SeaForester, a Portugal and Norway-based company that helps replant and restore native kelp forests has raised $1.9 million. The company will use the funds to support the expansion of its restoration efforts and the deployment of enabling technologies.
Kelp forests, the company said, are the ocean’s equivalent of tropical rainforests—which provide habitat for marine life, enhance fisheries, absorb excess nutrients and permanently sequester carbon. SeaForest seeds small stones with seaweed spores, growing them on land in specialized nurseries and deploying them in the sea. The seeded stones can be scattered from a boat without the need for divers or technical equipment, providing a low-cost and scalable seaforestation solution.
The company has also begun testing new techniques designed to
dramatically reduce the cost of restoring the ocean’s lost forests, such as the ROOTS (Restoration Oriented Ocean Technology System) kelp nursery platform and KelpOS, a digital monitoring and analytics system integrating satellite, ROV, and eDNA data to track ecosystem recovery in real time. SeaForest plans to announce
upcoming strategic collaborations with global players in genetic R&D and
marine restoration monitoring.
“This investment…allows us to accelerate our work in the sea, improve our techniques and expand partnerships with industries that depend on a healthy ocean,” said Pål Bakken, Founder and CEO of SeaForester. “Together, we will bring back the ‘forgotten forest’ and create more life on the ‘blue front yards’ around the world.”
The funding came from Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation, and World Wildlife Foundation.
Building on successful projects in Portugal where the company said it holds Europe’s largest restoration permit, SeaForester is also accelerating restoration activities in Norway, piloting large-scale restoration across urchin barrens in the North and lost seaweed forests in the South.
“The planet has been losing its kelp forests at a truly alarming pace, which means we’re
losing the habitat critical for healthy fisheries, and one of the planet’s largest carbon
sinks,” says Mark Schrope, Director of Schmidt Marine Technology Partners. “We’ve got to
reverse this trend and Seaforester’s technology is one of the best examples we’ve seen of
how innovation and science can work together to restore nature at scale.”
