Some of our team were super lucky to gather our seaweed broodstock and spend the day on and under the water in a magnificent vessel generously volunteer skippered by its owners courtesy of SeaKeepers.org.

The International SeaKeepers Society promotes oceanographic research, conservation, and education through direct involvement with the yachting and boating community in New Zealand and the Pacific through its South Pacific chapter. SeaKeepers enables the yachting community to take full advantage of their unique potential to advance marine sciences and raise awareness about global ocean issues.

Over the past two years, the South Pacific Chapter has conducted manta ray surveys in collaboration with esteemed organisations and vessels and expanded citizen science opportunities to vessels and partner marinas across the region. We were privileged to join them, as the ORA Reefs and Greenwave Aotearoa teams united to gather seaweed broodstock which will help drive kelp forest restoration and build an industry in regenerative ocean farming.

We have run a series of green gravel trials at our Greenwave Aotearoa Tauranga-based hatchery using cultures from our Hauraki Gulf broodstock. A big part of this work was to understand the conditions that support successful settlement, growth, and transition of these mini seaweed forests - from gametophyte to juvenile sporophyte - on the gravel.

These trials are one of the first steps toward long-term restoration solutions for degraded reefs in Aotearoa.

ORA Reefs is actively restoring biodiversity in impacted rocky reefs and soft bottom marine environments through supporting kina removal, reseeding kelp, investigating reintroducing crayfish, and using artificial reefs seeded with kelp, mussels and oysters to provide structure for marine life.