An L-A College professor has won a $150,000 grant for seaweed research.
By Lindsay Tice
Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Ike Levine has an impossible dream: grow saltwater seaweed in freshwater tanks.

If successful, fish hatcheries could use nori seaweed, a natural water purifier, to reduce pollution without expensive machines. The plants themselves could be harvested and sold as a new cash crop. The sheet-like seaweed is used to make sushi, dog-food supplements and medical dye.

No one has ever succeeded in growing the seaweed in fresh water. But in a small lab at Lewiston-Auburn College, Levine is about a year away from making the impossible happen.

“We’re trying to trick this cell membrane into thinking that it’s in saltwater,” said Levine, an assistant science professor. “We’re getting pretty close.”

In Levine’s lab, rust-colored seaweed spores float in flasks filled with diluted saltwater. The containers stay in an environmental chamber that can control light, temperature and humidity.

For two and a half years, Levine and his research assistants have struggled to get the plants to grow without ocean water. They’ve recently found that adding calcium, magnesium and other vitamins and minerals common to saltwater – without adding the salt – allows the seaweed to thrive in fresh water.

This winter, Levine won a two-year, $150,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to further his research.

“Let’s just say it came at a really great time,” Levine said.

A scientist with a doctorate in physiological ecology, Levine came up with the idea for freshwater seaweed four years ago.

He’d spent a decade harvesting nori seaweed from the ocean and selling it. He sold the business to investors in 2000.

He was on vacation, watching a lightning storm over the Badlands with his family, when the notion of freshwater seaweed hit him.

“In the middle of that, I somehow just thought of it,” he said.

With his experience with nori and his interest in ecology, Levine knew freshwater seaweed would be the perfect resource for fish hatcheries and other farms struggling to keep their water clean. Since the seaweed helps break down fish waste and purify water, hatcheries could pump their dirty water into a seaweed tank, ending the pollution of area rivers and eliminating the need for expensive purification machines.

The farms could then harvest and sell the mature nori plants for a second profit.

At the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn College, Levine set to work. But with little money, he couldn’t afford much research help. He was turned down for most grants.

“We’d get comments like, ‘Well-written proposal, but we don’t think you can do it,'” he said.

A few small grants helped Levine pay for his research and hire three undergraduate assistants. The Maine Technology Institute gave him $8,750 in 2001 and another $10,000 in 2002. USM gave him $2,500 in 2003.

Levine and his research assistants spent nearly every day at the lab with the floating spores and the machines that controlled their environment. They needed to trick the seaweed into thinking it was in saltwater. After more than two years, Levine’s research looked promising.

In January, the USDA gave him $150,000 to continue. It’s the biggest grant Levine has received for the project. With it, he can hire more help.

He believes his seaweed could be growing in fresh water by next spring. But although his dream may soon become a reality, Levine looks forward to a more distant future.

Eventually, he hopes the plants will prove revolutionary for all farmers struggling to keep their water free of pollution.

“It’s environmentally responsible and it ends up in bigger profits,” he said. “What could be better than that?”

ltice@sunjournal.com

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