Steven Hermans

Macro Oceans, the California-based seaweed biotechnology startup, announced it has completed the first phase of its pilot facility in Sacramento.

It’s the end of 2022, the second year I have been tracking the seaweed industry. Here, I try to visualise data I found in the Phyconomy database, and I look back at some of the trends I noticed in 2022.

On November 21, 2022, Urchinomics, the kelp restoration and sea urchin aquaculture venture, secured the world ́s first voluntary blue carbon credit for kelp restoration from their operations in Japan.

At this year’s Monaco Ocean Week, Oceans 2050 presented their research on the potential for kelp forests and seaweed farms to sequester carbon.

Impact funds are raising more sorely needed blue finance. Can seaweed benefit?

Aromatics are a key component in many everyday applications. Biorizon’s ZCORE research project makes aromatics from seaweed residues to create better, more sustainable coatings.

SOS Carbon developed a Sargassum harvesting and sinking solution that is low cost and easy to implement. Designed to create buy-in from fishermen, this allows for easy scalability.

You gotta start somewhere There is a lot of excitement around the potential of the seaweed industry outside of Asia. Phyconomy was started at the end of 2020 to track this evolution. In this first …

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Emerald Tutu combines flood protection with a waterfront that creates space for plants, animals and citizens alike.

Seastem is a startup building a bio-inspired seaweed dryer called Drylgae. I spoke to CEO and co-founder Mathias Baumann.

ReShore is reinventing breakwaters, by incorporating aquaculture to make coastal protection more biodiverse and economically attractive.

The 40-month H2020 IMPAQT project brought together a consortium of 21 companies and research institutes to drive the adoption of IMTA in Europe. As the project wrapped up last week, I spoke to coordinator Frank Kane of Ireland’s Marine Institute about IMPAQT’s accomplishments and the future of IMTA in Europe.

Seaweeds are garnering more interest, and that shows in the number of algae start-ups entering this fall’s start-up incubators and accelerators.

CH4 Global, Greener Grazing and Sea Forest all recently announced they are moving from research scale to production scale. It’s the start of a new stage in the race to reduce livestock’s methane emissions with seaweed supplements.

Former CEO of Catalina Sea Ranch Phil Cruver is developing a submersible cage system to take tropical seaweed farming offshore and into a new era. In addition to providing higher yields, the cages should also protect from predators, storms and ice-ice disease.

A new report by the Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation and McKinley Group assesses the potential and bottlenecks for Alaska’s seaweed sector.