“Once I’m in the nursery, I switch to my Crocs [laughs]. I wear my nursery crocs all the way in here," Allie Conrad, the nursery manager, said.
The nursery is a bright white, 40-foot shipping container. Inside, Conrad tends to baby kelp growing in 10 uniform water tanks, carefully adjusting light, temperature, and filtering contaminants out of hundreds of gallons of seawater. She was formerly a fisheries biologist with the Kodiak Fisheries Research Center, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries laboratory.
GreenWave, a national nonprofit, opened this first-of-its-kind nursery in Kodiak in August, with Conrad as its nursery manager and lead operator. It’s Alaska’s newest hatchery. She said her focus is to produce quality kelp by preventing bacteria from growing with the seeds.
“We’re pretty serious about biosecurity when we’re in season because we want to make sure that we’re producing the highest quality seed we can and reducing any risk of contamination," she said. "I mean, like, every time we open the door, there’s a risk of contamination.”
Conrad has to switch between her street clothes and lab clothes as soon as she steps into the container so that bacteria doesn’t impact the kelp seedlings. In the fall, she grew millions of sugar kelp spores on 240 spools over the course of several weeks. The spores become baby kelp, and when that’s healthy, it turns brown.
“Like some of our best spools I just started calling them chocolate bars because they just are solid chocolate brown," Conrad said.
Most of the kelp was ready by January. Then, it was transplanted to various local ocean kelp farm sites.
By this summer, those kelp seedlings will reach maturity and grow into kelp strands that are several feet long, ready to harvest. A 100-acre kelp farm could produce up to one million pounds of kelp depending on the environmental conditions according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Growing large quantities of quality kelp seed has been a challenge in Alaska, with few kelp hatcheries operating in the state. With this mobile container hatchery there are now two operational kelp hatcheries on Kodiak island and eight total statewide.
Dave Bailey with GreenWave said that’s part of why the national nonprofit launched in Kodiak.
“Kodiak needed some more seed for the new buyers that were in town and we really wanted to test out the infrastructure that we’ve been working on developing over the past couple years," Bailey said. "And we thought that it would be a great spot to sort of start up.”
Bailey, who directs farmer advancement for GreenWave, said the hatchery reduced the cost of kelp seed production to 41 cents per foot of seed line and made it more affordable for local farmers. According to local kelp farmers, purchasing kelp seed from elsewhere in the state costs an average of 50 cents per linear foot. Farmers typically need thousands of feet of seed line to grow their kelp.
Bailey said GreenWave might eventually hand off the container nursery to the recently formed Kodiak Ocean Growers co-op, which includes five farms around the island.
“We’re just trying to de-risk everything for them right now," he said. "Sort of understand the cost of production, how much labor is required, everything like that to see if it’s actually something they want to take on moving forward.”
Bailey said they’re eyeing 2027 for the potential transfer. Right now, Conrad’s labor is the biggest cost to running the hatchery, as GreenWave is operating the mobile hatchery rent free on site at the Kodiak Seafood and Marine Science Center. Then electricity costs are the next highest expense of roughly $300 a month according to Bailey.
Tollef Monson and his wife run a kelp farm in the co-op called Alaska Sea Greens in Uganik Bay on the west side of Kodiak Island. Monson said he’s looking forward to working collaboratively with the other farmers and the hatchery to expand kelp production in Kodiak, which will allow them to meet the growing demand from buyers.
“We’re talking in the hundreds of thousands of pounds, with these buyers that are coming on and we need to be able to support each other," he said. "So if one farm has some disaster happen, we’re not at a total loss for that buyer that has said, ‘Oh, I want 50,000 pounds from this farm or that farm.’”
Monson hopes to grow up to 100,000 pounds of kelp at his farm alone this year using the kelp seed that grew in the GreenWave hatchery. But that is largely dependent on the weather and storms that Mother Nature brings this season.
The cooperative is also hoping to expand its membership and is currently accepting new members. Permitted seaweed farmers can find more membership information on the Kodiak Ocean Growers’ website.
Farmers expect to start harvesting their kelp in May. By August, Allie Conrad plans to begin her second growing season in her Crocs in the GreenWave container growing more kelp seed for next year.
