Seaweeds cultivation methods and their role in climate mitigation and environmental cleanup

Abstract

Seaweed cultivation is an emerging sector of food production that can full fill the future food demand of the growing population. Considering the importance, Asia is home to seven of the top ten seaweed-producing nations, and Asian countries contributed 99.1% of all seaweed cultivated for food. Besides, it can reduce the carbon budget of the ocean through seaweed farms and act as a CO₂ sink. In the context of climate change mitigation, the seaweed culture is the energy crop, and during its entire life cycle can serve as a bio-filter and bio-extractor. The climate change effect can be reduced by farming seaweed on a commercial scale and it will protect the coastal area by decreasing the physical damage through damping wave energy. The seaweed can reduce eutrophication by removing excess nutrients from water bodies and releasing oxygen as a byproduct in return. The cultivation of seaweed plays an important role as the source of bioenergy for full fill the future energy requirement and it will act as clean energy through the establishment of algal biorefinery along with the seaweed cultivation site. Thus, the marine energy industrial sector moves further toward large-scale expansion of this sector by adopting energy devices to offer power for seaweed growth for biofuel operation. The current reviews provides the evidence of seaweed farming methodology adopted by different countries, as well as their production and output. To mitigate climate change by direct measures such as carbon sequestration, eutrophication risk reduction, and bioenergy, as well as through indirect measures like supplying food for cattle and reducing the strain on aquaculture. The US, Japan, and Germany lastly suggest the large-scale offshore commercial farming as a feasible climate change mitigation strategy.