Professor Mike Graham of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and Monterey Bay Seaweeds was recently featured in an NBC Los Angeles video.

In the video, Dr. Graham gives NBC reporter Ross Thomas a tour of the Monterey Bay Seaweeds facility in Moss Landing. Dr. Graham describes the sustainable aquaculture methods used to grow the edible seaweeds dulse, kelp, sea lettuce, and ogo. Monterey Bay Seaweeds is based at the SJSU/MLML Aquaculture Center and operates under a unique public-private partnership with San Jose State University.

Watch the video to learn more: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/california-live/new-superfood-alert/2711454/?fbclid=IwAR2BdPwuwzUaO7ROOkx2e_W1bpelv5Njbg39KgssiKuOrqNIjEkBaIB8NTg

In the next 30 years, global seafood demand is expected to grow 30 percent; aquaculture is expected to meet nearly all of this increased global demand. Researchers and students at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories are on the forefront of the growing sustainable aquaculture movement in the US.

A recent article from California State University highlights some of our ongoing aquaculture research projects including Olympia oyster restoration and the use of seaweed to reduce methane emissions from cows. Check out the article here to learn more about SJSU/MLML aquaculture research.

The SJSU/MLML Aquaculture Facility was featured in the latest issue of the Monterey Herald! Drs. Michael Graham and Luke Gardner were both interviewed regarding the future of aquaculture and the impacts of Covid-19 on the industry. The MLML Aquaculture Facility aims to develop novel technologies for enhancing the sustainability and productivity of current aquaculture practices through research, education, and policy initiatives.

Read the Monterey Herald article, titled "Is pandemic giving aquaculture a jump start?", here.

California Company Nurtures Interest in Seaweed Aquaculture

Excerpt:

"Native seaweed has the potential to be cultivated in California coastal waters and used to alleviate the effects of local ocean acidification, according to a new study funded by California Sea Grant.

Besides providing a local and sustainable source of food, researchers and aquaculture producers are exploring how seaweed production may benefit its surrounding environment.

“We were interested in how seaweed can help moderate the acidity of the water that it is grown in and how it can be used as a nutrient absorption tool,” said project leader Catherine O’Hare. She co-founded the Salt Point Seaweed Company which makes culinary products from wild harvested seaweed from the north coast of California. Along with co-founders Tessa Emmer and Avery Resor, the woman-owned company is conducting seaweed cultivation research in California.

The team currently gather nori, kombu, and wakame seaweeds by hand in northern Mendocino County, but are conscious of potential ecological impacts if they were to grow their operation says O’Hare. She says their long-term vision is to create food products sourced solely from farmed seaweed."

Combating urchin barrens with aquaculture

Author: Helaina Lindsey, Student, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories

June 28, 2019

Excerpt:

"California’s kelp forests are currently facing a major threat: deforestation.

The root of this issue can be attributed to small, spiny invertebrates – purple sea urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus). When urchins do not face predation pressures, their populations multiply, and they devour the foundation of kelp forests. When too many urchins are present, they prevent growth of canopy forming kelp, turning a beautiful and diverse kelp forest into a wasteland – also known as an urchin barren. These barrens don’t provide any of the benefits of a kelp forest, such as harboring endangered or commercially important species, sequestering carbon, preventing shoreline erosion, and oxygen production."

February 1, 2019

Aquaculture in a time of Climate Change

Excerpt:

“The unexpected consequences of climate change are often, well, unexpected. Researchers at the Moss Landing Marine Labs Aquaculture Facility are working with the shellfish industry to make sure that “out of stock” signs at our favorite oyster bars won’t be one of those consequences.”

October 18, 2017

As I step into the aquaria room at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML), I always notice the abrupt sensory differences between that room and the outdoors. Numerous waterfalls pouring from valved pipe fitting and hoses replenish tanks of various sizes with the seawater that marine organisms need. The continual splashing of this water is overlaid with a mixture of sounds from pumps and bubbling air stones, designed to diffuse bubbled air so it is more easily dissolved into the water. The piped walls and troughed floors provide a strong seawater circuit that controls the temperature and smell of the air – cool and salty. This aquaria room is crucial to the work of the students at the lab. The room’s newest occupants may help recover a once abundant inhabitant of the North American West Coast’s bays and estuaries: the Olympia oyster (Ostrea lurida; or Olys for short). Although most of the organisms I’ve cultured in the aquaria room have been seaweeds, I recently had the opportunity to participate in the culturing of these native invertebrates.

Our filled graduated buckets house these small oysters, and sit in a heated water bath in the back corner of the room. The Olys have been observed to release larvae at higher temperatures, and we’ve determined that conductive heat would be the easiest way to maintain these higher temperatures. Our broodstock, or adults that we are specifically using to produce larvae, are contained within three separate buckets: two containing Olys from Kirby Park and one containing Olys from Azevedo Pond. We have been hoping that some of these individuals are gravid, but there is no way to be sure without prying open the shell and killing the oyster. We instead have been sticking to daily observations using a high-powered spotlight. Every day, Peter Hain, the expert invertebrate aquaculturist, and I switch off transferring these broodstock to clean and preheated buckets. We then pipette in a highly concentrated mixture of diatoms and flagellates that quickly swirl around the bucket following the flow of our added air-stone. The end result is a brownish green diluted soup that is consumed entirely by the following day. Dr. Jillian Bible, from Bodega Marine Laboratory, has informed us that these oysters thrive under a specific density of phytoplankton per liter of seawater. Jill has had experience culturing Olys in the past, and her advice has been crucial for our setup design and maintenance scheduling.

Before I switch out and feed the last oyster containing bucket in the bath, I click on my spotlight. This Azevedo bucket, which I’ve observed has a partially foamy sheen, seems to have less water clarity than the other buckets. By shining this spotlight through the side of the bucket, I will be able to illuminate whatever larvae are swimming around within the bucket. Much to my surprise, I spot thousands of slowly moving larvae within the beam. Using a mixture of sieves and buckets, I gently siphon the young oyster pedi-veligers (the specific free-swimming Oly larval type) to minimize the oyster waste and various other organisms that may have hitched a ride during transfer from the slough. The grayish moving mass of water contained above the 100-micron sieve contains about 150,000 larvae, based on a few samples I examine under the dissecting microscope. This is the first step toward deployment of new juvenile oysters that may help bolster the population of Olys within Elkhorn Slough.

Populations of these small oysters were plentiful until the late 19th century. Early Native American middens on the west coast contain traces of a variety of seafood, including the shells of the Olympia oyster. Olys are much smaller, and would require three or four to match the meat of the other two more popular Crassostrea, the Pacific and Eastern oyster. A mixture of human consumption and anthropogenic stressors, such as sedimentation from the Gold Rush in San Francisco Bay and pollution from industrial runoff, drastically diminished population sizes and transformed the habitat of these oysters to decrease likelihood of recovery.

UC Santa Cruz’s Dr. Kerstin Wasson, along with the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, has been monitoring the Elkhorn Slough Oly population over several years. They have concluded that these Olys have experienced half of a decade of unsuccessful spawns. Although the reason behind the failure for lack of successful spawning has yet to be elucidated, an older population may be more susceptible to mortality due to age. In addition to compiling multiple reviews and conducting studies on various populations of Olys, Kerstin’s expertise and familiarity with the slough has also led her to observe a size difference between oysters at two sites in the slough: Kirby Park and Azevedo Pond. These size differences have been attributed to differences in dissolved oxygen content between the two sites.

Dr. Brent Hughes, postdoctoral researcher and fellow from Duke University and UC Santa Cruz’s Long Marine Lab is an alumnus of MLML and has conducted extensive study on another inhabitant of Elkhorn Slough that has been deleteriously impacted by humans: seagrass. Seagrass and Olys cohabitate the intertidal and shallow subtidal regions. Seagrass can be characterized as a foundation species: it provides shelter for organisms seeking refuge from predators, organisms such as small crustaceans feed on it, and it disproportionately impacts its system compared to other marine plants and algae. Photosynthesis by seagrass is a vast contributor to dissolved oxygen concentrations in the surrounding water and the root system of the seagrass stabilizes the sediment and makes the mudflats more habitable by the Olys.

Brent and Kerstin received a generous donation from the Anthropocene Institute to help restore the Oly’s in the slough and approached Professor Michael Graham of the Phycology Lab to collaborate with MLML in the process. Brent and Kerstin intend to study the effects of dissolved oxygen and other abiotic (environmental) variables on the demographics of Elkhorn Slough’s Oly population. Studies have shown that Oly (and other oysters) are most susceptible to succumb to stress mortality in their larval stage. Olys have evolved to produce hundreds of thousands of larvae per spawn to attempt to pass on their genetic heritage and overcome these mass larval mortalities. By taking some of the Olys from the slough and spawning them in a controlled environment, we may be able to minimize larval stress related mortalities. Peter and I are currently working to achieve this goal with the utilization of controlled and responsible aquacultural methods.

These larvae that were just released need to go through a few more steps before we can deploy them back in Elkhorn Slough. Although Oly larvae will “settle”, or transition from their motile to sessile life stage, and become affixed to any number of substrates, they have a chemical preference toward settling on calcium carbonate. Although there are a number of natural calcium carbonate fixing organisms in the system, we plan on providing butter clam and gaper clam shells for the Olys to settle on. By attaching these clam shells to wooden stakes, we essentially create a multiple oyster unit that can easily be deployed into the intertidal zone in Elkhorn Slough. We can deploy a number of these units to multiple sites to aid the recovery of these small oysters. Wish these larvae luck as they spend the next few months in our aquaria room before they are reconnected with their native Oly population in Elkhorn Slough.

August 22, 2018

Responsible Aquaculture Lures Support in California

Excerpt:

“California is the world’s leader in agriculture and there is no reason why we can’t also be the world’s leader in aquaculture production and technology,” said California Sea Grant Extension Specialist Paul Olin at a recent aquaculture forum at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in Monterey county. “With strong public and private ethics for environmental protection and stringent regulatory programs, California can become a global leader in aquaculture production. As Jacques Cousteau said in 1973, high efficiency sea farms totaling the size of Switzerland would produce more food than all fisheries combined.”

Moss Landing researchers were awarded funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Sea Grant Program. For more details, please see the Santa Cruz Sentinel's press release.