Mass cultivation of seaweeds: current aspects and approaches

Abstract

A word-wide overview is presented of the current state of mass cultivation of seaweeds. In comparison with a total annual commercial production of fish, crustaceans and molluscs of about 120 × 10⁶t, of which one-third is produced by aquaculture, the production of seaweeds is about 10 × 10⁶t wet weight; the majoirty of this comes from culture-based systems. The Top Ten Species List is headed by the kelp Laminaria japonica with 4.2 × 10⁶t fresh weight cultivated mainly in China. The productivity of a well-developed, multi-layered, perennial seaweed vegetation is as high as dense terrestrial vegetation, and even higher annual values for productivity have been reported for tank cultures of macroalgae. Epiphytes provide a major problem for the seaweed cultivator, but can be controlled by growing plants at high densities in rope cultures in the sea, or, more easily, in seaweed tank cultures on land. The main environmental problem of animal (fed) aquaculture is the discharge of nutrient loads into coastal waters, e.g., 35 kg N and 7 kg P t⁻¹ aquacultured fish. Integration of fish and seaweed farming may help to solve this problem, since seaweeds can remove up to 90% of the nutrient discharge from an intensive fish farm. Mass culture of commercially valuable seaweed species is likely to play an increasingly important role as a nutrient-removal system to alleviate eutrophication problems due to fed aquaculture.