What's an Abundant Potential Food Source That We Haven't Developed a Taste for Yet?
ImagineChina/CorbisAlgae on the beach at a resort in Qingdao, Shandong, China.
While the world's farmers labored to produce 819 million tons of corn in 2009, the world's rivers, lakes and seas brought forth 30 trillion tons of algae. The only reason the oceans aren't choked with the stuff is because so many living things other than humans willingly devour it. No one has figured out a profitable way to harvest naturally occurring microalgae, but roving aquafarmers could in theory one day reap the oxygen-depleting algae blooms that have created at least 400 oceanic dead zones worldwide, some greater in area than New Jersey. In the meantime, a few companies have begun trying to make food from commercially grown algae. (Algae as a source of biofuel has been a money-losing proposition so far.) Scientists at Solazyme Roquette Nutritionals have developed an algalin flour that could replace the oil and eggs in many snacks; Aurora Algae (formerly Aurora Biofuels) is constructing a 1,500-acre production facility in Australia to make an ingredient for patties and nuggets. Leslie van der Meulen, Aurora's vice president for business development, says its product will "rival any chickenless item on the market today."
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Fish, Shrimp, Oysters, etc., consume algae and have developed a means to 'harvest' [consume] algae.
Of course these mainly consume Diatom Algae and Green Algae and not Blue Green Algae.
