A commercial fisherman who admitted to once pillaging the oceans has won the 2015 Fuller Challenge with a system that only grows restorative crops, such as seaweed and shellfish

A commercial fisherman who admitted to once pillaging the oceans has won the 2015 Fuller Challenge, one of the most important prizes in sustainability.

Bren Smith, executive director of nonprofit GreenWave, took home $100,000 for his 3D ocean farming model, designed to address overfishing, mitigate climate change, restore marine ecosystems and provide jobs for fishermen.

Announced today by the Buckminster Fuller Institute, the prize is reserved for designers, scientists and students developing whole systems solutions to humanity’s most pressing problems.

“We have a very rigorous selection process,” said Elizabeth Thompson, executive director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute, which was founded in 1983 by the daughter and grandson of visionary architect and systems theorist “Bucky” Fuller.

This year, however, the winner doesn’t come from an environmental or scientific background. A high school dropout, Smith went to work various commercial fishing jobs, from Bristol Bay, Alaska, to Lynn, Massachusetts.

By the time he was 19, he had already begun to realize the need to address overfishing, but it would be several years before he developed a model that would not have a detrimental environmental impact.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bren Smith pulls up a catch on Thimble Island, Connecticut Photograph: Matthew Novak

“GreenWave is a real example of what Fuller meant when he talked about what one person can do on behalf of humanity,” Thompson said. “We’re looking for ideas that are replicable and verifiable. You have to prove that what you’re proposing is achievable”.

Smith, based in New Haven, Connecticut, has now perfected a vertical ocean farming system that only grows restorative crops, such as seaweed and shellfish, to produce food, fertilizer, animal feed, cosmetics and biofuel.

Each species is carefully selected to address a certain environmental challenge, such as fixing excess nitrogen, in the case of oysters, or seaweed that soaks up carbon dioxide. Requiring zero input, such as fertilizer, these farms are designed to have a negative carbon footprint.

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They are also working to train a new generation of farmers whose production model will have a restorative environmental impact. GreenWave has created an open source model that anyone in the world is free to replicate.

GreenWave is in the process of developing eight farms from southern new England to New York. The group also has a hatchery and is currently building a food truck, which Smith says will be the ambassador of a new cuisine inspired by these farms.

They are also developing what they’re calling a seafood hub in Fair Haven, Connecticut, to package and distribute crops from new and existing farms.

Thompson said GreenWave hits all of the Institute’s core criteria. She called it an incredible model of how we can respond to the die-off of commercial fisheries, a solution for the livelihood of fishermen and their families, while growing nutritious food at scale.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bren Smith, executive director of GreenWave, harvests seaweed from his boat Mookie III off the Thimble Islands in Long Island Sound. Photograph: Ron Gatreau

She added: “Humanity-centered design solutions are successful if they inspire spontaneous cooperation, convey a sense of urgency, and are implemented without ecological harm or the disadvantage of others.”

GreenWave was selected from a pool of 400 entries representing work being done in 136 countries. Smith said he intends to use the $100,000 to shift from applied concept to actual replication.

Prior to starting GreenWave, Smith worked a variety of commercial fishing jobs “all over the globe”, including long lining for McDonald’s in the Bering Sea and “sliming” in Alaska canneries. In his work, he admits “ripping up entire ecosystems”, fishing illegally in protected water and throwing “thousands of pounds of dead by-catch back into the sea”.

He then turned to aquaculture farming in Canada as a more sustainable occupation. “Aquaculture was supposed to be the great answer to overfishing, ” Smith said during a TEDx Talk in Bermuda. “It turned out to be just as destructive, using new technologies, chocking fish full of medicine, antibiotics, polluting local waterways – just for a terrible tasting, low-quality food.”

He told the Guardian it wasn’t until hurricanes Irene and Sandy that he really started to think of new ways to address some of the problems we face, including overfishing and climate change, growing new sources of fuel and capturing carbon and nitrogen.

“When two hurricanes in a row wiped out my oysters and dragged my gear out to sea, it was clear to me this is the new normal,” he said. “So, I really had to adapt.”

Each of Smith’s model farms includes hurricane-proof anchors on the edges. Within its boundaries, seaweed, mussels and scallops hang from floating ropes. Oysters grow in cages below the ropes, and cages of clams hang beneath them. GreenWave farms also harvest salt.

Kelp soaks up five times as much carbon as land-based plants while oysters filter 50 gallons of water a day, pulling out nitrogen, according to Smith. He also said GreenWave is capable of producing 30 times more biofuel than soybeans and five times more biofuel than corn – without polluting the food chain.

“I think it allows us to take the crisis of climate change and flip it into an opportunity to really innovate in sustainable ways,” he said. “Anybody with 20 acres, a boat and $30,000 can start a farm and be up and running within a year.”

GreenWave provides new farmers with grants, low-cost seed, free outdoor gear from Patagonia and training for two years. And they guarantee to purchase 80% of crops over five years at triple the market rate. The crops are then sold to restaurants around the country.

“It’s a stunning, relatively simple, fully-integrated strategy,” Thompson said. “Implemented at scale, it will have an enormous impact.”



