Seaweed Farming – an Alternative, Economical Livelihood for Fishers
Over the weekend, the media travelled to Calabash Caye and were exposed to an alternative livelihood to reduce pressure on the traditional fisheries products. It’s a seaweed farming project by The Nature Conservancy, the Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association and the Fisheries Department. It is an economical option that is being piloted with eight fishing camps that operated in the protected area. In tonight’s episode of Belize on Reel, News Five’s Duane Moody snorkels the Calabash Flats to find out more about the seaweed industry.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Growing up and even today, you would hear about seaweed as a drink that could be purchased from a street side vendor in downtown Belize City. It’s a milkshake, a healthy drink often promoting virility. But there are many other products that are made from the marine algae that grow along seashores.
Valdemar Andrade
Valdemar Andrade, Executive Director, TASA
“We have been looking at other industries like the cosmetics industry, the super food industry, it is used for Jäger Jäger, it can be used as an agglutinater in ice creams for example. So we have to look at other industries where we could export depending on the production.”
One entrepreneur from Placencia, Jolie Pollard, is the proprietor of Ikooma – a results-driven natural hair care powered by sustainably-farmed and hand-harvested seaweed. Since 2015, she has creatively merged seaweed and other natural ingredients to create hair products for curly hair. Just last week, she began shipping to Illinois and Florida and her products can be found in some stores.
Jolie Pollard
Jolie Pollard, Owner, Ikooma [File: August 28th, 2019]
“I use hand harvested and sustainably farmed seaweed grown in Placencia by the Placencia Seaweed Farmers. I paid full price and I buy it by the pound. I take that raw seaweed and I bled it with my formula. I started in 2015, making my own hair products and I just kept working on it, on my formula. I couldn’t get it right and finally when I started to incorporate seaweed with the other ingredients I realized that that was the missing ingredient.”
While Ikooma gets its seaweed from Little Water Caye with the Placencia Producers Cooperative, Turneffe Atoll Sustainability Association in collaboration with The Nature Conservancy and the Fisheries Department have embarked on a seaweed farming project in which they plan to engage women and men and provide a sustainable alternative livelihood for fishers.
Valdemar Andrade
“The seaweed farming initiative or mariculture initiative came as an option to look at how we can decompress the pressure from conch lobster and finfish and look at complementary livelihoods. So how can we create revenue streams for the fishers to be able to count on? And so we from 2017 have been working on the technique for the actual farm, the fifty by fifty farm, and finally we came to the submerged technique that you saw.”
…and so, the team at TASA monitors a seaweed farm, or a nursery of sorts, just off Calabash Caye within the Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve. Tourism Conservation Officer Hubert Gillett gave us a first-hand experience underwater.
Hubert Gillett
Hubert Gillett, Tourism Conservation Officer, TASA
“What we are doing at Calabash Flats, which is about two minutes away from where we are now, we are creating this seed bank. The reason why we are creating this seed bank is so that at these eight established fishing sites that we have throughout the atoll with the fishers, what we are doing is creating the stock here which are then transferred to these fishing camps so that they can start to generate their own farms.”
Valdemar Andrade
“We also monitor the ecosystem to ensure that where we are putting the farms, the ecosystem won’t damage, that enough life pass through the sea grass. And if you notice, there is a lot of life around the seaweed. There is fish life, many instances, there is conch lobster that we find under the shade of the seaweed.”
Hubert Gillett
“Once you have them established on the rope system that we are using, once it is established, it is very low maintenance. All you have to do is sporadically go out and clean the ropes to ensure that the algae is not building up. And also the seaweed also grows some additional algae on it so that has to be cleaned up. As long as that is cleaned up, it takes about three to four months to reach to the harvest stage. When it is harvested, it then needs to be rinsed in fresh water to remove some of the salt content. And once it is rinsed, it needs to be dried. As long as this product is dried, it can stored for a very long period of time and that is the final product that will be brought to the market.”
It’s a lucrative business which TASA’s Executive Director Valdemar Andrade says can minimize the pressures on the ecosystem as it relates to overfishing, but is economical for fishers.
Valdemar Andrade
“There is a local market that would allow us or the fishers to sell or whoever is harvesting the seaweed to sell to the local market for shakes and other areas where we use it locally like Ikooma and those products that have been value added. But there is also a need if production can come to a certain stage where we need to export.”
Hubert Gillett
“To put it into perspective. Conch on the local market sells for about ten dollars per pound; lobster will retail between thirty to thirty-five dollars per pound and seaweed once dried, can then be retailed for between twenty-five and thirty dollars per pound.”
Duane Moody for News Five.
