Seaforestation is a website helping educate the world on the benefits of seaweed afforestation and cultivation for our planet. The creator is Alexis Kahn.
In this edited conversation with Peter Green, Alexis outlined her experience building the site and her perspective on the seaweed industry.
What was your motivation for creating Seaforestation?
I was switching gears career wise. I have a long history in hospitality and wine education as a sommelier, teacher and I had my own wine bar. I sold the wine bar a few years ago, took a break, did some travelling, did some coral reef restoration, started a family and then decided that I wanted to get back to work.
I thought about winemaking for a little while but then I realised that the world needed more people to work on climate.
So, I started thinking about what avenues would be of interest to me. I've always been passionate about the ocean - I'm a dive master and one of the most fun jobs I ever had was doing coral reef restoration work in Thailand. So, I started looking at some possible avenues and solutions and seaweed kept coming up. As I was trying to educate myself about seaweed I noticed that there was no centralised location to aggregate the available information. That was the impetus for putting this website together.
What's been some of the biggest challenges you've encountered, building Seaforestation?
There's been a big learning curve on the technical aspect of building the site. Then there's the issue with getting through the noise to get to the useful information. Finding decent articles, videos or podcasts can be a challenge.
It takes time to find the standard that I want for the website. In order to get around this, just trying to break the seaweed down into bite-sized chunks is important. That way, if someone's only interested in one of those topics they don't have to scroll through a million articles to find what they're looking for.
What's your perspective on where the industry is going?
It's a really exciting time for seaweed. There's a lot of capital being invested in projects related to the industry. I've been particularly interested in the use of seaweed as a cattle feed additive to try to reduce methane. I was part of a Climate Sprint recently and our team were really impressed with all the potential benefits that come with growing seaweed and using it for cattle.
Interviewer: Peter Green