Greenwave
Establishing a kelp seed bank and nursery in North America
Commercial
Southern New England
From 2022
What we are doing
GreenWave works to replicate and scale the regenerative ocean farming model and support a thriving and resilient seaweed industry, developing stable jobs while protecting the planet. This mission is in line with Hortimare’s goals of sustainable impact.
The kelp cultivation in the USA is mostly driven by culturing spools from spores, extracted from fertile material in the wild. As ocean conditions are changing in a variety of areas, the quantity and quality of the needed fertile seaweed material is beginning to decline. This shorter, or higher risk, culturing season before outplanting resulted in a significant drop in farming yields, increased costs on diving as well as more stress on the wild seaweed beds.
With Hortimare’s experience in gametophyte propagation and nursery construction, it became a very interesting opportunity to collaborate, strengthening both parties.
The project began with a re-construction of the existing nursery at GreenWave, exchanging joint learnings from Europe and the USA, into a newer more efficient model. On top of this, the water system was re-designed and built up from the beginning in a way that facilitates on site training and replicability in other locations. Clean, reliable supply of seawater is paramount for any hatchery and nursery operation, therefore was given a lot of research and development in its installation.
Parallel to this, work on developing the seed bank began. It started with development of a temperature-controlled room where cultures will be upscaled for production. Hortimare sent employees to assist in the transfer of knowledge and protocol implementation, and to be on the ground for the first extractions. This gave the project the best chance of success, as starting with clean material with a good foundation is paramount.
As the months went on the cultures were beginning to scale nicely and the first quality checks were performed. Coming into the production season it was very important to validate the gametophyte technology, having it perform as Hortimare would expect in Europe, but in the USA with locally developed stock cultures. A scaled gametophyte production, into sporophytes on spools, had yet to take place from a controlled stock of gametophytes in this way in the USA. This was a very important proof of concept for the entire region, and the first season the results were very good, resulting in clean, uniform sporophytes across the spools.
The work continued into the second year, where the seed bank continued to be expanded, and the production in tanks increased to approximately 14.5 km (48 000 feet) of production line. GreenWave successfully reared and out planted 100 % of their spools they began to cultivate, strengthening their brand as a reliable, and high-quality seed supplier for the east coast of America. The improved seed resulted in fantastic yields of up to 30 kg/m (20 pounds / foot), due to the control over the seed stock and out planting times. In the third year of the partnership GreenWave’s nursery has again successfully produced 100 % of spools initiated.
Together, the partnership highlighted the power of collaboration and the impact this can have for the industry. We are proud collaborators and partners, and we look forward to continuing to strengthen this relationship and have the impact we both strive for.
How GreenWave talks about our partnership in their newsletters:
Hortimare provided hands-on technical assistance and strategic guidance that was instrumental in allowing us to break our dependence on wild seed, resulting in control over the timing and quality of seed production. Farmers we supply are seeing immediate results with a doubling of yields vs spore seeding.