Image Source: Amazon Books

$20,000, twenty acres, and a boat.

That’s all Bren Smith needed to launch his journey as a restorative ocean farmer. Smith now grows and farms shellfish and kelp (a type of seaweed) on his underwater farm in Long Island Sound. 

What began as a lost fisherman’s attempt to find his way back to the sea turned into the potential for a groundbreaking, global ocean-based climate solution: regenerative seaweed farming. 

In Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change, Smith combines memoir, history, fisherman’s tales, and even a kelp-based cookbook to show readers how seaweed can play a key role in addressing the climate crisis. The book is a story of his “search for a meaningful and self-directed life,” as well as a story of how the oceans can combat climate change. 

But Smith has not always lived a life focused on seaweed. Driven by a need to work hard for the “thrill of the hunt,” he spent his early years as a ruthless fisherman, facing forty-foot seas and grueling hours on fishing boat’s decks. After giving up fishing, Smith had  a brief stint in industrial aquaculture working with farm-raised salmon.  It was then Smith realized something was terribly wrong with how people approached farming the ocean: we focus on producing food that can swim away.

Image Source: Pixabay

Smith asked what the ocean wants us to grow.

His answer to that question is simple: seaweed.

I know, it’s slimy and kind of gross. I was a bit skeptical at first too.

Smith claims that seaweed is a climate solution we need. It can sequester up to five times as much carbon as land-based plants, which have already taken up 25% of the carbon that humans have released into the atmosphere. Seaweed is also versatile and has many nutritional benefits. Best of all? It is easy to grow!

Fishermen know how to tell a tale, and Smith does not disappoint. He narrates with a conversational yet knowledgeable raw honesty. His passions, regrets, and visions of a beautiful, more-just future swirl through every page. While sometimes I felt the examples and anecdotes could be a bit disjointed, what tied the whole book together was Smith’s engaging voice. 

With this strong voice, Smith does more than walk us through his seaweed vision: he tells us how we can take part. It is more than just a book about his stories of his search for a life of meaning and his goals for the future.  He also concludes each section of the book with a how-to-guide for regenerative ocean farming. From seeding to harvesting, Smith breaks the process down and makes it sound so easy that even I feel like I could give it a go. 

What excited me most about the potential for regenerative ocean farming is its accessibility to people of all economic backgrounds.  He believes that the power of regenerative ocean farming is that it can revitalize blue-collar communities and re-strengthen the middle class. The revitalization of the middle class aligns with the goals of the Green and Blue New Deals, both of which hope to transition the world to a clean energy future in a just way.

The key, as Smith sees it, is to make sure ocean farming doesn’t repeat the mistakes of land-based agriculture. He hopes that the oceans will be seen as a commons to be “protected, not privatized.” To this day, in the waters of his own farm off the coast of Connecticut, people still swim and boat above the shellfish and kelp he grows.

In addition to his tall tales and how-to guide, Smith included a “Recipes” section at the end with his favorite kelp-based cooking creations. You can barbecue it, fry it, or even make kelp butter—I had no idea that kelp could be incorporated into so many dishes!

Oftentimes, proposed climate solutions can feel like a lot of hand-waving, or they can feel unachievable due to the limits of the agricultural and capitalistic systems already put in place. Regenerative ocean farming gives us the chance to build a successful, sustainable industry from the bottom-up. 

I felt hopeful and excited while reading this book. Climate change is upon us. And we need ocean-based climate solutions to address the crisis and achieve a just clean energy future. Eat Like a Fish details a novel and much needed solution. 

In the book’s introduction, Smith includes a quotation from a 1962 speech by President Kennedy: “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea…we are going back to whence we came.” Smith then writes, “The time has come to return from whence we came.”

That time has come.