Seaweed aquaculture offers many environmental and economic benefits, but warming ocean temperatures and the increasingly-contested availability of coastal spaces is making nearshore cultivation more challenging. Movement offshore will be needed to enable large-scale production and full realisation of potential benefits.
In Australia, the seaweed industry is small and underdeveloped, and commercial cultivation is rarely done offshore. Future industry value has been estimated at $1.5 billion GVP by 2040, but this growth potential is contingent on expansion offshore. Significant investment and research efforts are now being directed at facilitating industry movement into offshore production.
We aim to contribute to these research efforts by identifying possible offshore sites for Macrocystis pyrifera cultivation in southern Australia. M. pyrifera is moderately suitable for offshore cultivation, and its established market value and fast biomass production make it a standout among other seaweeds with commercial interest.
We have identified conditions that affect wild M. pyrifera distribution from a literature review. Using remote-sensing and other spatial datasets, we will derive variables or indicators/proxies that can represent these conditions in offshore locations. GIS modelling techniques will then be applied to synthesise these derived condition layers into current and future suitability maps of offshore locations.