Tag: mariculture | Data Nuggets

The activities are as follows:

With so much coastline, Alaska has many opportunities for mariculture, which is the farming of food in the ocean. Large-scale mariculture is still new in Alaska, but interest is growing quickly because it can provide jobs and food for small coastal communities.

Alaska’s cold, clean waters are ideal for growing oysters. Oysters usually stay on a farm for several years until they are large enough to sell. Farmers want oysters to grow as quickly as possible so they can sell them sooner. Because oyster farming is still fairly new in Alaska, research needs to be done to find the best ways to grow oysters successfully.

Amanda is a marine researcher who lives and works in Valdez, Alaska. She wants to figure out which methods are most effective for oysters to grow. She can then share her findings with farmers to help them. Amanda partnered with members of the Valdez Native Tribe who were interested in growing oysters in the area.

Amanda started monitoring the oysters every year to document their growth. A few years after the farm was set up, she visited the site and noticed that the oysters had not survived the summer season. Amanda wanted to find out why this happened so they could prevent it from happening again in the future.

Amanda had a few ideas about what might be affecting the oysters. She noted that the oysters were all in surface baskets, which float at the top of the water. She also observed that the year that all the oysters perished, Valdez had heavy rainfall. Amanda knew that rain can lower salinity, or the amount of salt in ocean water, near the surface. Freshwater from rain flows into the ocean and can stay on top if it does not mix well with saltwater below. When salinity becomes too low, oysters close their shells and stop feeding and growing.

Amanda asked one of her students, Jane, if she wanted to do an independent research project to test a new type of home for oysters. They explored the use of lantern nets, which are a different setup that holds oysters below the surface of the water instead of floating on top. These nets hang straight down and are about 3 meters long. They also have several levels, allowing oysters to be placed at different depths so Amanda and Jane could see where the oysters grew best.

To test salinity levels and oyster growth at different depths, Amanda and Jane set up a new study at the Valdez farm site. In April 2025, they brought very small, young oysters to the farm. They weighed out equal amounts of oysters and placed some into three surface baskets and some into different levels of two lantern nets.

Over the summer, Jane visited the oyster farm every two weeks to measure salinity. She looked at four different depths: surface (0 meters), 1, 2, and 3 meters deep. This way, she could see whether the freshwater inputs make the surface water less salty. In October 2025, Jane and Amanda measured the oyster size at the end of the summer to see how much they had grown. They compared the length of oysters from the surface baskets and from the different levels of the lantern nets.

Featured scientists: Amanda Glazier (she/her) and Jane Churchill (she/her) from Prince William Sound College. Written by Melissa Kjelvik.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.8

Additional teacher resource related to this Data Nugget:

Student research spotlight featuring Jane Churchill, one of the researchers featured in this activity:
Video series by Alaska SeaGrant “Meet your Alaskan farmer” offering a glimpse into what it is like growing oysters in remote Alaska communities and how farmers are working together:
- “Shucking barriers: Developing the Alaska oyster cooperative”
- “Seawan Gehlbach, Simpson Bay Oyster Farm:”
- “Meta Mesdag, Salty Lady Seafood Co.”
Short articles on Alaska oyster farming:
- NOAA Fisheries: “Exploring the Upsides and Obstacles of Growing Pacific Oysters in Alaska’s Cold Waters”
- Alaska Public Media: “Alaska oyster farmers refine growing techniques to meet high demand”
- Read an overview of Alaska mariculture at the following site.
Video with interviews from students and faculty about the collaborative education and training programs in Alaska.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under award #OIA-2344553 and by the State of Alaska.

Growing kelp for community

A grow line on a kelp farm in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

The activities are as follows:

When thinking about farming, many people imagine fields of corn or soybeans, or even their own vegetable garden. All of these crops are grown on land, but what about growing food in the ocean? Alaska Natives who live along the coast have been harvesting kelp, a group of seaweeds, from the wild for thousands of years. Kelp is very nutritious and is full of vitamins and minerals. It is used in a variety of dishes, from soups to salads. Kelp also provides structure for herring to lay their eggs, another traditional food source that coastal Alaska Native communities harvest. Kelp has other purposes too, including soil fertilizer and food additive applications.

Recently, there has been a surge of interest in farming kelp at a larger scale along the Alaskan coast. Farming kelp involves cultivating kelp at a site to grow larger for harvest. Caitlin is a biologist who works for the Native Village of Eyak within the Prince William Sound of Alaska. The Tribe wants to start a kelp farm to provide a nutritious food source for its community members. Caitlin was tasked with designing the farm setup and testing how much kelp can be grown. Her first step was to find a site. She had to consider environmental factors that help the kelp grow. Kelp need particular nutrients and cool water temperatures. She also had to make sure the site was easy to get to and that it was protected from intense weather like high winds and large waves.

Left: seed line one week after planting in November. Middle: kelp at the farm in April. Right: kelp blades after the harvest in June.

To get started, Caitlin talked to the members of the Eyak community to learn where they have historically found kelp, called Traditional Knowledge. She listened to their suggestions, which were based on current and long-term connections with the local environment. This helped her identify a site that is a short boat ride. Caitlin also had discussions with other kelp farmers in Alaska and read scientific research articles to learn more about how to set up a kelp farm and which species would be a good fit. She decided to grow sugar kelp because it has a sweeter taste and grows well in other places with similar conditions.

She designed the farm to grow the kelp vertically in the water. To do this, she would place lines vertically in the water for kelp to attach and grow at different depths. This design maximizes the amount of kelp grown below the surface, which is good to minimize interference with boats and animals. While vertical lines have benefits, there could be drawbacks too. Kelp needs sunlight for photosynthesis, which it uses to grow. But the deeper you go in the water, the less sunlight there is. The kelp at the surface will get plenty of light, but the kelp attached to the line in deeper water might not get enough. The kelp at the bottom could also get blocked or shaded by the kelp above it.

Caitlin wanted to know if there is a time of year when kelp had the fastest growth rates. This information would help her know when to harvest kelp from the site. She also wanted to know whether depth affected the kelp growth. If it turned out that kelp didn’t grow on her vertical lines in deeper water, she may have to try another design. She predicted that kelp grown in the first 1-2 meters from the surface would grow more over a season because it would receive the most sunlight.

To assess her kelp farm plan, Caitlin worked with partners to seed lines with fertilized sugar kelp spores. Each of these spores can grow into a large kelp blade that can be up to 5 meters long. The seeded lines were then installed vertically at the farm site in the fall of 2022. Caitlin and her colleagues set up 532 vertical lines that were each 10 meters long. In total, over 2 miles of seeded line were installed on the farm! The lines were attached to a horizontal line to secure them in place and were spaced out so they had room to grow.

Each month, Caitlin and her colleagues monitored the kelp growth by measuring the length of kelp blades, or leaf-like structures, on 5-8 of the seeded lines. On each line, they measured kelp blades at different depths so they could see how the kelp was growing at different depths.

Featured scientist: Caitlin McKinstry (she/her) from the Native Village of Eyak. Written with Rosel Burt and Melissa Kjelvik from Prince William Sound College.

Flesch–Kincaid Reading Grade Level = 7.4

Additional teacher resource related to this Data Nugget:

Video for students to visualize what mariculture looks like and to hear perspectives from many groups about the growing industry.
More information, history, and insight about the Native Village of Eyak’s mariculture program.
Ocean rainforest has more videos about kelp farming and the latest news in this field
The Ologies podcast has an episode on seaweed, Macrophycology, that explains many of these similarities and differences.
Video on the potential for kelp farms to create additional habitat for animals.
Read an overview of Alaska mariculture at the Prince William Sound Science Center’s page.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under award #OIA-2344553 and by the State of Alaska.

Testing the waters for oyster farming

Growing kelp for community