’re facing staunch resistance from a community group and your outreach efforts aren’t well-received, it may be worth considering a different site.

Environmental factors

Finally, you’ll want to pay attention to the biophysical characteristics of your site— the natural elements that make it unique. You can work to form new markets and resolve potential conflicts with your neighbours, but if your crops don’t grow well on the site you’ve selected, your business may be doomed from the start. You’re looking for a site that has the right depth, current, salinity, and nutrients for your crops to thrive.

Some of the guesswork of environmental suitability can be determined through site visits and observations. For example, when you first begin searching for prospective sites, see if you can identify wild beds of the species you intend to cultivate growing naturally nearby. If wild kelp is growing in the area, it’s a good indication that farmed kelp should also thrive. Likewise, mussels growing under buoys and on ropes in the area, or large natural mussel banks on the ocean floor, are strong indicators that you will have a fair chance of success with growing mussels. But to get the clearest picture as to whether your site is suitable or not, you’ll need to collect some data. When searching for the ideal site, try to keep the following factors in mind:

Exposure

Ideally, you’ll want to look for a site with minimal exposure to prevailing wind and weather. A more exposed site will be harder to access and maintain year-round and may require a larger investment in anchors and farm infrastructure. The more weather and storms your site sees, the greater the chance your gear could fail and cause loss to your crops.

If you’re growing kelp, you’ll also want to consider a site with good exposure to the sun. Kelp needs light to grow. Especially in mountainous regions, some protected sites can be in shadow for months at a time, which not only makes working there in winter quite cold but could also limit the growth of your kelp. Being backed up against steep slopes might also pose an avalanche or rockslide risk. Visit the site or sites you are considering at different times of day, at different tide stages, and in different weather conditions to get a feel for how exposed or protected it really is; and look at the surrounding landscape for context and clues of other types of disturbance.

Salinity

You’ll want to measure the salinity of the water at your site. Blue mussels and kelp are saltwater species; if there’s too much fresh water at your site it can stunt the growth of your crops. Salinity is measured in parts per thousand (ppt). Deep ocean salinity is usually around 35 ppt, and levels decrease as you near sources of fresh water and get closer to shore. Farms with kelp or blue mussels should ideally have a minimum salinity of 20+ ppt, with an ideal range of 22-30 ppt, at the depth where the crops are grown. Lower levels of salinity are entirely possible to work with but will influence the size and growth rates of your crops.

This being said, a number of trials with regenerative cultivation of low-salinity species have also been carried out, and Duck mussels, Swan mussels, Fucus algae and Ulva have all shown promising results. Reach out to your Cool Blue Future country facilitator for more information about this.

An easy way to measure salinity is with an inexpensive salinity refractometer, commonly used at commercial aquariums and available online. You can easily read the salinity of the water by putting a few drops onto a slide and holding it up to the light. The reading will display the salinity in ppt.

Keep in mind, when collecting your sample, that some sites could have a freshwater lens at the top of the water column from snowmelt or other surface water runoff. The water could be significantly more saline 20-50 cm below the surface. Because you ultimately want to know the salinity at the depth where your crops will grow, you can use an at-depth water sampler, such as a Niskin bottle, to capture a water sample below the surface.

Temperature

Whereas blue mussels are quite tolerant to temperature fluctuations, kelp can tolerate water temperatures from 0-15°C with optimal temperatures for growth at 4-13°C. You’ll want to choose a site that falls within this range during the growing season (October to April).

Water temperature can be measured with a marine grade thermometer, or sometimes with the chart plotter on a boat.

One important factor to consider with temperature is sea ice. During the winter months, recurrent or excessive sea ice can damage your crop and disrupt your arrays. Long periods of ice cover will also prevent light from reaching your crop. Kelp can survive in the dark for a period, but long periods of occlusion will cause it to die. There are workarounds to minimize the damage from periodic flows of sea ice, such as lowering growlines and switching to cylindrical spar buoys. But when siting your farm, try to avoid sites that are known to freeze over every winter.

Water clarity

Water clarity is important for kelp to thrive because it helps the light of the sun penetrate to the depth of your crop and supply the blades with the energy they need to grow. Your kelp may not grow well if the water is quite murky or mixed with sediment. Ideally, we recommend that you can see down at least 1-2 meters below the surface. For the cultivation of mussels, water clarity is less of an issue – actually, large amounts of microorganisms in the water means that the mussels have large amounts of feed available.

Water clarity can be measured with a low-tech secchi disk – a black and white disk with a string attached. Lower the disk into the water and record the length of string when the colour pattern is no longer visible to the naked eye. This gives you a reading for the depth of water clarity at your site.

Keep in mind that water clarity may change during different times of year, after storm events, and due to runoff.

Nutrients

Kelp and mussels both need nutrients to grow and have been shown to thrive in areas where coastal runoff deposits excess inorganic nitrogen and phosphorus into the water column. Ideally, an ocean farm should be sited in an area where nutrient supply is recurring and not dependent on terrestrial behaviours. The more flow and water movement at a site, the more likely the current will bring in new sources of nutrients and therefore increase nutrient uptake.

Site depth

There is a range of site depths that will work for farming. The closer your crop comes to the bottom of the seafloor, the more likely it is to experience biofouling. And due to considerations of anchor scope, a deeper site will have a larger footprint, and consequently a larger gear and startup cost. In general, you’ll want to select a site that has enough depth at Mean Low Water (MLW) to keep your crop suspended at all tides. We typically recommend a minimum site depth of 5-15 meters at MLW.

Bottom type

Knowing the bottom type of your site is critical for designing the appropriate anchoring system. We’ll discuss anchoring systems and the relevant bottom type in detail elsewhere, but in general, a gravel, sandy, or muddy bottom is suitable for most anchor types, whereas a rocky bottom may require a more complex anchoring system. Anchors can be some of your costliest startup expenses, so having clarity on your bottom type can help you make decisions around this early capital investment. Get to know your bottom type by observing the shoreline near your site; drop an anchor from your boat and see if it comes up covered in mud, or snorkel or dive your site.

Critical habitat areas

Lastly, you’ll want to make sure that your farm won’t be located in or near a critical habitat area. Avoid areas with seagrass and other bottom vegetation, as these are important breeding grounds of many marine critters, which your anchors could disturb. You’ll also want to avoid marine mammal haul-outs and areas where fish, such as herring or salmon, are known to spawn. Reach out to your Cool Blue Future country facilitator for more information about possible siting restrictions due to habitat areas etc.

Pollutants

If you plan to grow mussels or oysters, we highly recommend that you take samples from existing populations of mussels in the area and get them tested for pollutants. Heavy metals such as lead, cadmium and quicksilver are typically found in the sediment near areas where industrial production has taken place in the past and pose a risk to your crops. Other sources of pollution, such as bacterial pollution, also pose a risk if you place yourself near cities or wastewater treatment plants, and the best way to make sure that you are poised for success is to take samples and get them analysed before making any decisions.

Choose a site

Now that you’re aware of all the factors you should consider when deciding where to site your farm, you might be wondering how to get all this information and where to start.

The first thing to keep in mind is that site evaluation is a process. It’s not uncommon for people to dramatically change their minds about what they’re looking for once they start evaluating the specifics. You’re probably not going to find the perfect location right off the bat, and you might have to go back to the drawing board several times. Going through this process takes time and persistence; patience and organization are key. We recommend the following steps for collecting the information you’ll need to ultimately make your choice.

Identify 2-3 sites

To begin, we recommend you start by going back to the basics: roll out a few marine charts or poke around on Google Maps. Start to identify which areas, generally, might be worth investigating in more detail. If you have a boat or a skiff, take it out for a scoping tour. Remember, when considering access, you’re thinking about the proximity to the nearest port and the cost, feasibility, and safety of getting to and from your chosen sites.

During this initial scoping period, you might also consider the option of purchasing a pre-existing farm. Occasionally, aquatic farms go up for sale as farmers retire or leave the industry. There might be a shellfish or seaweed farmer in your region looking to sell their business and transfer their site lease, which can sometimes help streamline the permitting process. Some kelp farmers have also had luck teaming up with an existing shellfish farmer to farm kelp on a portion of their existing lease.

Compare options

Once you’ve identified 2-3 sites where you’re potentially interested in farming, compare them against each other. Evaluate each one on whether it meets the social, cultural, and environmental suitability criteria we outlined before. Consider roughly how much it will cost to travel to and from your farm.

Every site is unique and will have its own set of pros and cons. Ultimately, you’ll use these factors to help you whittle down the options and narrow in on the one site you believe will best suit your farming goals.

Use whatever system helps you stay the most organized, so you can objectively compare one location to another. Much of the information you collect during the site evaluation process will also be relevant when you go to apply for your lease and permit. Store this information in one easy-to-reference place to save time later on.

Research online

There are many great online resources that can help you gather more information about your prospective sites. Most countries have dedicated mapping tools that use GIS software to overlay different types of information onto an interactive map. Often, you can select and deselect layers to identify other nearby ocean farms, critical habitat areas, and different jurisdiction boundaries. Some tools even have the capacity to display the water depth, salinity, and much more. These tools are often very useful during the permitting process but can also give you a more detailed profile of your prospective sites. We recommend you start with a preliminary, desk-based review to get a sense of some of the basic environmental characteristics of your region. Your Cool Blue Future country facilitator can help you find the online resources you need.

Talk to people

There’s a limit to how much you can learn from the internet. Once you’ve done some background research, get out from behind the computer and start talking to people. Look up other seaweed and shellfish farmers in your region and introduce yourself. Ask about their experience farming nearby waters and what challenges they’ve faced. Speak with local fishermen who travel through the area and know the waters well. Try and talk to as many people as possible. Be open and honest about your plans, but also humble—when you’re first starting out, the learning curve will probably be steeper than you expect. Making friends with your neighbours and fellow farmers will go a long way.

Spend time on-site

And, of course, the most important step in the site evaluation process is to get out there and spend time on the water! Just journeying to your prospective farm sites will give you a sense of how far they are from your house or harbour and how much fuel you’d burn accessing your farm for routine maintenance and monitoring. If possible, try to visit in different seasons, times of day, and stages of the tide. Notice how the water looks and feels in both good and bad weather. Is your site in sun or shadow for most of the day? Is it sheltered or exposed to common winter winds? The more information you can gather at this point, the better.

While you’re out exploring in the field, it’s also a good idea to verify some of the information you found recorded elsewhere. Check to see if the charted depths of your site are the same as what you’re reading on your depth sounder. When you cut the engine on your boat, do you move swiftly or stand still? Can you tell if there is a lot of water turnover or whether flow is rather stagnant? Is there kelp or mussels growing nearby? Obviously, all these observations should be placed in the context of the particular stage of tide and weather conditions, but jot down your observations to reference later on.

In addition to your observations, a few quick water quality measurements can help you determine whether you’re in the right ballpark for farming. Recording the sea surface temperature, water clarity depth, and salinity will give you some objective data to compare later and include in your lease and permit applications. Keep in mind, though, that the ocean is dynamic and the conditions you observed will likely change over time with the seasons, tide cycle, runoff, etc. But even one or two quick measurements can sometimes help you rule out a site early on.

By the time you’ve finished compiling and comparing all these different factors, you’ll not only have a much better understanding of the marine environment in your local area, but hopefully also a much better sense of what you’re looking for in a farm site. Remember, site evaluation is an iterative process. Don’t get discouraged if something you discover along the way causes you to scratch your original plans and start searching anew. Eventually, if all goes well, you’ll narrow in on the location you want and be ready to move forward with farm design.

Adapted with permission from GreenWave

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