Kale of the Sea

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Science, Food, History, Arts

4.7 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2014

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Call off the search for the new kale: we’ve found it, and it’s called kelp! In this episode of Gastropod, we explore the science behind the new wave of seaweed farms springing up off the New England coast, and discover seaweed’s starring role in the peopling of the Americas. The story of seaweed will take us from a medicine hut in southern Chile to a high-tech seaweed nursery in Stamford, Connecticut, and from biofuels to beer, as we discover the surprising history and bright future of marine vegetables. Along the way, we uncover the role kelp can play in supporting U.S. fishermen, cleaning up coastal waters, and even helping make salmon farms more sustainable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	It's not seaweed, it's sea vegetables. Sea vegetables.
0:03.2	Welcome to Gastropod. I'm Nicola Twilly and I'm Cynthia Graber. We are so glad you could join us for another
0:09.2	gastroadventure exploring the science and history of food. So you may have eaten seaweed before.
0:15.0	Hello Cynthia, didn't you just hear it's not seaweed?
0:18.9	We're supposed to call it sea vegetables. Right. Sorry. Sea vegetables.
0:22.8	But if we do and somebody just kind of drops in, they're not gonna know what we're talking about. So
0:29.0	shouldn't we use seaweed? Yeah, no fair enough. Seaweed it is.
0:33.1	Sorry, chef Elaine Swinner. Anyway, weed their food too as we learned in our last episode on
0:39.2	subnatural cuisine. They absolutely are. So you may have eaten seaweed in a Japanese restaurant with sushi or in a seaweed salad.
0:47.0	But seaweed is not just for Asian food. It's been eaten for well as long as people have lived along coastlines all around the world.
0:55.0	We will learn about that and we'll also hear from a scientist in the US who developed a whole new seaweed farming process.
1:02.1	He did a ton of research on kelp biology from spore to seaweed to speed up their growth curve.
1:08.1	And he's now growing an entire seaweed farming industry on the East Coast.
1:13.6	So since this whole story is about farming in the ocean, shall we start on a boat? What do you think? I think that's a great idea.
1:20.6	You can just see the boobies out there right now.
1:23.3	So here we are on a boat called the Corey Alexander and it's a working fishing boat owned by Donald King or DJ as he's known.
1:30.9	We're heading out to see his kelp farm. It's off the coast of Branford, Connecticut in this gorgeous archipelago called the Thimble Islands in Long Island sound.
1:39.9	DJ told us that Captain Kid supposedly buried his treasure here.
1:43.9	Gary Trudeau, the dunesbury cartoon artist, owns a whole island here.
1:49.2	And for the past two years, DJ King has had a kelp farm here.
1:53.1	It's fairly close in. It's just, it's easy to access and it's kind of a little bit out of the weather.
2:00.0	The big storms and weather. I told Charlie that's the biggest, the biggest trick to this.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.