On a clear March afternoon, John Smet shut off the engine of his workboat as he approached his go-to wild kelp bed. It was high tide, so less kelp was pooling on the surface of the water, making it harder to see.

As the boat drifted ahead, his business partner Nick Stern noticed a kelp strand within reach. Using a gardening rake, he pulled it on board, cut off a few feet and threw the rest back. As Stern held up the shiny seaweed for a photo op, Smet explained the basic anatomy of Macrocystis pyrifera, the species known as giant kelp.

“So you have the blade, pneumatocyst, which is the little air pocket, and then stipe,” Smet said.

Giant kelp is probably what you picture when someone says “kelp,” those flowing golden-brown towers that fish dart through and sea otters like to sleep on top of. And this species is what brought the two entrepreneurs to Ketchikan. 

After working several years in New York finance, the college friends decided to quit their jobs and start a company that could be both profitable and good for the planet. Stern grew up working on a garlic farm, so Smet said they wanted to focus on agriculture.

“We looked at a lot of different businesses, things like spirulina, or on-land-aquaculture, mushrooms, greenhouses, vertical farming,” Smet said. “And we thought that kelp was by far the most environmentally beneficial. And we thought, ‘Oh, there could really be a business here.’”

They settled on giant kelp because it’s one of the world’s fastest growing organisms, at up to two feet per day. That means their new company Pacific Kelp Co., can grow more biomass in a given area, making for a more efficient business model. They just got permitted to start a giant kelp farm in the waters off of Duke Island, and they plan to begin planting this summer.

Kelp farming is still a young industry in Alaska, but one that’s created a lot of excitement. Farmers throughout the state’s coastal communities can grow high quality kelp, a type of seaweed, but they’ve been hampered by a lack of local processing and insufficient demand for their products.

The Pacific Kelp founders think they can help address both of those issues. 

They’ve been refining giant kelp into a liquid extract that they think can have big implications for the terrestrial farming world. They just received a grant to work with two universities, studying the benefits their extract has on growing wine grapes and grass. If it’s proven to work as they hope, it could drive up demand for kelp throughout Alaska.

And Pacific Kelp Co. will soon have something else to help their industry neighbors: a processing facility. Back on dry land, Stern stood inside a warehouse just south of downtown Ketchikan.

“With the equipment we have today, we can do about 1,000 kilograms or 2,200 pounds of raw kelp per day,” Stern said, pointing to their shredder and other machinery.

The company is sharing the space with local dive fisherman, but say they have plenty of room to process kelp from other regional farms and their own. Alaska currently has very few kelp processors, which makes it difficult and expensive to get the cumbersome raw product to markets in the Lower 48. Stern said that’s an industry gap they’re trying to fill.

“We’ve had talks with kelp farmers up in Kodiak and Juneau, over in Prince of Wales,” Stern said. “So once we’re up and running, [we can] buy their product, process it for them, and distribute and sell it into markets that we have been spending the better part of the last two years trying to cultivate and build.”

Part of that market cultivation process is proving that their liquified kelp extract can be an effective biostimulant, a specialized type of fertilizer. Kyle Wickings is one of two researchers they’ve partnered with to conduct field trials to demonstrate the value of their product. He’s a Cornell biologist who studies grass (officially called “turfgrass”) and he thinks Pacific Kelp’s fertilizer could help make grass, or any number of other plants, more resistant to stressors like drought and pests. And as bans on certain insecticides go into effect, Wickings said this extract could help farmers replace them.

“When you’ve got the potential for a product like a seaweed extract to sort of up regulate those defenses and stress tolerance of the plant, that’s, I think, what drives a lot of the interest across the whole range of different agricultural sectors,” Wickings said.

The $500,000 research grant comes from the Southeast Conference, a regional economic development organization. The goal of the project is to strengthen Alaska’s mariculture industry while contributing to broader agricultural sustainability efforts. Stern hopes the research will stir up demand for kelp products by showing that they can save farmers money on things like irrigation and synthetic fertilizer.

“If every school in the country is spraying kelp on their turf grass, they’re using a lot less water and fertilizer, but they’re also using a lot more Alaskan kelp,” Stern said.

Pacific Kelp plans to get their extract certified as a basic fertilizer and onto shelves in the next few months. The research project over the next two years will help the company complete the much more rigorous process to register as a specialized biostimulant.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – An episode of “Molly of Denali” has won the PBS Kids program its first Emmy award.

The episode that won the prestigious award was co-written by Alaska Native language expert X‘unei Lance Twitchell. Twitchell was born in Skagway and raised in Anchorage, now a professor of Native languages at the University of Alaska Southeast.

“It feels real now,” Twitchell said, still glowing from the achievement.

“I guess for the first two or three days like I just kept revisiting the moment in my mind and saying, ‘Did that really happen?’” he said. “I’m so blessed. It’s the second time I’ve had a chance to go to the Emmys.”

He said that he and his team were ready in case they didn’t win, and were surprised when they did.

“In the back of my mind was this thought like this doesn’t happen for indigenous people,” he recalled. “We don’t win these types of awards.

“And so I went in and as we got closer and closer to them, calling our category, I was having this little conversation in my mind, which was I really want this for the native people, for native writers. For this particular show for native kids,” he added.

Twitchell remembers growing up and not having proper representation on television, especially in children’s programming.

“There was a documentary called ‘Real Injun,’” he referenced. “It points out that what you had was Bugs Bunny shooting Native Americans and singing a song about it.”

“And just to think like how that violence was normalized towards Native people and now we can say look at this, these brilliant kids who can… they can speak indigenous languages. They can solve problems and they’re fun funny and intelligent. And it’s just such a wonderful thing to be a part of,” he said.

But the road to the gold award wasn’t paved in gold. Twitchell recalled many tribulations along the way.

“I just remember going to high school in Anchorage and being advised on what I should be doing,” he said. “I feel like the advice I was given was to [not] do things that are difficult, and I felt kind of insulted by that, that I couldn’t do things that were.”

“I’ve had some writing teachers over the years who’ve been absolutely wonderful, but one of them, when I was in a writing class, he would take my writing and put it up in front of the class and, like, make fun of it. Wouldn’t tell anybody whose it was,” he said.

“He would just make fun of it and I thought, ‘What a terrible way to teach people.’ But the ones that I had who are really good, they would sort of get you to believe that you could do something that you thought was maybe impossible.”

The program that won the Emmy award from the National Academy of Television, Arts, and Science, featured Molly and her friends discussing Native mascots in sports. Twitchell said we’ve come a long way, but there are still conversations to be had with teams like the Atlanta Braves and Kansas City Chiefs encouraging fans to do the “tomahawk chop.”

“You don’t have to go back very far, you can just watch the replay of the Super Bowl or World Series a couple of years ago and just see whole stadiums of people making this very silly chant,” he explained.

“Things are getting better as far as Native Americans and mascots, but just the amount of misrepresentation. The stereotypes that are there, the very weird simplistic songs and dances and costumes that are created are damaging, and so to just sort of see that costuming of culture and to be able to address that through a preschool show and have these kids model conversations that I just wish adults would have on a more regular basis in a way that was less hostile and violent.”

“[I’m] also trying to have these conversations, conversations in ways that aren’t embarrassing to people or humiliating anybody. And just being kind and showing this other perspective.”

When accepting the Emmy, Twitchell said he spoke in his Native language of Tlingit. He honored the past, with a hope to inspire the future.

“The moment was overwhelming, but I said in our language, finally it has happened,” Twitchell recalled. “This is for the storytellers of ancient days. The ones of today, the ones of tomorrow.”

“And then gave a message which is for all the writers out there. All the Native writers, all the Native babies out there who want to become storytellers someday. If you ever wondered if you could tell your stories through film and television, then ending on the tagline for the show, which is ‘mahsi choo’, let’s go… thank you in Gwich’in.”

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The expected eruption of Mount Spurr — a volcano just 75 miles west of Alaska’s largest city — has prompted municipal officials to upgrade their activation status to level two Thursday.

The office of Anchorage Mayor Suzanne LaFrance put out a notice Thursday that the city’s Office of Emergency Management will be stepping up its activation status to level two out of five total.

It means the city’s eruption plan for Spurr will go from “normal operations” to “response incident monitoring,” according to the municipality’s description of all five levels. Level two means responding agencies could take “coordinated action.”

The Alaska Volcano Observatory said earlier this month that new magma had intruded into the Earth’s crust beneath Mount Spurr, which indicates an eruption is likely — but not certain — within the next few weeks or months.

The observatory said the most likely outcome is something similar to what occurred in 1953 and 1992.

The volcano’s aviation alert level was upgraded on Oct. 16, 2024, from “green” to “yellow” by the AVO.

LaFrance stated Thursday that the city is working to keep residents informed of any impending eruptions, which could be coming in weeks or months, according to the AVO.

“Stepping up our emergency operations one level is the appropriate move to help manage preparation and reduce community concern,” LaFrance said. “I encourage people to check in with family and be prepared if we do end up seeing some ashfall here in Anchorage.”

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