Why Seaweed?
The benefits of seaweed
Seaweed cultivation has a net positive environmental impact and provides
opportunities to replace emissions-intensive products with low-carbon food,
animal feed, bioplastics and biofuels.
Enhancing ocean ecosystems and environmental resilience
- temporary, localised refuge against increasing temperatures;
- reversal of acidification and deoxygenation;
- coastal protection and erosion prevention by attenuating wave energy from storms;
- bioremediation and water quality improvement through the removal of excess nutrients; and
- biodiversity enhancement through habitat provision.
Enhancing food security and building resilient systems
Although the ocean spans 71% of the Earth’s surface, it currently provides only 2% of the global food supply in terms of calories. This gap highlights significant potential for growth and expansion in ocean-based food production.
Seaweed offers both direct and indirect contributions to food security. As a nutrient-rich food, it can play a valuable role in human diets. Indirectly, seaweed supports agriculture by serving as a supplement in animal and aquaculture feed, and as a natural bio-stimulant for crops.
Incorporating seaweed into the food system not only enhances nutritional diversity but also helps build resilience against climate-related challenges such as drought. Furthermore, seaweed farms can function as nurseries for forage fisheries, supporting the recovery of fish populations and contributing to sustainable seafood supplies.
Providing a nature-based carbon capture and storage solution
Seaweed for carbon capture and storage has many environmental co-benefits,
including reversing ocean acidification and reversing eutrophication by removing
nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
Decarbonising the economy
Seaweed can help decarbonise the economy by replacing emissions-intensive products
with low-carbon alternatives, including:
Food
Animal feed
Bioplastics
Fertilisers
Fabrics
Biofuels
Harvesting and processing seaweed also enables potential land-based forms of sequestration, for example by serving as a soil additive.
Seaweed can also be processed into land-based carbon dioxide removal and storage products, such as biochar and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, which remove CO2 long term from the carbon cycle.