San Diego Firm Earns Millions From Kelp Trade

While Mendocino County’s seaweed farmers wrung $73,000 in sales from the ocean in 1989, San Diego-based Kelco was harvesting millions of dollars in giant kelp.

Kelco, a division of pharmaceuticals giant Merck & Co., is the largest company of its kind in the world. It has three 140- to 180-foot ships, kelp cutters that mow the tops off the fastest-growing and tallest plants in the ocean.

This seaweed, however, isn’t harvested to be eaten. It is used in 70 different products, including textiles, cosmetics, dental impression compounds and wound packings for hospitals. It also makes for longer-lasting foam in beer.

The biggest application of the algin--the gelatinous substance extracted from kelp--is in the textile industry’s printing paste. The algin thickens the paste and provides sharp and well-defined prints.

It is also used to change flow characteristics in such foods as salad dressing, to thicken or make them smoother.

Kelco does not reveal annual production or sales figures, but one official said the largest annual harvest the 60-year-old company ever made was 170,000 tons of seaweed in the 1970s off the California coast.

Its ships trim the surface canopy of giant kelp, usually within a mile of shore up and down the coast, from the Mexican border to Monterey, where giant forests of the huge plant exist. The kelp forests are leased from the state of California.