Ocean innovation

This dish shows the three colours of Acadian Seaplants' Hana-nori product.

The ocean might be a playground to some, but it's also a hotbed of world-leading technological innovation for a group of business entrepreneurs and researchers in Nova Scotia.

The source of their creative output is not silicon chips, nanotechnologies or microelectronics. It starts with some of the oldest and simplest life forms to be found on the planet.

Local strains of seaweed are shaping global agricultural practices and advancing the cause of medical research.

A homegrown technology for fish oils turns the pungent by-product into an odourless, colourless additive for everything from milk and juice to baked beans and pasta.

And a rare peptide found in a native flatfish could possibly become the source of the world's next super-antibiotic.

Quote

'Atlantic Canada is developing a very rich and promising bioscience community committed to research and commercializing products.'
-Marli MacNeil, BioNova CEO

"Atlantic Canada is developing a very rich and promising bioscience community committed to research and commercializing products," said Marli MacNeil, the chief executive officer of BioNova, a life-sciences industry association based in Halifax.

"One of the key things driving this is an increased interest in healthy products and more novel approaches to preventing or dealing with illness."

Turning seaweed into things that feed

One of these innovators is Acadian Seaplants in Dartmouth, which gained global stature through its research and development with local seaweed varieties.

The company started 25 years ago shipping seaweed as a raw commodity. Today it has four divisions and more than 250 products that are exported to 70 countries.

What's innovative about seaweed, one might ask?

According to company CEO Jean-Paul Deveau, innovation is at the heart of everything Acadian Seaplants does — whether it's developing environmentally friendly fertilizers and animal-feed supplements for export around the world, or extracting pigments from seaweed to create unique multicoloured products for food-service operators in Japan.

Among other innovations, Acadian Seaplants has perfected the science of cultivating sea plants on land.

Its expansive biosystem in Charlesville covers an area the size of 20 football fields; Deveau says it is the largest single facility of its kind in the world.

Technology vanquishes fish oil's smell, taste

Dartmouth is also home to Ocean Nutrition Canada (ONC), which supplies refined, concentrated fish oils under the MEG-3 brand for the global supplements market.

An aerial photograph of Acadian Seaplants' Charlesville Cultivation and Food Processing facility.

This subsidiary of Clearwater Fine Foods turned a major corner three years ago when it patented a micro-encapsulation spraying process called Powder-loc. The process coats tiny particles of fish oil extracted from sardines and anchovies, creating a tasteless, odorless powder that is rich in omega-3 content.

Research suggests omega-3 fatty acids in a person's diet can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

"People have been trying to put fish oil in foods for a long time because of the lack of omega-3 in Western diets," said Laurie Covert, ONC's vice-president of marketing and communications.

"It never worked, largely because the food tastes fishy. This technology changed all that because it delivers the goodness of fish … without the fish."

ONC's innovation is already a global phenomenon. Tropicana, Danone, Tesco and Heinz are among the multinational brands using the ingredient in selected products.

And demand is growing so much that Ocean Nutrition Canada has built a new micro-encapsulation facility in Arcadia, Wis., and is planning another $24 million plant in Dartmouth.

The benefits of simple life forms

The beauty of tapping into marine life resources, industry players say, is the simplicity of the genetic makeup of much of the ocean's contents.

According to Deveau, since sea plants grow in environments full of trace elements, "they have an internal system that allows those elements to be passed on to whatever consumes it. That means we can take extracts from them to create [natural] compounds with beneficial properties."

Ed Cayer, the vice-president of Ocean Produce International in Shelburne, added: "People don't realize seaweed is one of the first living forms with multiple organs. Also, the closest thing to blood in veins is the composition of salt water."

OPI developed an amino acid protein extracted from a mutant strain of indigenous seaweed that is used in neurological research facilities around the world.

Similar simplicity applies to the anchovies and sardines harvested by Ocean Nutrition Canada.

"They're very low on the food chain and only eat algae. They also have a very short life cycle, which means they naturally have a low level of contaminants," Covert said.

"That means we can create products that offer significant health benefits."

Drawing on the ocean's genetic riches

Dr. Aleks Patrzykat, of the National Research Council Canada's Institute for Marine Biosciences in Halifax, said the ocean life also offers variety — a veritable buffet of genetic anomalies that could lead to groundbreaking medical research.

"The marine environment shows huge biodiversity," said Patrzykat, adding that as far as genetic materials go, "it's like opening another dimension."

The institute, under the leadership of senior researcher Dr. Sue Douglas, has become the world centre for antimicrobial research on flatfish, for example.

"Certain fish have ways to protect themselves from bacteria at the genetic level," Patrzykat explained.

"Our hope is that our research into these antimicrobial peptides will lead to a treatment that would be the last line of defence against superbugs that are resistant to antibiotics."

Whether it's developing the next generation antibiotics or rainbow-coloured seaweed for Japanese restaurateurs, Nova Scotia is becoming a hotbed for marine-related sciences.

There's no shortage to the innovation going on in the region — it's just a matter of looking below the surface.