Abstract
Seaweed aquaculture could meet the “triple bottom line” of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. However, while seaweeds in nature are incredibly diverse, only eight species are responsible for >95% of production, leaving untapped potential. We use a trait-based framework to identify candidate seaweed species for commercial production. We apply a trait-based approach to characterize the traits of species already successfully aquacultured (identified from Food and Agriculture Organization production data) and compare them to a global species database of seaweeds with traits related to performance. We collected traits from the literature for the aquacultured species that were not already in the global dataset. The trait distributions of aquacultured and non-aquacultured species did not differ, underscoring the significant biological potential for expansion into production of novel seaweeds. We found five broad “types” of seaweeds farmed at scale and posit the trait combinations distinct to each group could facilitate selection of candidates for aquaculture production. Our approach and analyses indicate the current practices in seaweed aquaculture do not take full advantage of the huge diversity of seaweed in the ocean. Indeed, there is likely significant capacity to diversify production and unlock seaweed aquaculture potential to create a vibrant and sustainable industry.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to CF Campbell for your arrival and support through this passion project. No funding was received for this research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information (download PDF )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Fong, C.R., Fong, P. & Froehlich, H.E. Using a trait-based framework to characterize farmed seaweeds and guide selection of new candidates.
npj Ocean Sustain (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-026-00239-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44183-026-00239-5
Source: Ecology - nature.com
