Seagriculture Speaker

About the speaker:

Nichole Price is a benthic marine ecologist with interest in how global change phenomena, like ocean acidification and warming, can alter bottom-dwelling species interactions, community dynamics, and ecosystem function in shallow coastal regimes. Her work focuses primarily on the eco-physiology of seaweeds and calcifying invertebrates and their current and future role in dissolved inorganic carbon and nutrient cycling. Nichole utilizes state-of-the-art analytical tools including prototype autonomous oceanographic instrument packages in field campaigns, develops custom experimental aquaria in the lab, and applies emerging technological approaches (like environmental DNA) to tackle fundamental ecological research questions about population dynamics, biological feedbacks, and ecosystem services. Nichole also applies her expertise to explore mitigation strategies for coastal acidification (the ‘Halo’ effect) and climate change (e.g., blue carbon and uses of farmed seaweeds). She has focused on these topics primarily on tropical coral reefs and temperate systems and extrapolates her results from each biome to regional and global scales using statistical modelling.

Company info: 

Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences is an independent, nonprofit research institute located in East Boothbay, Maine. From the Arctic to the Antarctic, Bigelow Laboratory scientists use innovative approaches to study the foundation of global ocean health and unlock its potential to improve the future for all life on our planet. Creative, cutting-edge science is our hallmark. We’ve reimagined ocean research – fusing the best of scientific inquiry and entrepreneurial ingenuity. This bold and nimble approach has transformed our independent nonprofit from a scrappy startup to a world-renowned hub of ocean discovery during the last 50 years.

Within Bigelow Laboratory, the Center for Seafood Solutions is a partnership for problem-solving, informed policy, and public awareness. We’re working with seafood partners to develop science-based solutions through the power of philanthropy. Opportunities and obstacles abound for the aquaculture and wild harvest seafood industries, and we are partnering with stakeholders around the globe to put our science to work. We’re uniting the industry partners, cutting-edge science, and financial resources necessary to secure the future of sustainable, nutritious, safe seafood for generations to come.

Presentation: 

Interest in the utility of seaweed farms to mitigate coastal eutrophication has grown commensurate with the recent rise of the farmed seaweed industry in the U.S. But valuation of this ecosystem service remains elusive in part because of challenges in quantifying this spatiotemporally variable biological process with reproducible and comparable metrics. Regulatory bodies that permit wastewater discharge, lease areas for aquaculture farms, organic certification, or emergent nitrogen crediting require measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) of dissolved total nitrogen (N) in nearshore marine environments. Mathematical mass-balance models used to indirectly estimate the potential for N removal by farmed seaweed generally rely on stoichiometric relationships between elemental N, carbon (C), and hydrogen. These models tend to assume static assimilation rates over the lifetime of the seaweed and across tissue types and environmental conditions (e.g., nutrient loading or temperature), largely because data do not exist to more appropriately parameterize the models. Further, the little information available on the impact of sample storage and preparation on subsequent tissue analyses suggests that pragmatic protocols need to be developed to generate uniform data sets. Finally, optimized normalization procedures (e.g., to seaweed surface area, wet or dry biomass, or pigment concentration) need to be selected for direct comparison across seaweed farms. We present the results of several controlled pulse-chase laboratory experiments with Saccharina latissima to quantify C & N uptake rates on the same samples, contrasting multiple methods (stable isotopes, elemental analyses, disappearance of ammonium and nitrate from the media, and simple surface-volume ratios) and explore the significance of sample storage and preparation, tissue type, and nutrient availability to N assimilation estimates. Our goal is to generate set of recommended industry MRV science-based targets to evaluate nutrient bioextraction effectiveness of seaweed farms.

Keywords: 

Carbon and nitrogen uptake, nutrient bioextraction, MRV, carbon and nitrogen markets, sugar kelp, valuation of ecosystem services