New Seaweed Crop Successfully Deployed

It’s that time of year again - kelp seeding for next year’s crop. This past week, we deployed both Sugar kelp and Winged kelp at our seafarm at Skarveskjæret. Not only was the weather collaborating, but we had a great team of TANGO staff, visiting trainees and partners who made it all happen.

The seaweed growing season is reversed compared to agricultural crops, i.e. we ‘seed’ (not really seeds, but seaweed-propagules) in the fall and harvest in spring. Growth is limited by light at this time of year when days get noticeably shorter, but the early development period is important for the juveniles to get properly attached on our cultivation ropes and start increasing in number of cells, even below the radar of what we can see with the naked eye.

Whereas the seeding methods and procedures for deployment – we use both direct and twine seeding – are being gradually more developed each year, the details of what makes the right high-quality seedling mix at our location remain a work in progress. We are collaborating with our propagation partners – Hortimare and Seaweed Solutions (SES) – on the developments to answer this question.

In practice, our deployment team consisted of experienced TANGO staff, our four visiting interns, Hortimare and SES team members and Job Schipper from Seawiser overseeing the entire deployment operations.

The fully stocked farm - Nov. 2022

Last but not least, the de-briefing and sharing a successful seeding week is what puts the icing on the cake…also here, of course, seaweed is involved!