Seaweed–also known as “kelp”– is another one of the many gifts of the ocean. It supports other sea life, is wonderfully rich in nutrients, absorbs excess carbon, and puts oxygen into the sea.
Since 2022, we have been sharing our warehouse space in Homer, Alaska each spring with the Kachemak Kelp Innovation Hub team, which started as a collaboration between Saltwater Inc. and Regeneration North—two women-owned, Alaskan businesses. Together they’re working to support a new, sustainable seaweed-based industry by creating an exciting array of products from locally farmed kelp.
Early each Fall our local seaweed farmers gather samples of wild seaweed from the pristine waters of Kachemak Bay. The samples—50 of each species taken within 50 miles of an individual farm site–are taken to the Alutiiq Pride Marine Institute hatchery in Seward, where their team produces the seeded lines that the farmers plant out on their floating farms. The famers set out the lines in late fall and leave the seaweed to grow until spring—needing nothing more than the sun, waves, and the nutrients of the sea. By late March or early April, the seaweed is ready for harvest, and that’s when the Kachemak Kelp team gets busy!
Growing seaweed is relatively easy but processing it into a high-quality food grade ingredient or other marketable product is a big challenge. And while a lot of people eat seaweed sheets as snacks, getting seaweed products onto local menus or into people’s cupboards takes work.
Supported by a range of grants, the Kachemak Kelp Hub team has been testing different ways to tackle these challenges.
Seaweed is a sea vegetable and like any fresh vegetable, it needs to be treated with care. Once it has been harvested, most seaweeds need to be processed—or “stabilized” -- within 48-72 hours of the kelp leaving the water. This means it needs to be dried, frozen, blanched, salted or fermented.
Our local farmers harvest their kelp and deliver it to the Homer crane dock where the Kachemak Kelp team picks it up and gets busy. Almost all the seaweed is harvested and delivered in a matter of weeks which means processing a lot of it really quickly!
Each year they bring on an amazing crew of talented local gals—women who live and work in Homer as schoolteachers, fish processors, lodge managers, commercial fishermen, boat drivers and moms.
The first season, the Kelp Hub team set up a high-tunnel and tested drying seaweed with nothing more than the heat of the sun. Since then, they have made improvements to that process and tested a range of other methods; this season that included drying many pounds in our new electric dehydrator—which worked even better than we had hoped!
Once the initial processing is done, the team gets busy making value-added seaweed products. Using dried sugar and ribbon kelp, they make a truly killer “Killer Kelp Crisp” that is a great addition to ramen, spring rolls, Spam musubi —and our favorite—salmon spread.
They make whole-leaf dried kelp and kelp flakes, which are sold on our webshop and in our shops and in bulk to other Alaskan producers of food and skincare products.
This season, they used traditional salting methods to create a limited supply of naturally preserved shelf-stable kelp of varied species available in vacuum sealed pouches at our Homer Fish Shop. Johnny’s Corner – who also shares a corner of our building--featured salt-preserved sugar kelp in his miso soup and won the Taste of Homer for the second year in a row! You can try a bowl on one of his Miso Mondays if you happen to be down on the Homer spit this summer.
We also love Kachemak Kelp’s seaweed rich Selkie Soaks, which bring Alaska’s waters to your tub with a fabulous combination of hydrating and nutrient-rich sugar kelp, antioxidant-rich calendula flowers and relaxing mineral salts.
Seaweed is also a wonderful source of nutrients for plants—and the Kelp Hub team is excited by the potential for Alaskan grown seaweed to support local agriculture. For the past two seasons, they have been experimenting with fermenting seaweed to produce a rich liquid fertilizer for farms and home gardeners. Working with partners at the UAF Experimental Farm and Twitter Creek Gardens—a local Homer farm—they are testing its power on classic Alaskan crops: beet and potatoes—and hope to have a product to share by next spring.
We love sharing a workspace with the Kachemak Kelp team, watching their progress over the years as they experiment and innovate, and supporting their ventures to bring more kelp to market. We’ve loved learning more about the process of growing, harvesting, processing, and producing seaweed products–all which we are proud to host at Salmon Sisters HQ. We look forward to seeing where the mariculture industry goes in Alaska, and hope that it can help support the local economy and keep local ecosystem thriving.
If you love kelp too, check out our latest collaboration boots with Xtratuf! Featured in these photos, the new Salmon Sisters x Xtratuf Kelp Legacy Boots are available on our webshop and in our Homer stores.