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Environmental and ecological impacts[ edit]
Several environmental problems can result from seaweed farming. Sometimes seaweed farmers cut down mangroves to use as stakes for their ropes. This, however, negatively affects farming since it reduces the water quality and mangrove biodiversity due to depletion. Farmers may also sometimes remove eelgrass from their farming areas. This, however, is also discouraged, as it adversely affects water quality.

Seaweed farming helps to preserve coral reefs by increasing diversity where the algae and seaweed have been introduced, and it also provides an added niche for local species of fish and invertebrates. Farming may be beneficial by increasing the production of herbivorous fishes and shellfish in the area. Pollnac & et al 1997b reported an increase in Siginid population after the start of extensive farming of eucheuma seaweed in villages in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.

Seaweed culture can also be used to capture, absorb, and eventually incorporate excessive nutrients into living tissue. "Nutrient bioextraction" is the preferred term for bioremediation involving cultured plants and animals. Nutrient bioextraction (also called bioharvesting) is the practice of farming and harvesting shellfish and seaweed to remove nitrogen and other nutrients from natural water bodies. (See main article Nutrient pollution.)

Seaweed farming can be an actor in biological carbon sequestration.