Kelp news just gets better

Jay OwenNature/Biomimicry, Halophytes

 

 

Last you heard from us, we had recently arrived in Australia and we’re still getting our footing. As some of you know, the housing market here is a bit constrained right now and we now have a home for another 6 months.  With that out of the way, and with a ridiculous amount of work, things are growing by leaps and bounds at the Climate Foundation.  Awards, patent applications, innovations, movies, books, volunteers, fundraisers, and even a wedding are all happening! In addition, we took time out to participate in the Australasian permaculture conference that featured all sorts of wonderful speakers – including  David Holmgren, who is the co-founder of the permaculture movement. As you can see, we are literally taking a leap of faith with David, AND we are really enjoying Australia!

So let’s dive in and let me tell you all about it.

 

Good News

 

REALLY GOOD NEWS – After much trial and error, We’ve figured out improvements that further increase THE PRODUCTION of seaweed and CUT energy consumption for deep water irrigation, which will be a huge boon to subtropical and tropical island populations.

PATENT APPLICATIONS – More good news!  You know how we have been telling people for about a decade that seaweed can be a long term carbon sink? We now have a patent pending for measuring and quantifying how much carbon has been sunk.

DOUBLE YOUR DONATION!We’ve had some fabulous individuals, companies and foundations who have pledged to match YOUR DONATION dollar for dollar- basically – every dollar that you give is matched. Dollar for dollar. So your $15 donation turns into a $30! Your $100 donation turns into $200! Your $10,000 donation turns into $20,000! The donors will match up to $125,000 – which is great, as our goal is  $250,000 for 2021. Wanna help us get there and help the planet? Donate!

Have you ever noticed Dr Bronner’s logo? It is of two hands wrapped around the earth. We contacted Dr Bronners about their holistic logo and this is what they said: All-One means “ that all of us, no matter race, creed, religion, gender, or nationality, share a common humanity and there is more that unites us than divides us, and that we must look out for each other and the planet.”
They are one of the few companies that work at taking care of the planet and have been doing so since the 1940s.

Dr Bronner’s is among the organizations who have contributed to our matching pledge. So go out and buy Dr Bronners – they put their money where our planet is.

 

Australian News

 

We love the Great Barrier Reef – and Hatch is contributing substantially to the design and creation of a 100m2 platform that could grow seaweed and help cool the Great Barrier Reef during those destructive mega-hot days. Fortunately, it’s great that with the deployment of the 100m3 platform, we’ll be able to assess the benefits to the reef by growing seaweed. So we think it’s pretty cool that while we save the reef, we are helping the planet’s key ecosystems and a world heritage site!

 

GRANTS What a relief and blessing to have some wonderful grants show up. We have dedicated our lives to work on saving our beloved ocean and planet, and receiving funding helps with the responsibility of all those that work with us. The blessing is that the grantors believe in what we are doing. One of the grants is to grow kelp in Australia – and then sink it. The point of this award is to develop research and technology on the potential of sinking seaweed as a carbon offset and to research seaweed methodologies for the sequestration of deepwater seaweed carbon.

 

 

Queensland’s Morag Gamble’s prime interest is Permaculture – so when she found out that we excel in Marine Permaculture, well, this interview had to happen. You can find Morag online in her podcast HERE

 

 

 

The Bayside Action Climate Crisis Action Group in Melbourne hosted a webinar in order to learn about how Marine Permaculture (and the other solutions that we’ve created) could just possibly save our well-loved planet.  You can listen to it  HERE:

 

 

Philippines News

 

ONE HOUR INTERNATIONAL FEATURE DOCUMENTARY: A while back we were contacted by an international production company who use their talents to help the planet. This resulted in a TV docu-series titled “Race to Feed the World”. They held interviews in the Philippines and interviewed our teammates. Look for episode two. You get to find out what we are doing and why we are so passionate about our work.

Chat with the Director, Olive Faure

Olive, how many other films have you directed? I’m a very young director! I’ve directed short films for BBC World News as well as the United Nations. Last year I directed a 1-hour documentary about rising sea levels in Asia as part of a series called The Longest Day. It recently won a Silver Medal at the World Media Festival under the category Documentaries: Climate. I worked as an Assistant Producer on the award-winning feature-length documentary The Great Green Wall about desertification in the (African) Sahel.

What motivated you to do this one? After directing a film about people living on the frontlines of climate change, I realised that most of the struggles people face on a daily basis are about FOOD. The disruption caused by COVID-19 also made me realise that food supply chains were very vulnerable. After a bit of research, I was totally inspired by the amount of ambitious, creative, and brilliant ideas that people had to feed the world in the future. I wanted to showcase them all!

How long have you wanted to direct? Since I graduated! I realised there’s no better way to get people thinking about climate change and the environment than with moving and awe-inspiring documentaries with human stories.

 


 

Philippines Progress

  • Our ingenious guys needed a dock for our self-built skiff  – so they built a floating dock using barrels and plywood. Who needs to buy retail when you have a smart crew like this one?

 

 

 

 

 

  • Next, we needed an offshore platform replete with high-tech thingies that measure, float, has blinky lights, keeps boats at bay and is all-around useful – so they built one. Then they launched it, and hooked it up to one of our sites.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • In addition, we went about implementing a new test that measured the difference in growth based on deepwater irrigation techniques and controls on the local seaweed. No surprise – and sadly – the ocean is now so warm that the local seaweed became pale and died. However, the cooler upwelled water thrived. It grew 3 to 6% each DAY.
    In these examples dark means higher phytonutrients, higher antioxidants and higher omega-3 fatty acids; pigment is good when it comes to life and food!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Hatch and the Filippino team are designing several 100 square meter platforms for Australia and the Philippines. This step will help us scale to increasingly larger arrays to distribute to locations around the world.
  • Two years ago the Climate Foundation initiated a coastal clean-up where we collected 5 tons of plastic nets and talked about the adverse effects of using plastic. Recently the local legislator of Bein Unido, town of Bohol, passed an ordinance (sponsored by councillor Alex Mabalatan) to ban the use of plastic as seaweed farming material. These pictures were taken in Hingotanan island three weeks ago where they collected 20 tons of plastic. This happened – thanks to their ordinance – which was in support of our mission.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wonderful news: Our Team member Gorio and the new Mrs Fatima Pepito decided to tie the knot!  We added to the merrymaking by donating a pig for the celebration dinner. Lots of laughter, fun and joy permeated the festivities. We wish them much happiness.

 

 

The World

 

Brian gave a talk to the EU Commission  – which resulted in CF contributing to the development of a seaweed carbon statement being convened by UN Global Compact to clearly communicate the macroalgae blue carbon opportunity to policymakers and the public.

SO many things are coming together – citizens, volunteers and governments from around the world are working with us to help save our oceans, ourselves and the planet!

In addition, we have several Master and PhD students working with us from countries from Australia to Norway and around the world.