The Open Ecologies of Kelp: The Ocean Food and Energy Farm Project, 1974 to 1977

• In Event: Controlling Plants, Growing Environments - I

Abstract

This paper discusses the Ocean Food and Energy Farm Project (OFEF), managed by nuclear physicist, Howard A. Wilcox, at the U. S. Naval Undersea Center in San Diego, California from 1974 to 1977. The OFEF entered the historical archive as a seven-volume report that documented a pilot farm study implemented in 1974 off the shores of San Clemente Island, along with background biological research and systems analysis intended to assess the scalability of the project. At the core of OFEF was giant kelp, _Macrocystis pyrifera_, a macroalgae that, as Wilcox imagined them, would serve as feedstock for biofuels production; supply the raw materials to replace petroleum in manufacturing processes; become feed for livestock, and fertilizer for terrestrial and aquatic agriculture, and serve as habitat for wild and domesticated finfish and shellfish fisheries. While American environmental thought had predominantly turned toward closed-systems ecological thinking (popularized in the pages of the _Whole Earth Catalog_ and with the writing of Barry Commoner), the OFEF sought to enroll kelp in massive open-ocean agricultural endeavors, in part, for its capacity to afford a surplus of habitat for other species. The aquatic ecology of kelp, as described by the OFEF, was understood as an open system. This paper emphasizes that the alternative and significant history of open-systems ecology helps us contextualize current environmental appeals to build and dwell in post-anthropocentric habitats. The paper interrogates the complexity of entanglements that frame the organism-environment relationship and thus seeks to further the conversation between STS and the Environmental Humanities.

Author

• David Stentiford, Stanford University