Transcription of Marine Plant-Based University with Steve Eddy:

Alissa Miky: Hi y’all, thank you so much for watching to the Martin Plum Base University, and today I would love to introduce… Stephen. So Stephen, thank you so much for coming today. So could you please introduce a little bit about yourself?

Steve Eddy: Certainly. I am the science advisor for a company called Main Coast Sea Vegetables, which has been in business for 51 years.

Selling dried seaweed as food and also for bath products. I also work as a director for the Center for Cooperative Aquaculture Research, which is the University of Maine Aquaculture Research and Development Facility. And one of the things we have worked with is seaweed aquaculture. Beautiful.

Alissa Miky: You work for this industry for more than 20 years? Is that the correct understanding?

Steve Eddy: I’ve worked with the university’s aquaculture facility for 23 years.

Alissa Miky: Congratulations.

Steve Eddy: Thank you. And I’ve worked for Maine Coast Sea Vegetables since 2018.

Alissa Miky: Wow, good for you. So why do you decided to like, like be this, you know, work? Sorry, why do you decided to work for this industry?

Because there’s so many researcher or so many occupation in this world. But why did you especially decided this seaweed industry, which is so unique?

Steve Eddy: So the founder of Maine Coast Sea Vegetables is a guy named Shep Earhart. Him and his wife Lynette started the company. And now it’s employee owned company.

It’s an ESOP. Shep still works for the company, and he’s been interested in seaweed aquaculture for quite a number of years. He started one of the first aquaculture farms in Maine to grow Pyropia for Nori think a couple decades ago now. And now recently, Maine has been experiencing a lot of growth of people growing kelp, sugar kelp.

And so Shep got a lease site and he worked with a Professor at the University of Maine, Dr. Susan Brawley to establish some seeding laboratories here at the CCAR facility, the university facility that I direct. So I got to know about him and his efforts through that connection. And then this opportunity became available at his company for a science advisor to help run their testing program and to help deal with a lot of the customer questions.

About a lot of the technical and scientific aspects of seaweed.

Alissa Miky: Interesting. So mainly your role is to educate the customer about the seaweed benefit or the use case. Is that correct? Understanding? Yeah, that’s a big

Steve Eddy: part of the role and also to help the company navigate things like testing for safety heavy metals and radiation and things like that.

So the best lab to use how to interpret the test results, whether the test results. Whether the testing method is appropriate, what do the levels even mean, that kind of stuff and also to help them with their nutritional labeling, so I’ve done a lot of work in that area, too.

Alissa Miky: So you’re interesting, so your background is mostly nutrition, or, I’m sorry, I’m still not, like, getting on the same page, so your background is mostly, not about the researching about the CV, your background is more like nutrition or the food scientist?

Steve Eddy: No, not really. My background is biology, wildlife and fisheries, biology, and I worked in commercial fisheries for a long time. And then I got into aquaculture in 1996. And so I’ve been working in the aquaculture profession since that time. But while I was working for the university, we Get to take classes for free.

We got a certain amount of free credits. So I got a graduate certificate in food and nutrition. So I have some background in food and nutrition.

Alissa Miky: I understand loud and clear. Okay. That’s beautiful. So for what is your like difficulties? What is your challenge to educate people about the seaweed benefit or the.

Or the seaweed, like, you know, use case, because I think we have a same like, you know, struggle right now because my company we create the medical capsules or the plastic alternative, but we mainly have, we mainly be an ingredients company to sell our seaweed powder for the finished product company, such as food beverage or the medical, like, whatever.

They, you know, still in the States, people really don’t understand about the benefit or the use case. Do you, so we were probably, we’re doing the same, like, you know, we, we have a lot of like, you know, commons difficulty. Do you have any like huge difficulty to like, you know, go through to tell the people on the market?

Steve Eddy: I’ll say a couple of things about that. So we also sell to ingredients customers. We mill seaweed and sell it to pharmaceutical companies that are making seaweed supplements or ingredients customers that are using seaweed in a In a chips or cookie or whatever it is they’re making. And so those customers are used to the safety requirements and paperwork for conventional foods, but they’re not as familiar with seaweed.

And so they ask for a lot of documentation, and they expect it to conform to their idea of what other foods are like, and it doesn’t always. So that’s been one challenge. With our retail customers, When it comes to nutrition, we have certain customers that are very specific in what they want to get, like, for example, iodine or iron or any of those good things that seaweed has.

And so they will ask, well, how much will I get if I eat two grams of this? Can you tell me how much is in there? And then I have to explain to them, well, there’s a lot of variation, because this is a marine crop, and the levels of iodine and other nutrients fluctuate throughout the season. So I can’t tell you exactly how much you’re getting.

And so why don’t, why don’t you test for that? Well, we do some testing, but we can’t test every single batch of seaweed.

Alissa Miky: For sure. Especially seaweed is one of the volatility, you know, product, because like, if you harvest on a warm day, cold day, the characteristics are going to be totally different, right?

So yeah, I’m in the same page. Yeah. But like, it’s so unique that people think that seaweed is. It’s always same and then how to say they, most of the people don’t understand about we have tons of varieties. They have a volatility on the season and also it’s going to be different when you harvest on a different country.

So of course there’s like, you know, people think that seaweed, it’s just the same thing like apple or like the strawberry, you know what I’m saying?

Steve Eddy: Yeah, there’s that. And also because seaweed is so healthy and it was, it’s been used in Chinese medicine for thousands of years that some people think of it like like a pill or a nutritional supplement and it should have an exact formulation that should always be the same, but it’s not.

It’s a wild plant with healthful properties. But, you know, it’s not going to give you the same dose of whatever it is you’re looking for and usually it’s iodine every single time there’s going to be some fluctuation.

Alissa Miky: Yes, that’s a headache. I totally understand. And but, so, we actually tried to, like, find iodine.

We are now working, we are talking with UC San Diego to search the iodine, but do you? But they said that they couldn’t find they don’t have any facility to, to search the iodide, but you, you did the research for the seaweed?

Steve Eddy: Oh, yeah, there’s am I allowed to name a lab on

Alissa Miky: Oh, well, we can talk later if you want.

Steve Eddy: Okay, so there are large commercial analytical labs that can test for iodine levels in seaweed. There’s several, and we use one of them and you have to pay, obviously, for the test, but they’re pretty good.

Alissa Miky: Really, that would be really helpful. I would love to introduce my executive later about this solution, because we had a lot of headaches to, like, to find Certificate, like a specific iodine number on our product, especially we work off our company focus on mainly agar agar, the red allergy and also the giant kelp and then giant kelp.

We can, like, do that, but because of the red allergy itself is too tiny than the other seaweed. That’s why we couldn’t find a great research for the iodine itself. But. Okay. Yes, I would love doing . Could you please help me with that? Oh yeah. I would love to introduce my scientist researcher over there,

Alright, so, but that is amazing. So what, for the next step, what, what do you wanted to do? So I understand that you doing a lot of scientific research. You try to educate people, but do you have any, any. Do you have any, like, your life goal or anything, your expectation for the future?

Steve Eddy: Yeah, retirement.

Alissa Miky: When is your what’s your plan for the retirement? When do you want it to retire?

Steve Eddy: It’s not that far away. I may look younger than I actually am, but, no, this seriously what I would like is for this industry to continue to grow, but I don’t want to see it come at the expense of a lot of hype about seaweed’s going to save the world and seaweed’s going to solve the climate crisis and, you know, that kind of stuff.

It’s just simply unrealistic. So I’d like to see our industry continue to grow and I’d like to see more people eat seaweed. Regularly is part of their diet. But I, I just want to see us avoid a lot of the hype that I’ve been hearing lately. And here in Maine, we have,

Alissa Miky: May I challenge you about that point?

Why do you think it’s hype?

Steve Eddy: So people talk about the carbon sequestration abilities of seaweed, but I don’t think they fully understand what sequestration means, which is to lock away carbon for at least a hundred years or more. And once someone eats… Anything, seaweed included, all the carbon that they take in, then gets metabolized and released.

Back into the environment. So every breath you’re taking, for example, is releasing carbon dioxide. So, oh, it’s kind of incorrect to think that you can take seaweed from the sea and then eat it. And now it’s like sequestered. Yeah.

Alissa Miky: So, but my understanding is correct. If it’s wrong. Please correct me. The reason why I like the seaweed better than the other vegetables or the forest, because like, first of all, as a human, we need to eat some food.

So that means like, you know carbon neutral, it’s going to be difficult if we are existing, first of all. However, the seaweed itself is, you know, the, it’s, they can actually divide into multiple party. During the growth, so of course, if we eat too much seaweed, of course, the, the, you know, the carbon neutral doesn’t happen.

However, seaweed is a super rare element that they can divide into multiple parts and those leftover can grow new, new elements or even if they cannot be so bigger, they’re CO2 and go down on the ocean. So. Of course, like, you know if we take too much of the seaweed, it’s not gonna happen. We need to be little by little, protect the, you know, ocean.

Yes. But, you know, the human need to eat something else. And, like, on that point, I thought, like, a seaweed is way more better solution than the other vegetable or the forest to protect the carbon neutral. How do you think about that?

Steve Eddy: No, I agree with that. And that’s why Maine Coast Sea Vegetables is exists as a company because that’s that’s part of their mission.

Seaweed is probably the most sustainable crop you can grow because you don’t have to put any fresh water or fertilizers or Pesticides or any of fossil fuels other than the boat. Into it. And it’s a terrestrial crops by comparison need all of those things. So I’m not saying everything is hype. I’m just saying there’s been a certain amount of hype.

Alissa Miky: Oh, I understand

Steve Eddy: you continue to promote seaweed, but without exaggerating it’s claims because that can backfire of all.

Alissa Miky: For sure. Because now, like, 70, 70 percent or 30 percent of the CO2 that the marine plant are correcting Correcting a year, right? As you see, so if you lose more seaweed or those kind of marine plant based resource, definitely that means we’re going to, it’s, it’s quite difficult to get the CO2 and then the global warming can be a more headache.

So definitely I’m on the same page, but I was like, so surprised that people really don’t understand that. For example, the giant kelp, although the specific specific seaweed can grow 11 inch a day, right? As you know. So I thought like, you know, when I tell that story, people were so like surprised and they didn’t know that.

So I thought like, well, of course there’s a lot of hype and then too much hype as, as you mentioned, but I was thinking of, for my personality is why, why don’t we use a little bit to like, you know, educate more corrective information to the customer. So that’s, that’s my feeling, but yeah, I get your point now.

Steve Eddy: Yeah, and we don’t want to miseducate anyone, so we want to make sure whatever we tell people is factual. So yeah the carbon sequestration is just one example of that. And people overlook, when seaweed breaks down, it goes through its own life and death cycle. It gets broken down by microbes or eaten by sea urchins.

Yeah, and all of that goes to the carbon cycle, that carbon isn’t sequestered, it’s just cycled and put somewhere else, but it’s still there. But yes, that seaweed definitely does help with like there’s been studies showing that it can help with the pH issue, so our oceans are acidifying. They absorb more CO2 and in areas where there’s lots of seaweed, the pH is better for the ocean.

So yeah, it definitely, it’s part of the solution.

Alissa Miky: Right, right. I totally understand. So, yeah, especially this like sea environment is like so complicated. So we cannot like. Take the only one piece, like, for example, people gonna say that, like, oh, sea urchin is too much. Yes, but on the same time, in Japanese research, we found that there’s one person that they, like, you know, they, like, crack the sea urchin around the around the like seaweed barrier, but they found that the most most difficulty was not actually from the sea orchard.

They found that the specific fish. Eat too much of the seaweed. And that’s why in Japan we finally found that like sea char is not just a part, part of the reason we definitely need to control the, the fish because the fish fish number as well. So now like, you know, we have a lot of debate.

Are there really, like sea is a reason that the losing the, the seaweed. Now we have a lot of hypotheses these days, but yeah, but we still need to like do a lot of research. How can we really protect the seaweed? I totally understand. Sorry, we only have like five more minutes for the for this like podcast.

So, for the last question what kind of message do you want it to like, do you want it to say to the audience that who’s watching the marine plant based university today?

Steve Eddy: Well, I wanna say that there are a lot of companies now that are selling seaweed. You can buy it on Amazon even. And just before you buy from a company, just do a little bit of research and make sure that the company has good ethics and good values, and, is either based in Japan or the United States.

Alissa Miky: Beautiful, beautiful. Thank you so much for the time. Thank you.