Seaweed often gets a bad rap – maybe it just has the wrong name!  Many regard it as a nuisance – slimy, smelly stuff that mars our beaches, entangles us while swimming and not good for much, except of course making sushi.  But an increasing number of marine scientists, ecologists, entrepreneurs and foodies are beginning to appreciate seaweed’s remarkable properties. 

The benefits of seaweed are enormous and we are only starting to explore its myriad applications, from farming to pharmaceuticals, from food to packaging. Some species can take CO2 out of the atmosphere at 5 x the rate of land-based plants, and in addition to being a sustainable food source for humans and animals, it is one of the fastest growing plants. Nori provides more protein than soy, more vitamin C than orange juice and it is full of Omega 3s, iodine, zinc and magnesium – and it doesn’t require agro-chemicals, fertilizer or antibiotics!  Seaweed has been called the miracle crop because it can be cultivated easily, protects the planets by trapping carbon, it provides many foodstuffs, supplies jobs and generally does good.

Of course, in some parts of the world, like Ireland, farmers have been cultivating seaweed as an animal food and fertilizer for centuries.  Our discussion features experts around the world about why they are so excited about algae and how they became involved in this huge field of sustainable seaweed aquaculture.

Recorded May 17, 2022

Stefan Kraan is a Dutch marine biologist and founder of the The Seaweed Company in Galway, Ireland who specializes in high-quality, seaweed products that he produces in Ireland, India, Morocco and the Netherlands.  

Sean Barrett is the founder of Dock to Dish, an expansive network of small-scale community-based fishery programs, as well as The Montauk Seaweed Supply Company in Long Island. Sean is currently pioneering a “sea to soil” movement to revive an ancient symbiotic relationship between regional gardens, farmlands and local oceans.

Vincent Doumeizel is Senior Advisor for the UN Global Compact, Head of the Safe Seaweed Coalition and director of the food program at Lloyd’s Register Foundation.

It feels like a new Cold War is upon us – Russia poses an alarming extrinsic threat to the American concept of freedom, and to Western ideas of democratic values.  Russia’s terrible assault on Ukraine and the recent elections of pro-Putin regimes in Hungary and Serbia, coincide with a growing threat to American democracy from within its own borders.  

JOHN SHATTUCK, an international legal scholar and human rights leader, is currently Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at Tufts after a long and distinguished career in academia and government.  In the early post-Cold War years, he was responsible for coordinating and implementing U.S. efforts to promote human rights, democracy and international labor rights. The first U.S. official to reach and interview survivors of the genocide at Srebrenica, he helped negotiate the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia and was instrumental in the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. He also served President Clinton as U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic from 1998-2000.  

Holding Together: the hijacking of rights in America is co-authored by SUSHMA RAMAN, Executive Director and Mathias Risse, faculty director at the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

Raman is the host of Justice Matters podcast and a contributor to Foreign Policy magazine; she brings two decades of experience in launching and leading social justice and human rights’ initiatives to her position as director at the Carr Center. 

Are you alarmed at the steady deterioration of common purpose among your fellow Americans or are you more concerned about the international disregard for human rights and democratic values, we have witnessed in Ukraine and beyond?  Join this spirited discussion to investigate what can be done.