Sea Rice

Culturing of sea grasses is even more of a new frontier than working to protect coral reefs.  Sea grasses are not as exotic as coral reefs, but they are a comparable engine of fish habitat, carbon drawdown, and shoreline protection.  Eelgrass grows in large areas of temperate to polar waters. Certain sea grasses, such as eelgrass (Zostera marina) produce a cereal grain often called “sea rice.”  This grain has significantly more protein than rice as well as vitamin C and some of those oceanic omega fatty acids. [1]  Sea rice has been cultured by the Seri people around the Sea of Cortez in Mexico since before the Spanish conquest.

Sea rice produces only half the weight of grain as conventional rice does, and there are no machine production implements as there are for rice.  However, this is because sea rice is an old-but-new crop.  Rice, maize, barley, and all the other commercially grown cereals were little more than grasses eight thousand years ago.  There is great potential for breeding more productive sea rice and developing implements to harvest the grain as well as using some of the green stalk material as forage for livestock.   Commercial development of sea rice is definitely worth a try.


[1] “Why 'Rice' from the Ocean Could Be a Superfood of the Future,” CNN.Com, Oct. 29, 2021.  https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/10/29/sea-rice-cadiz-c2e-spc-hnk.cnn/video/playlists/top-news-videos/ (accessed Oct. 30, 2021)

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