There was a brief time when Huna Hough thought growing up without WiFi in a water access-only South Island bay was lamentable.
Huna’s family live in the Marlborough Sounds in a historic homestead with a story to tell, where guests can arrive only by boat and are introduced to the animals including those that live under the sea.
“It's a very special place – especially in the Sounds itself. It's very peaceful. We grew up in a nice property, surrounded by native bush and with a beach, and we have lots of animals and horses. So I spent a lot of time outside.
“During high school, we had no wifi or cell phone reception so you were kind of forced to spend a lot of time outside, which for a teenage girl, sometimes you were like – ‘Oh, I just miss the internet’. But I think as you get older, you start to realise just how special that was.”
Huna’s dad is a diver as well, who got Huna and her siblings into diving from a young age. “We always had kayaks and little boats, and spent a lot of time snorkelling – with a lot of rays in that area. I developed a big love for stingrays through living there. It’s a very cool spot.”
Huna also developed a deep appreciation for seaweed. She now dedicates her days to growing native seaweed with Greenwave Aotearoa, a venture of EnviroStrat, which has a seaweed hatchery operation in Tauranga where Huna works.
“I've always loved seaweed, but I do think that it has made me realise that the early stages – like when in spores and the gametophytes – are so delicate and are so easy for things to go wrong, and it’s hard for them to compete for space and things.
“My favourite seaweed is the Lessonia, specifically from Marlborough, although maybe I’m a little biased. It's big, it's beautiful. It's got really cool colours on it, but I also really like the Gigartina from Marlborough as well. Big red blades – it’s got a really beautiful colour - and the spores that you can see in it as the little black dots look really cool.”
Surrounded by spools of twine where baby seaweed seedlings otherwise known as sporophytes are growing, Huna says she struggles to explain her job to flatmates but she can articulate why she believes there’s hope in what she’s doing.
“I tell them that I manage the hatchery and keep it nice and clean, do the water changes weekly and take care of the spools of seaweed, giving them fresh nutrients. We’ll cut a little snippet of twine out and look at it under a microscope to see whether they're growing, whether there's contamination that we can't see on there. And then we can also know whether we need to adjust the light levels. If they're growing too fast, we give them a bit of shade to slow them down – or vice versa.
“A lot of people get really excited – ‘Wow, you work with seaweed! and you must just spend all your time around this beautiful big seaweed’. But a lot of it is not yet visible to the naked eye.”
Huna’s learned a lot from colleague Peter Randrup, but because it’s a new industry that’s never been commercially tested or scaled in New Zealand before, there is a lot of trial and error. Some of the species grown have healthy tiny babies growing on them, Huna explains, while others struggle due to contamination of other species that outcompete the baby seaweed for space and nutrients.
Greenwave Aotearoa is making progress by trialling management methods. The seawater undergoes multiple stages of filtration followed by UV and it’s then cooled and stored under controlled conditions. The seaweed species Gigartina adheres well to the twine and the competing species can be partially removed with rinsing. While not fully resolved, the results are promising for growing to an outplantable stage.
“Fingers crossed, when they're outplanted in the open ocean where they’ll have more space – they'll take off a little bit on their own,” says Huna.
Through her work with seaweed, Huna sees her own backyard differently now. Holding up a piece of seaweed grown by Greenwave Aotearoa, she shares: “This seaweed comes from the Queen Charlotte Sounds, and my family are from the Pelorus Sounds – and part of the challenge is that Pelorus is really battling with impacts on our wildlife in general. There’s a lot of forestry around. The sedimentation is really bad, and it’s really changed in the last few years – plus it’s so warm in there that it is hard for seaweed to grow.
“I think working here has made me think about what can I do – like, if I'm going to move back home or if I ever settle back there – what are things that I can do to help that process along? Is there a way that we can start maybe restoring some of the better sites using stuff that’s grown in a hatchery rather than just leaving it be?
“I would say to young people worried about the state of the ocean and climate, don’t be too doom and gloom about it. I know it’s really hard, and I know it can be really sad and scary sometimes – but when you start to meet people that are working in this space, you realise just how many people actually care. And sometimes that is why people get a bit sad – they just don’t see the work that is quietly ticking away in the background by all the people that are really passionate and putting time and so much effort into it.
“So, things are happening. And if you want to - get involved, because it really helps with that sort of climate scare that a lot of us feel.”
There was a brief time when Huna Hough thought growing up without WiFi in a water access-only South Island bay was lamentable.
Huna’s family live in the Marlborough Sounds in a historic homestead with a story to tell, where guests can arrive only by boat and are introduced to the animals including those that live under the sea.
“It's a very special place – especially in the Sounds itself. It's very peaceful. We grew up in a nice property, surrounded by native bush and with a beach, and we have lots of animals and horses. So I spent a lot of time outside.
“During high school, we had no wifi or cell phone reception so you were kind of forced to spend a lot of time outside, which for a teenage girl, sometimes you were like – ‘Oh, I just miss the internet’. But I think as you get older, you start to realise just how special that was.”
Huna’s dad is a diver as well, who got Huna and her siblings into diving from a young age. “We always had kayaks and little boats, and spent a lot of time snorkelling – with a lot of rays in that area. I developed a big love for stingrays through living there. It’s a very cool spot.”
Huna also developed a deep appreciation for seaweed. She now dedicates her days to growing native seaweed with Greenwave Aotearoa, a venture of EnviroStrat, which has a seaweed hatchery operation in Tauranga where Huna works.
“I've always loved seaweed, but I do think that it has made me realise that the early stages – like when in spores and the gametophytes – are so delicate and are so easy for things to go wrong, and it’s hard for them to compete for space and things.
“My favourite seaweed is the Lessonia, specifically from Marlborough, although maybe I’m a little biased. It's big, it's beautiful. It's got really cool colours on it, but I also really like the Gigartina from Marlborough as well. Big red blades – it’s got a really beautiful colour - and the spores that you can see in it as the little black dots look really cool.”
Surrounded by spools of twine where baby seaweed seedlings otherwise known as sporophytes are growing, Huna says she struggles to explain her job to flatmates but she can articulate why she believes there’s hope in what she’s doing.
“I tell them that I manage the hatchery and keep it nice and clean, do the water changes weekly and take care of the spools of seaweed, giving them fresh nutrients. We’ll cut a little snippet of twine out and look at it under a microscope to see whether they're growing, whether there's contamination that we can't see on there. And then we can also know whether we need to adjust the light levels. If they're growing too fast, we give them a bit of shade to slow them down – or vice versa.
“A lot of people get really excited – ‘Wow, you work with seaweed! and you must just spend all your time around this beautiful big seaweed’. But a lot of it is not yet visible to the naked eye.”
Huna’s learned a lot from colleague Peter Randrup, but because it’s a new industry that’s never been commercially tested or scaled in New Zealand before, there is a lot of trial and error. Some of the species grown have healthy tiny babies growing on them, Huna explains, while others struggle due to contamination of other species that outcompete the baby seaweed for space and nutrients.
Greenwave Aotearoa is making progress by trialling management methods. The seawater undergoes multiple stages of filtration followed by UV and it’s then cooled and stored under controlled conditions. The seaweed species Gigartina adheres well to the twine and the competing species can be partially removed with rinsing. While not fully resolved, the results are promising for growing to an outplantable stage.
“Fingers crossed, when they're outplanted in the open ocean where they’ll have more space – they'll take off a little bit on their own,” says Huna.
Through her work with seaweed, Huna sees her own backyard differently now. Holding up a piece of seaweed grown by Greenwave Aotearoa, she shares: “This seaweed comes from the Queen Charlotte Sounds, and my family are from the Pelorus Sounds – and part of the challenge is that Pelorus is really battling with impacts on our wildlife in general. There’s a lot of forestry around. The sedimentation is really bad, and it’s really changed in the last few years – plus it’s so warm in there that it is hard for seaweed to grow.
“I think working here has made me think about what can I do – like, if I'm going to move back home or if I ever settle back there – what are things that I can do to help that process along? Is there a way that we can start maybe restoring some of the better sites using stuff that’s grown in a hatchery rather than just leaving it be?
“I would say to young people worried about the state of the ocean and climate, don’t be too doom and gloom about it. I know it’s really hard, and I know it can be really sad and scary sometimes – but when you start to meet people that are working in this space, you realise just how many people actually care. And sometimes that is why people get a bit sad – they just don’t see the work that is quietly ticking away in the background by all the people that are really passionate and putting time and so much effort into it.
“So, things are happening. And if you want to - get involved, because it really helps with that sort of climate scare that a lot of us feel.”
