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BIDDEFORD, Maine

Marine scientists and students attend Maine Seaweed Festival and present on new Microalgae Nursery and Research Cluster at Marine Science Center

Adam St. Gelais, M.S., assistant research scientist, Jeri Fox, Ph.D., associate professor, and Barry Costa-Pierce, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Marine Sciences and director of the Marine Science Center, as well as five undergraduate marine science researchers attended the second Maine Seaweed Festival on August 29, 2015, at Southern Maine Community College in Portland. While there, they gave a presentation on the Marine Science Center’s new Macroalgae Nursery and Research Cluster.

The cluster, part of the Marine Science Center’s Ocean Clusters, recently “spored” its first round of sugar kelp, obtaining millions of kelp spores that, when reared in the laboratory, can then be transferred to experimental or commercial farms in coastal Maine waters. 

When at full capacity, the Macroalgae Nursery and Research Cluster will serve as a much needed local hub for industry to source high quality seaweed for the southern Maine and Casco Bay areas, as expansion of Maine’s already growing seaweed industry is currently limited by the availability of “seed” (or baby seaweed) to populate start-up commercial farms. The cluster will also give UNE the capability to rear and experiment with any of the “Maine Ten” candidate seaweed species.

At the Seaweed Festival, the UNE group detailed plans for its pilot kelp research and development site in Saco Bay, which includes a 200 foot kelp line with innovative ocean engineering that is highly mobile, easily deployed, inexpensive and presents an important opportunity to work with the communities in technology transfer. The demonstration farm will be deployed in September with the first target harvest in January 2016.

The macroalgae cluster is part of Fox’s Edible Campus Initiative and is also an integral part of UNE’s ongoing research with the Maine Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network (SEANET), a National Science Foundation funded, multi-institutional research project focused on building infrastructure and workforce capacity for aquaculture in Maine.

About the University of New England

The University of New England is Maine’s largest independent university, with two beautiful coastal campuses in Maine, a one-of-a-kind study abroad campus in Tangier, Morocco, and an array of flexible, accredited online degrees. In an uncommonly welcoming and supportive community, we offer hands-on learning, empowering students to make a positive impact in a world full of challenges. The state’s top provider of health professionals, we are home to Maine’s only medical college, Maine’s only dental college, a variety of other interprofessionally aligned health care degree programs, as well as nationally recognized programs for marine science degrees, natural and social sciences degrees, arts and humanities degrees, and business degrees.