(compelling music) (indistinct chatter) - [Customer] In a few hours, yeah.

- [Customer] Can we get cheese on that?

(indistinct chatter continues) - Plumbing, unless it's like really cool copper pipes.

(indistinct chatter continues) (compelling music) (boat motor humming) I'm really grateful to have this opportunity to be sitting at this table with the three of you.

A little over a year ago now, I started learning more about growing seaweed and some of the benefits of it, both for the environment and for communities.

I work in mental health counseling, working mostly with kids.

I see that there's not a lot of great opportunities for jobs in Down East Maine, and especially in Washington County, and I also have seen since I was a little kid, the fisheries that once sustained the town of Lubeck completely collapse, and seeing the economy and the population collapse with that as well, (compelling music continues) and then as things are rebuilding back with tourism being a huge base of the economy, (seabirds crying) leaving local people not a lot of meaningful work in that.

And so it seems like seaweed has such a potential to be an income source for people to actually live in these coastal communities and to make a living.

The three of you all have a pretty diverse base of experience in seaweed, so I'm curious to hear more about how you came to seaweed farming, and what it actually looks like in reality.

(peaceful music) - I loved the environmental benefits of seaweed, and I loved the nutritional aspect of seaweed.

My partner and I were in our young 20s and we were living in the Midwest.

We were hiking a lot and we were getting really into cooking, and so it was exciting to learn about seaweed and how healthy it was.

But I really got excited about being involved in growing food because I think we're so disconnected from where our food comes from, and I think that when we know who grows our food, we have more compassion for the people that are around us in our community.

I could make a difference by doing that in a world that feels, sometimes we feel so helpless I think at times, yeah.

We're from Maine originally.

Jake grew up in a small town and on the water.

He grew up lobster fishing and clam digging, and so he had a lot of those skills.

We were quite far removed from that in the Midwest.

We got so excited about it actually that we were trying to initially, this is so funny to think about.

We were trying to actually convince people we knew back home to start farms, and they were like, "You're insane, like we're not doing that, that's crazy," and so we were like "Okay," but we just kept finding ourselves coming back to it, so we were kind of like, yeah, let's just try it.

Let's just see what happens.

What's the worst that's gonna happen, right?

Like it just doesn't work out, and you know, that's okay.

(all chuckling) It was like a bunch of experiments that first year.

(peaceful music) We talked for hours on the phone interviewing people about their experience and what they knew about seaweed farming, gathered as much information as we could.

Fast forward now, we're about a four acre farm and we grow three different types of seaweed, and we're involved in the entire process, five years strong, and growing every year.

(peaceful music continues) - I always joke that I've always wanted to be a seaweed farmer since I was a kid, 'cause nobody has ever dreamt that.

(all laughing) But I didn't come to seaweed because of seaweed.

I came because of the opportunities that it presented.

My background is in economic development.

I was a diplomat for a number of years in the US Foreign Service, and the question I've asked my whole life about everything is like, well, how did we get here?

Why did we not figure this out before it became a disaster?

So when I moved back to Maine, it became abundantly clear to me that we have a huge opportunity here on the coast, 'cause you said a lot of the fisheries have gone by the wayside, but a lot of the fisheries haven't.

Lobster is doing very well, and people are making good money with it.

That is different than what was in the past.

We're making kind of money from a lot of fisheries, and now people are making good money from one fishery, and that's almost the most terrifying part.

The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than 99% of oceans in the world, and those lobster larva are gonna have a harder time.

(water splashing) And when we're completely beholden to one industry on the coast, and when your entire income is tied up in that and your entire community's income is tied up on it, it leaves us really vulnerable.

How can we take this tremendous asset we have, which is cold, clean water of Maine, which is more coastline than the state of California, 4,000 plus lobster license holders with boats with social knowledge, with a ton of skills, with the ability to work on the water better than anyone?

It's not gonna replace lobster, but man, it can help absorb some of the shock of that volatility in the lobster industry.

But that's why I came to Atlantic Sea Farms and started in our model of working with fishermen as our partner farmers, and we now work with 27 partner farmers, including Jodi and her partner Alex, who are some of the first- - Oh awesome.

- [Name] To take the risk into kelp farming.

- We're crazy people.

- [Bri] Yeah.

(all laughing) - So I know you guys are all looking forward to the future, and we're coming at this from a whole different aspect because we were looking at the past growing up in a fishing community that has, and I'm gonna say this on camera right now and someone's gonna kill me.

We have sold out to the tourism industry.

(compelling music) For me, there's a difference between a job and a career.

All of our careers are gone, unique careers.

- [Participant] Absolutely.

- And that's totally different than a dead end housekeeping job four months out of the season.

What are these people gonna do the rest of the time?

And the tourism is great, we love the tourism, okay?

It is good, a lot of people make pretty good money on it, but we need to look at how is it gonna be sustainable long term?

Eight kids from my graduating class are still in town.

The rest of them went to college, never came back.

I don't know half of the people that live on the road I grew up on.

I used to know everybody on that road.

You could spend all day walking down the mile and a half to get to the stop sign talking to all of your neighbors.

So we're looking at it like all of our people are leaving.

We're trying to preserve the past and where we came from, and it's been really difficult.

We've watched fisheries close down.

We participated in multiple fisheries.

They shut down shrimping.

So it really was a long, hard discussion on do we even stay?

Do we sell it all and just be done with this and give up the dream of living in Maine?

Because at the end of the day, we have to survive.

So we looked at aquaculture as a way to stay here, and we decided we were gonna do seaweed because it was winter, we had lost shrimp, which was a winter industry as you all know, and we thought maybe this will work.

(bright music) - Kind of like what you were discussing with your town, there's not a lot of job opportunities where we live other than lobster fishing and things like that.

So when we think about what does it look like in 10, 20 years- - Come down, you can see what it looks like.

- Yeah, it's interesting to hear you talk about that, 'cause I don't feel like that is the same where we live right now, but I totally see how that could happen.

So many young kids leave, they just leave, and I did the same thing, I did the exact same thing.

I didn't see that there was a reason for me to stay in Maine until I learned about seaweed and then it brought me back, funny enough.

- Alex is the second youngest fisherman in his grounds, and he's almost 40.

- [Participant] Wow.

- [Jodi] Our graduating class last year, I think it was like 23 kids.

- [Participant] Wow.

- [Jodi] Alex's graduating class was over 100.

- How many is it in Lubec?

- So yeah.

- How many do you have?

- They shut down the high school 2000 or 2001, and there's been talk multiple times of shutting down the elementary school.

On the other hand, though, you also have this like living memory that there's people who are still alive that remember like working in the canneries, and like when I was little, my grandmother had a store where she made lunch for the people who were working in the two processing facilities that were still open in town, and that was after there had been tons, and it was just kind of the ones that were barely hanging on.

I remember when I was little sitting in front of the wood stove listening to people talk over lunch, and that's not there anymore, and I know- - [Jodi] That community.

- Yeah, and even though that was kind of like an echo of what it had been, that was still there.

(waves lapping) There's something really valuable and really exciting and really needed that I hear each of you speaking about.

There's a potential for it to fill this gap.

- There's a huge need.

I'm like we need to help the fishermen in our community, and so we hire them.

I want them to say, "Okay, we're a part of this."

I look at it like we're helping another family be able to stay in our area and not move away like so many others have.

So far it's worked out beautifully, and it's allowed them to take part in it.

- You all have invested so much time and energy and like sweat and blood and tears and all of this into like- - Money.

- And money, oh yeah, that too, yes, money.

- I've literally cried out there, so.

- Yes, I was gonna say, exactly.

- I think people romanticize this idea of like, oh, you're in Maine, and you're on the ocean, and how nice.

It's like, yeah, it's in the middle of winter, actually.

It's windy and it's freezing, and we have 50 layers on, and it's really hard actually.

Like some days are really, really challenging.

(compelling music) - When you think of the challenges, what stands out?

- We're farmer owned, we are self-funded, and we're small, and so learning how to scale but in a way that we feel is sustainable and manageable for us has been probably our biggest challenge.

(compelling music continues) Especially where we're located, trying to operate in a really small town, also where people just don't really understand, I think, what we're doing.

- Yeah.

Have you encountered anybody that has seen what you're doing as a potential threat?

- Yeah, I think actually when we initially got started, we knew that if we were gonna go in and say like we're gonna take up this plot of ocean, that people are gonna be intimidated by that.

So we started really early having those conversations and trying to educate people, letting them know that we weren't there to try to take away from them, that we were there to maybe even try to help them in the long run.

So we started with town hall meetings, talking to landowners, talking to the community in general.

I think that people have a tendency to dislike what they don't understand, and when you can understand why they feel the way they feel and why their territorial over their space, I mean, these are people who have lived on the water for generations, so it makes sense, right?

That they're protective of that.

- It was funny, when we first started this, we were working from the preconception that like, okay, well exactly what Morgan said, let's make sure fishermen feel like they have stake in the game.

What we didn't realize is that we have to consider the person who doesn't wanna see a farm from their $3 million house because they don't like mooring balls.

They bought that house in Maine 'cause they wanna see those working waterfront communities.

That's why people love it here, and they're taking that out of existence by not supporting our ability to be who we've always been.

We work on the water.

- We work on the water, we do.

- And that's what we do on the coast.

- Well, part of it is they don't understand, and I had some opposition.

- [Bri] You had, yeah.

- To the site I thought was gonna be like smooth sailing.

It's an acre, we got this, right?

We're not gonna have a problem with that four acre site out there.

Four acre site, nobody cared.

- [Bri] 'Cause they couldn't see it.

- Everybody was like, even the people who could see it.

We went out, we met them, we brought them our whole plan.

I had that little slideshow thing I did for everybody.

- Yeah, it was great.

- And they were like, "This is great, we love it," and I'm like, "Okay, this is going better than expected.

We're good," and then the comments came on my little dinky one acre site.

(compelling music) And they're like, "Poly balls?"

And I'm like, "I'm at the end of a mooring field, like poly balls as far as the eye can see."

And then they wanted us to sink 'em and do all this crazy stuff, and our lease got held up because of that.

- For a long time.

- For a long time, so I finally had enough one day, and I actually went through our tax book at home.

(compelling music) I pulled up everybody's property taxes who opposed my site, and I wrote it down, (compelling music continues) and I looked at 'em, I said, "You do realize you pay more property taxes on your summer vacation home than I make in an entire year?

We're just trying to make a living," and they were like, "Oh."

I'm like, "I'm dead serious.

You pay more on property taxes for a summer home you spend six weeks in a year than I make in an entire year," and it's like the light bulb turned on and they were like, "Oh, I understand."

(bright music) - Just looking at some of the challenges that are out there of being a woman on the working waterfront and being in this business, what comes to mind?

If it seems like there's more opportunity in seaweed too for women since it is such a new industry here, or if there are also kind of the same old challenges that come with that too?

(bright music continues) - Oh I'll start, yeah.

(all laughing) - I gonna say I would actually love to hear what you have to say.

- [Bri] Yeah, me too.

- I think that's gonna be interesting.

- Yeah, I grew up in a man's world, I did.

(laughs) - We all did.

(all chuckling) - Yeah, that's true, here we are.

- You learn some things you probably shouldn't learn at a tender young age on the deck of a boat.

I'm just gonna say that.

It was actually taboo for a very long time, where it was like bad juju to have a woman on a boat.

There are men that still to this day believe that, but you're finding a shift in the younger guys.

They don't care as long as you show up and you do your job well, but it is hard, and you are looked at different.

There's a lot of opportunity for women in the industry, but I think you're still gonna have it be a man's world for a very long time.

- I think, though, where women have a lot of opportunity is in the business and in marketing, because I think that women-run businesses, employees are happier and people are happier.

- All the data proves all of that.

- Yeah, exactly.

- You made a good point that in aquaculture in general, there are a lot of more opportunities for women to get in, and I started sort of forgetting about the gender imbalance in seafood writ large, because here, there are a lot of women running oyster farms.

There are a lot of women running kelp farms.

The scientists, most of the scientists we work with here are women, but I know statistically, the aquaculture industry has significantly more women than the seafood industry.

The statistics in the seafood industry are terrifying.

One out of the top 100 seafood businesses in the world is run by a woman.

- So I guess my question is how many of these men have women standing behind them?

- All of them.

- That's a thing, but- - [Jodi] Like all of them.

- They might have women standing behind them, but they're not in the C-suite.

I'm tired of being behind.

(bright music) - We've talked about so many challenges in this upstream swim that it seems like you're all facing.

To help support communities and women and families and the environment and all of this, like what makes it all worth it to keep going?

- Every day I wake up and I love going to work.

My staff is amazing.

Our 27 partner farmers have never done anything but believe in us, even at times where they maybe- - We might question.

- When Jodi and Alex started, it was on a whim of me being like, "I promise we will buy it."

- Yeah, and we had a conversation at home like, "What happens if they don't buy it?

Like what do we do with it?"

And I found a fertilizer company that would take it.

- [Bri] Maybe you didn't trust me as much as I thought you did.

(all laughing) - I mean I did, but then I'm like.

- She has some background plans.

- I'm like what?

- Nobody knew that we were gonna show up.

No one knew what we were gonna do with it.

That was particularly cute when we got this big deal with Sweetgreen and a bunch of other fast casuals that were moving like tens of thousands of pounds of kelp a week, and we expanded so much with so many partner farmers 'cause we had the demand, and we were growing for the demand, and we promised them all we would show up, and COVID hits three weeks before harvest season starts, and we had just enough money to cover harvest, and we wrote an email to all of our partner farmers that said, "We'll be there."

- I'm like, what do you think they're gonna do with it?

- No, no, it closed down.

We were probably just gonna like just put it like in a dump or something.

We just think we had no idea.

We were like, "Well, if this is the last thing we do, we will be there."

They believed in us, and we were able to go to the people who had invested in our business and say, "This is our option.

We either buy the kelp and go to business or we buy the kelp and we have a little bit more money that you guys can put into it to give us a little runway to try something differently."

(compelling music) And they tried the second, and here we are, we're standing, and we just moved into a 27,000 square foot facility, and we're in 1,700 stores across the country, and restaurants, and ingredients and all of that.

The fact that everyone showed up at the dock and people stayed with us and trusted us and believed in us, like how could I not get up every morning?

(compelling music continues) I just feel so fortunate to be here with these people in this business doing this thing, 'cause it's weird and it's hard and it's new, but there's nothing else I'd rather be doing.

(compelling music continues) - [Morgan-Lea] What keeps me going is the lifestyle that we've been able to build, but I can wake up and some of what we do is outside, and we live in this very beautiful, remote place, and we have this incredible community of friends that also contribute to the community in their own way.

It's a really simple way of living, and I don't know that if we had not gotten involved in seaweed, that that would be the case for us.

If I can do this for the rest of my life and contribute to the environment and food in a really positive way, I'll consider myself to be really, really lucky.

- For me, it's just about helping our community, and then to be able to help other people who want to get into the business.

(bright music) I am behind the scenes.

I do all the backend paperwork, the non-glorious.

It's Jodi Burr calling.

We need to schedule the hearing with the new harbor master.

I am one hell of a buoy painter, and all kinds of different people stop when you're out there painting buoys, locals.

Some of our landowners stop in, and you know, "What are you guys doing and how is it going?"

So it's really about getting up and just continuing to help our community, and showing people that they can do it.

- You actually are like passionate about going to work, which is I think a rarity for a lot of people nowadays, and I'm curious what your hopes are for seaweed farming into the future.

(peaceful music) - [Morgan-Lea] It was a very common thing in households that people were sprinkling seaweed or eating it somehow in their smoothies.

- [Jodi] Just like your salt and pepper.

- [Morgan-Lea] Yeah, exactly that it's just so normal.

That would be my hope.

- I'm gonna echo exactly what you said, but add on Campbell Soup, (all laughing) General Mills, and everyone has seaweed in everything and you don't even know it.

It might be ingredient seven, but they're using it, and they're using line grown, US grown kelp.

Like I don't know how many emails I've sent to like huge corporations being like, "You need kelp, so just tell me when you're ready."

(all laughing) And then sometimes they're like, "I do."

I'm like, "Oh cool, do you want me to come to your house tomorrow, or like what would you like?"

(all laughing) - [Morgan-Lea] I do think that it would be really exciting if kids in high school were deciding to stick around the coast of Maine to have a kelp farm, or even just work at a production facility or whatever it is to get involved in aquaculture.

I had no idea that that was an option growing up.

(bright music) So like you said at the very beginning, you know you have this dream being a kelp farmer.

(bright music continues) How cool would that be if we could inspire people to wanna be a kelp farmer?

(bright music continues) - I would love to see small towns like yours be able to sustain itself without becoming reliant on the tourism industry.

For me, I would love to see kelp grow to the point that we are making different materials with it, and we can put processing into some of these small towns that used to have canneries where you could have a career where you got retirement and health benefits and live comfortably in your town, and then your kids could then go into an industry.

(bright music continues) - [Pamela] It seems like there's just such potential for that on the coast, (waves flowing) but that doesn't yet exist.

- Hopefully like this conversation and what we're all doing on the water can show people it's not scary, because it's not.

It's changed to continue to be who we are.

- [Morgan-Lea] There's so much opportunity, and I think we're at the very beginning.

- [Jodi] This is helping our community stay.

(bright music) (indistinct chatter) - I think there's a lot of hope in that.

Finally it took like 25 years, but I was.

(peaceful music)