Bren Smith, Executive Director of Greenwave, was born and raised in Newfoundland, Canada. He dropped out of high school when he was 14 and headed out to sea to fish the globe at the height of industrial fishing. It eventually became clear to him that it wasn’t sustainable…so he went on a search for sustainability. Now Bren is a 3D ocean farmer.
Imagine an underwater garden. “We’ve got floating long lines. And from there we grow our mussels, our scallops and our seaweeds. And then below that we have cages where we have our oysters and clams,” says Bren.
“Our crops require zero inputs to grow, so that means no freshwater, no fertilizer, no feed. Growing cattle and pigs on land is incredibly resource intensive. It takes water, and tons of feed, but what we’re farming requires so few resources. We don’t have to feed our sea vegetables. We don’t have to feed our shellfish. They’re just eating what’s in the water, filtering what’s in the water. And so, using this entire vertical column, we are able to grow huge amounts of food in a small area.
Bren wants people to realize that all along our coastlines we can have small farms producing incredible amounts of food, and it’s not going to ruin our oceans.
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