52 



with so many conflicting uses already that I think it is out of the 

 question that this could be used for large scale energy farming. 



I think one would have to get offshore into areas that are not 

 now being used to carry this out. And this immediately opens up a 

 whole new spectrum of problems, technological and economic. They 

 are going to be very difficult problems. 



We are trying to develop techniques by which we could grow this 

 Gracilaria offshore using different kinds of suspending mechanisms 

 for holding it up into the surface areas. 



But it may well turn out that some other species of seaweeds are 

 better adapted for this sort of thing, and you have just heard of one 

 of these candidate species, the giant kelp. There may well be 

 others. One of the more intriguing ones, I think, is Sargassum, 

 which is a brown seaweed that already occurs naturally out in the 

 central gyres of the ocean. It is the seaweed that gives the Sargasso 

 Sea its name. 



It floats because it is buoyed up by little bladders. There is a 

 species that is the common species in the Sargasso Sea that re- 

 mains vegetative throughout its whole life. It has never been found 

 to have reproductive bodies, so it has that advantage as well. 



We know almost nothing about this species. Nobody has really 

 tried to grow it yet. This certainly bears looking into. 



So I think the real challenge is can we develop a technology for 

 growing these seaweeds out in the open sea where there is plenty 

 of room and where we can take advantage of their natural inher- 

 ent high growth rates. 



I would like to end up by reading the last page or so of my 

 testimony. 



Seaweed culture as a large-scale commercial operation is still 

 very much in its infancy. The few practices scattered around the 

 world are, for the most part, primitive and they make very little 

 use of modern technology. 



Much remains to be learned about the basic biology of the plants, 

 particularly with respect to their nutrition and growth and the 

 factors that control their organic productivity. The much more 

 difficult task of developing a technology for growing seaweeds in 

 the open sea must await our ability to grow them in small, con- 

 trolled experimental units on land or in protected coastal areas, 

 and to fully understand and define their growth potential under 

 different conditions. 



In short, open-ocean energy farming of seaweeds must be regard- 

 ed as a long-term prospect that cannot be expected to be solved in a 

 time frame of less than tens of years I estimate. 



It would be a serious mistake, I think, to neglect the challenging 

 potential of producing biomass from the open sea. But I think it 

 would also be equally wrong, in my opinion, to plunge headlong 

 into large-scale costly experiments in this area where so much 

 fundamental science and engineering technology still remains to be 

 done. 



I think that repeated failures-this is my major concern — of hast- 

 ily conceived efforts will inevitably lead to premature elimination 

 of this whole concept of open-ocean energy farming from any fur- 

 ther consideration. 



