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Description
Seaweed forests are among one of the most productive habitats on earth, with a lot of associated benefits (e.g carbon and nutrient sequestration, increased biodiversity etc.), but have been decreasing at incredibly fast rates all across the world. Portugal is no exception and being Portugal the southern limit of cold-water species, it brought the necessity for the creation of SeaForester. Ultimately, we want to conserve and restore these habitats through research and sales of services to local coastal municipalities and companies.In order to achieve this, we’ve planned for the creation of an institution combining research, project management, financial advice and communication. The initiative SeaForester was initially created in 2018, but now with this fund we expect to draw on our experience of coordinating and participating in restoration projects in Portugal and elsewhere, in order to create new synergies, develop key materials and produce impactful communication strategies to support the launch of new restoration projects. Ultimately, and by restoring seaweed forests, we will be improving the health of all the surrounding ocean, creating positive effects on those directly and indirectly related to the sea. The workplan is divided into 4 main activities: Activity #1 – Organization set-up and project managementActivity #2 – Services for municipal and corporate projectsActivity #3 – Financing mechanismsActivity #4 – Communication
Summary of project results
SeaForester was born with the mission to bring more life back to the sea, after its founder saw that because of hisseaweed aquaculture facilities in Norway, marine life was changing for the better. Today our focus remains the sameand with the seaweed restoration projects we managed to initiate around the world, we are getting one step furtherto achieve our main goal.As the world is changing, and climate change is becoming a bigger influence on how the natural world behaves,SeaForester’s approach is a natural based solution that can help mitigate some of the effects of climate change. Byrestoring the marine vegetation of our coastlines, we will be contributing to cleaner water enhancing nutrientsequestration, we will be supporting fish stocks by enhancing biodiversity, and we will be fighting ocean acidificationby enhancing carbon sequestration.SeaForester represents an opportunity because it will be in a position to deliver knowledge, research and practicalexperience of seaweed restoration. SeaForester is already involved in several seaweed restoration projects, inPortugal and elsewhere, and wants to turn this knowledge into an advisory role to support and encourage theinvolvement of private companies and local authorities in marine ecosystem restoration.
In order to structure the company SeaForester, build a secure and sustainable business model and implement the somuch needed research to investigate innovative models for seaweed restoration, we built a project focused on 4 mainactivities. Those being: (1) setting up the company and personnel for project implementation, (2) establish SeaForesteras the leader in restoration implementation as a service provider, (3) developing and/or securing sustainable financingmechanisms for project implementation and (4) contributing to improve public’s perception on the benefits seaweedforests have.The innovation grant received allowed the hiring of key personnel to continue and improve the work started withCasulo. From the beginning, with just 3 employees, the grant then allowed 2 people in 2021 and more recently, in2024, 2 more. The people in question have responsibilities in project management, sales and marketing, projectdevelopment and technical operations.
Being the first in something brings some advantages but at the same time some difficulties. For SeaForester wasunclear, in the beginning how the business model could be sustainable for the long term. What started with smallresearch grants, funding small scall pilot tests, soon became a very successful company attracting private funds forseaweed restoration projects.A relevant part of our work was to search for potential funders, present SeaForester and our ideas, and then hopefullyget them on board to help us scale our operations in Portugal and overseas. Thanks to that work, we secured 7agreements with new partners and implemented 8 different restoration/feasibility projects, double of what wepromised as deliverables.Part of our sales and marketing simplistic strategy, was the production of different and attractive communicationmaterials for people to become familiar and aware of all the benefits these marine ecosystems have for theenvironment and society. Also, through conferences participation, SeaForester was able to spread the urgency toactively engage in seaweed restoration bringing several private companies to our doorstep.