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Related: About this forumWhy We May Be Able to Start Feeding Ourselves From Urban Waters Again
http://www.alternet.org/food/why-we-may-be-able-start-feeding-ourselves-urban-waters-againThey are back: blue mussels and menhaden have returned to Long Island Sound this year in huge numbers. On this 40th anniversary of the Clean Water Act, we can celebrate their homecoming as a sign of the progress made reviving our Sound. More needs to be done, but this welcome news of cleaner waters opens the opportunity to begin farming the urban sea.
Aquaculture has rightly earned a reputation for growing low quality seafood at the expense of the environment, but a new form of ocean-friendly farming has emerged right here in Long Island Sound. These small-scale vertical farms -- some of the first in the country -- are designed to grow multiple species of seaweed and shellfish, have small footprints and provide an array of environmental benefits. Picture them as three-dimensional gardens, where seaweed, mussels and scallops grow at the top of the water column, stacked above oysters and clams below.
Eating local seaweed may seem exotic, but it's coming to a plate near you. While shellfish have seen turns as both delicacies and a staple food source in our region for hundreds of years, the seaweed that grows alongside them is less familiar. It shouldn't be, though: a native seaweed like Nori contains more vitamin C than orange juice, more calcium than milk, and more protein than soybeans. And it might surprise those of us on the hunt for Omega-3's to learn that many fish do not create these heart-healthy nutrients -- they consume them. By eating the plants fish eat, we get the same benefits. Already restaurants such as Beyond Sushi in Manhattan have crafted entire menus around these sea vegetables, and a bevy of gourmet chefs are working on recipes to make locavores swoon.
The best news is that these farms do more than grow food: in every sense, they restore rather than deplete. Matched up against land-based farming, these new ocean farms win every time. Seaweed and shellfish require no inputs--no land, no fertilizer, no fresh water--and since they grow three-dimensionally, they use space more efficiently than their land-based counterparts.
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Why We May Be Able to Start Feeding Ourselves From Urban Waters Again (Original Post)
xchrom
Nov 2012
OP
Demeter
(85,373 posts)1. I bookmarked this for the condo association
we have three ponds and a creek...surely they can earn their keep.
hunter
(38,264 posts)2. That picture makes me hungry...
... I grew up eating stuff like that, unfortunately from the ocean off Los Angeles, which wasn't too clean in the 'sixties and early 'seventies.