Stonington company helping build seaweed market

Suzie Flores of Stonington Kelp Company shows kelp product to CT Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz and Stonington First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough.

Apr 24, 2023 By Jason Vallee, Westerly Sun

STONINGTON — When Jay Douglas purchased the Mechanic Street Marina in Pawcatuck in 2016, his wife Suzie Flores said the couple was looking for a productive, innovative way to spend their winter months out on the water. The couple wanted an activity that could potentially help to improve waterways, provide a secondary income and encourage economic growth and healthier living.

Flores never anticipated that the desire for winter work would lead to her and Douglas to form the Stonington Kelp Company, a sugar kelp business that in the past few years has grown into the largest kelp harvester in Connecticut.

“This was something that seemed to check all the boxes,” she said Monday during a press conference outside the marina. “This was something we could do all winter, and the benefits it has for cooking and other things, it was a product we were completely sold on and believed in from the very beginning.”

Flores, Douglas and both state and local dignitaries, including Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, state Agriculture Commissioner Bryan P. Hurlburt and First Selectman Danielle Chesebrough gathered Monday at the Pawcatuck marina to promote kelp production and bolster the emerging sugar kelp industry.

The celebration was part of the third annual sugar kelp harvest celebration in southern New England, a 10-day program designed to mark the harvest at the end of April, promote partnerships with restaurants and raise awareness regarding the new and growing industry. “Kelp Week,” as the event has become known, will feature dishes with the signature ingredient and will be available through April 30 at more than 50 restaurants in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

In honor of the restaurant participation, Bysiewicz, Hurlburt and Chesebrough joined Flores and Executive Chef David Standridge of the Shipwright’s Daughter in Mystic, one of the 50 participating restaurants, for a customized meal prepared with kelp as the primary ingredient.

In a presentation to officials, Flores provided an inside look at how the kelp is produced and showed off a variety of products. Among the items available from the company are more classic options such as dried kelp, or custom creations including the Decimation hot sauce made with kelp — the sauce plays on the nickname for sugar kelp as “devil’s apron” — and the family-favorite Moromi Sugar Kelp Shoyu, a soy sauce-like condiment.

“You are evangelizing kelp, and you should be really proud of what you’ve built,” Bysiewicz told Flores. “The other thing that is cool here, it is an example of another woman working and doing something new within the state’s farming industry, and that is something worth supporting.”

It hasn’t been an easy transition for Flores, a former academic book publisher and marketing specialist who made a full-time move to running the kelp company when she and her family moved to Stonington and Douglas took over operations at the marina. The first problem Flores said she encountered was that the research on kelp was new and largely unknown, and there was simply no market to tap into.

“When we first began operations, there was nowhere to sell it,” Flores said. “We didn’t have a choice; we needed to build a market that started with a concept of harvesting to order. It has taken a few years, but we have made significant growth.”

Chesebrough said Monday that any organization that is providing jobs, cleaning waterways and providing taxes for the local economy should be considered an important one. She added that this is the latest in a long history of seaside success for those in Stonington.

“Stonington has a long-standing commercial fishing legacy and is now also home to the largest commercial kelp farm in the state,” she said. "(The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) has called seaweed farming ‘the fastest growing aqua-culture sector,’ which bodes well for local waterways. Kelp also cleans water, and absorbs carbon and agricultural runoff nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus."

Kelp needs no additional water, land, fertilizers or pesticides, Flores said. The Stonington Kelp Company’s farm is capable of producing as much as 68,000 pounds per year but Flores said there simply not enough of a market just yet, noting it currently produces about 6,000 pounds in a season.

The kelp is grown in controlled environments to assure cleanliness, officials said, and any products are tested to assure compliance with Food and Drug Administration and state standards. Kelp-growing season begins in October, and the last harvest and farm are pulled from the waters by Memorial Day each year.

Over the past few years, the Stonington Kelp Company has worked alongside the Yellow Farmhouse Education Center on North Main Street to promote awareness, and that has led to partnerships with schools across the region.

Eric Dawson, a farmer and education coordinator with the Yellow Farmhouse, said the Mystic Rotary Club has provided a grant for each of the past few years to allow for the purchase, distribution and education of students in 15 high school culinary classrooms in eastern Connecticut.

By partnering with retailers and producers like the Stonington Kelp Company, he said the community can foster sustainable, long-term practices that benefit everyone.

“Our mission is to create an interconnected community that can benefit everyone,” Dawson said. “We are all about educating people; ocean farming is a rapidly growing industry in Connecticut and it is important to share opportunities like this with the next generation.”

Bysiewicz and Hurlburt said that in the decade the state has permitted sugar-kelp farming, more licenses were issued in 2023 than ever before, with 10 businesses approved for harvesting kelp along Connecticut shorelines.

Hurlburt said it is time to use the state’s waterways to expand sustainable agricultural options available to local residents. He said there is still a lot of work to make the businesses viable long-term, but examples like the Stonington Kelp Company show the state is moving in the right direction.

“We have a tri-state waterway in Long Island Sound that we really need to start looking at more as a farm. It is an incredibly valuable agricultural resource and industries like this are on the forefront,” Hurlburt said.

For more information on Kelp Week, visit www.newenglandkelp.com.