Like so many entrepreneurial ventures with food products, Ocean Approved frozen seaweed started with a pot simmering on a kitchen stove. Now, with a $95,000 NOAA Small Business Innovation Research Program Phase I Grant and an experimental lease to raise seaweed near Little Chebeague Island, the first lease of its kind in the U.S., the company, which has grown steadily since its inception, is poised to move towards large-scale commercial production of seaweed.
In the first year of business, Tolleff Olson, the company’s founder, did all the work, gathering, processing and marketing. Two years ago, he was joined by business partner Paul Dobbins, who runs the office. According to Dobbins, Olsen is “the visionary” and does everything else. They now have 10 part-time employees.
During the past year, sales have more than doubled. At first, Olsen sold the seaweed products to four Portland stores; that has increased to 17 Whole Foods Markets and 72 specialty and natural foods stores, including two venues in Los Angeles. In June, as a result of contacts made while serving their seaweed at the NOAA Fish Fry for NOAA employees and guests in Washington, D.C., Ocean Approved gained orders from a chain of natural food stores in the D.C. area.
The NOAA grant will make it possible for the company to generate their own seed and raise young seedlings (or sporelings) to put on aquaculture lease sites for growout, a move which Olsen says is necessary if they want to increase productivity. “We have been hand picking seaweed from the wild,” he explains, “always respecting the biomass and making sure we are tending the beds. But kelp can be overharvested, so to expand into larger scale production, we have to begin growing plants from our own seed.” He adds that this move also has the advantages of making possible selective breeding and choosing the ideal environment to put down their seedlings for optimum growth. Each variety of kelp they will grow, he explains, has its preferred environment, ranging from directly in the surf to a high current calmer location.
Olsen will learn all aspects of seaweed aquaculture under the tutelage of Dr. Charles Yarish of University of Connecticut, who is considered the foremost authority on the aquaculture of seaweed. Olsen plans to begin on a small scale, using a single aquarium at his Presumpscot facility, a multi-room house where rooms are dedicated to each step of processing seaweed products. “You can raise a surprising amount of seedlings in one tank,” he says, explaining that as the seedlings grow and float in the tank, they will attach to string wound around small PVC pipes, where they will stay until they are ready to survive in the wild. The seed is fed either a commercial algae nutrient or one that will be grown at the facility.
Young plants will be transferred to the Bangs Island lease site in Casco Bay to adjust to the ocean environment. For final growout, the plants will be moved to a site most suited to the particular variety and placed on a long line arrangement Olsen developed. The line sits close to, but not on the ocean bottom in order to avoid snails, out of view and out of the way of recreational boaters. Lobstermen can fish around the area, which is marked by buoys. Olsen says that six- to 12-inch wild seedlings put on long lines in November at the Little Chebeague lease site had grown to 10 feet by June. The company also has a site in Blue Hill Salt Pond.
Once they have proven they can successfully raise seedlings, Olsen and Dobbins hope their aquaculture and marketing successes will help them win a follow-up NOAA SBI grant for funds to move their nursery to an outbuilding with several aquariums. Then they could radically step up production.
Olsen likes to talk about kelp as “the virtuous vegetable.” Not only is it beneficial to the ocean ecology, soaking up CO2 and nitrogen and earning a zero-degree discharge under the Clean Water Act, as a food, it has almost double the fiber of brown rice and is rich in minerals including potassium, magnesium, iron and calcium. Having observed its cultivation and consumption while traveling in Asia, Olsen says he has long realized the virtues of seaweed as a food, but that not until recently did he think it would attract a broad market in the United States. For the past 10 years he has been raising mussels in Casco Bay, but now he is selling the mussel farm to focus on growing and processing seaweed.
Presently, Ocean Approved sells three products: Kelp Noodles from Laminaria saccharina, Kelp Salad cut from Alaria esculenta and Kelp Slaw cut from Laminaria digitata. All are cooked al dente and retain a bright green color when they are frozen in flat packages. They are ready to eat when defrosted. “I don’t know of any other similar product in the United States,” Olsen says, and it seems there are few available even in Asia, where seaweed aquaculture originated.
Recently, Olsen and Dobbins sent samples of their products to a connection in Denmark and received a strong positive response. “Right away, they were talking about making a label in Danish, and they wanted a huge order,” Olsen says. But he adds that since the company is still dependent on wild product, and summer is a slow season while kelp is spawning, they will have to wait until the fall before filling new large orders. “We have to make sure we can take care of all of our existing customers first,” he says.
Once they are able to move into larger scale commercial production, there are numerous possibilities for further markets. Olsen plans to begin giving demos for restaurants chefs soon. “There’s been a lot of interest expressed,” he says, adding that he has built much of this and other retail interest through tastings at venues like Harvest on the Harbor in Portland and the Boston Vegetarian Show.
Olsen says he and Dobbins will move cautiously in growing their business. “We need to educate the consumer,” he says. “Seaweed has never been presented in this way. It’s fun to have the leading edge on a product.”
For more information, visit www.oceanapproved.com
Muriel Hendrix is a freelance writer who lives in Bath.