For Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean, the Ocean Green project is an opportunity to help solve a problem seen in waters around the world, with sea urchin proliferation decimating kelp forests.
Having seen how Ava Ocean’s gentle scallop technology could re-open a fishery in the Barents Sea that had been shut for three decades, Anastassiou was confident it could be adapted to other sea life.

“I come from a research and conservation background and spent many years doing coral restoration and sea grass monitoring in the Caribbean, where I got really into the potential of kelp – especially when I moved back to Europe,” she explains. “Then, when I started with Ava Ocean, we began looking at the potential of not just scallops, but also marine resources lower down the seafood chain.”


Reading about the ‘urgent’ urchin problem in Norway – where some 80% of kelp forests have given way to urchin barrens – Anastassiou felt confident the firm could help. The problem however, was that while there is a market for scallops, the general response to the idea of harvesting urchins was ‘who in their right mind is going to pay us to do this?’


As she dived further into the world of kelp and urchins, Anastassiou says she came to understand that urchins today have no real value. What they needed was a product. But to invest in developing a product, you need to be able to harvest a good supply of urchins. So who goes first? It was a catch-22.

“We realised that we have to do it at the same time,” she explains. That was the beginning of the Ocean Green project, where a consortium of partners brings together industry minds, researchers, individuals that have been at the forefront of the urchin problem for decades.


As the project lead, Ava Ocean is key to getting enough urchins out of the water so that the other partners can do their parts in product development or marketing. As well as project coordination and management (work package one), Ava Ocean is the lead on work package two: Novel sea-urchin harvest technology. Having looked at numerous restoration attempts, Anastassiou says “the problem isn’t understanding what happens when urchins are removed: You remove urchins, kelp comes back.


“The issue is finding a large-scale technical solution that can go in shallow waters, that can handle tides and large changes in weather, that can go on uneven, large rocky areas, on bedrock, on sand. You need to be able to handle more than one type of substrate.” At the same time, this technology must be gentle enough and bring minimal disruption.


“It’s not just conservationists and researchers coming to the table,” she continues, pointing out for example that Ava Ocean’s engineer is a diver who comes from the fracking industry. The chicken-and-egg, ‘who goes first’ problem meant Ocean Green needed minds from outside the box – features Anastassiou says makes the project unique – and more likely to succeed.


Today, as Ava Ocean prepares its first pilot harvesters, Anastassiou is working on attracting new sources of funding for Ocean Green, which received 47 million NOK from the Norwegian government’s Green Platform to run for three years. She feels that regulation is going to galvanise businesses to get involved.


 came into play this year and that is a pretty big game changer,’ she says. ‘We’re going to see a lot of interest and we’re going to see a lot more funding become available – and it always comes down to funding.”


The flip side is that regulation around conservation is also set to pose challenges. “If an urchin barren is inside a marine conservation area, what does that mean for potential restoration efforts,” she wonders. “We’re talking about restoration by starting a new fishery. That’s not been done before.”


Ava Ocean, which is leading the project, is responsible for developing technology to gently but efficiently harvest urchins; 

 are fronting the research and development of urchin-derived products; Hofseth Biocare will be responsible for the marketing- efforts of those products. Wandering Owl contribute expertise to meet the social impacts elements of Ocean Green.


We’re talking about restoration by starting a new fishery: The large-scale ambitions of Ava Ocean

Meet the Ocean Green partners: Ava Ocean

Hartvig Christie has been in the urchin-management business for a long time, getting to work on his first kelp-restoration project back in 1988. He has since been involved in projects that support

 predation or that use quicklime to kill the creatures

 that are decimating northern Norway’s kelp forests.

Now, Christie, a marine biologist, is part of the NIVA team that makes up part of the Ocean Green project, bringing with him decades of urchin-kelp experience. And after all these years, the goal – and the challenges – remain the same. "The major task is to remove the sea urchins and help the kelp forest coming back," says Christie. "For our ocean, it's important to develop a tool or a method for removing the urchins – so that's the first challenge right now."


The loss of Amazon rainforests under water

Research that Christie worked on, published in 2021, put the realities of kelp-forest loss – and the potential held in their restoration – into a stark light, likening the loss of some 8,400 km2 of Norwegian kelp forests to Amazon deforestation, even though the two issues are worlds apart in terms of global attention.

"Norwegian kelp forests are important carbon sinks and nutrient filters, as well as focal points for high biodiversity and abundances of commercial fish species, generating an estimated €16.7 million per km2 per year," the researchers wrote. "In comparison, boreal forests are valued at about €0.24 million per km2, which makes kelp forests 70 times more valuable than their terrestrial counterparts."

They estimate that restoring the 5,000 km2 area ‘still dominated’ by urchin barrens would provide an extra €83.6 billion per year – a value they put at three times as high as all of Norway’s terrestrial forests combined.

"There is no doubt that if Norway lost all its trees today, there would be a public outcry over their disappearance and calls for immediate restoration actions; a perception that must be adopted for kelp forest ecosystems to firmly establish their conservation and restoration as an integral part on political agendas," wrote the researchers.


As part of the Ocean Green project, Christie and his colleagues at NIVA are responsible for work package three: the environmental impact assessment. This involves assessing not just the effectiveness of the tools developed by Ava Ocean in removing urchins but also their potential impact on non-target species and the surrounding habitat.

NIVA is currently working to identify grounds for urchin removal and will also be involved in monitoring progress as the project moves through urchin collection and into kelp restoration – something Christie explains often happens faster than you might expect.

"We have been very surprised about the recovery of the kelp because it's so efficient – even across really long distances." Christie points to examples in both open and more sheltered water where, if you’ve removed urchins sufficiently, researchers have found not only kelp spreading from further afield on the currents but also more kelp plants growing than would be usual. "Normally, in the kelp forest, you have about 10 adult kelp plants per square meter. But [we found one restored area] that had these very tiny juveniles and there were more than 400 per square meter."


Finding solutions for a worldwide problem

The urchin-kelp dilemma is one seen across the world as overfishing and climate change lead to decreases in natural urchin predators, allowing the invertebrates to proliferate, eating their way through essential underwater forests. The result is urchin barrens where there should be kelp.

In Norway, Christie points out that the "Norwegian coastline is two and a half times the equator: lots of islands, a lot of fjords and cold water." These characteristics create their own challenges when it comes to NIVA’s job identifying areas for Ocean Green to work on. Climate change and warming seas further complicate the picture, making it harder to predict what things will look like in the future. Christie uses the brown crab as an example. "The increase in sea temperature has created a northwards extension of brown crab," he notes, with the result that, "in some parts of the southernmost areas where we had these sea-urchin barrens, urchins have been partly removed through crab prevention. Sea urchins are a cold-water species and there has also been some impact on their reproduction," he adds. These ‘no action’ areas have resulted in the return of kelp, explains Christie, though the scale of the problem in Norwegian waters means projects like Ocean Green remain essential to kelp restoration.


These various issues – climate change, species creep, urchin management across smooth bedrock versus ‘stony bottoms’ that offer a multitude of urchin hiding places – offer up more questions than answers at the moment.

Christie talks about the scale of the issue too, noting the popularity of discussing these things in terms of football pitches. "Our calculation is more than 700,000 football fields of grazed areas," he says. Which is why a new, large-scale approach to restorative harvesting is so essential. The challenge, is to be ‘efficient’ enough for these large areas.

"This project has what you call good intentions," says Christie. "You start on the easy parts, then you can move to the more challenging tasks."

Ava Ocean, which is leading the project, is responsible for developing technology to gently but efficiently harvest urchins; 

 are fronting the research and development of urchin-derived products; Hofseth Biocare will be responsible for the marketing- efforts of those products. Wandering Owl contribute expertise to meet the social impacts elements of Ocean Green.



Lots of islands, a lot of fjords and cold water: Finding the right spot for restoration with NIVA

Meet the Ocean Green partners: NIVA 

By her own admission, Giovanna Ottaviani Aalmo is a person that sees things with a different eye. 

She has the type of eye that can connect a small dog-food production facility in Greenland making use of by-catch to a restaurant in Sicily where a fisherman and chef rediscovered an old family recipe that took a very cheap, almost unwanted catch and returned it to the delicacy it once was – and to the Ocean Green restorative-harvesting project.

Aalmo is a research scientist in the department of food production and society economics at NIBIO – one of Norway’s largest research facilities – with lead responsibilities for two of the Ocean Green work packages: WP4, which focuses on sea urchin valorisation and circular innovation and WP6, where the focus is on the socioeconomic impacts analysis of the main value-chains. This is Aalmo’s sweet spot.

"The objective of the Ocean Green project is to showcase the technical innovation of Ava Ocean in quickly the problem of having too many sea urchins, with the consequence that the kelp forests will be restored. What NIBIO needs to do is to look into the potential of those sea urchins that are going to be extracted."

Aalmo’s colleagues at the research centre are exploring a number of possibilities, including fertiliser – she notes that urchin-fertiliser has already been proven on basil; now they’re trying it out with strawberries. Then there is the possibility of higher-value products, made by extracting specific enzymes for example. For Aalmo however, the focus is very much on the chain of stakeholders involved – a reach that goes far beyond the consortium and its core goals.

Her role involves everything from focusing in on the areas where the urchin harvest will take place in order to facilitate the uptake of this raw material, to exploring what skill sets are available today – and where there are gaps – to best take advantage of the job-creation possibilities of opening a new fishery and resulting products. She looks at what has been done before, what has worked, what can be built upon. Aalmo brings in a policy view too: "I look at the current policy environment, at governance, to see how this is driving – or hindering – innovations in terms of product development."

She also explores where indigenous knowledge fits into all this – which is where the conversation goes from Norway to Greenland, to Sicily as Aalmo cites examples of regained knowledge coming together with social innovation to benefit communities.

"I'm dealing with social innovation," she states. "Social innovation is going to provide input to the business models and the governance and policy analysis, because what we want is to create a new policy."

Aalmo points out that her skill of ‘seeing things differently’ – and looking in places the traditional scientists working on product creation don’t look – provides a new perspective to those working to turn urchins into viable commercial products. The two perspectives serve the purpose of taking the possibilities further.

This is very much the Ocean Green approach. As crucial as the core urchin-kelp challenge is, the project is not seeking to solve only a single problem but to bring together people with different viewpoints to create a circular economy, to launch a new fishery that can bring economic diversification to coastal communities in Northern Norway, to deliver social benefits that goes far beyond the biodiversity boost and carbon sequestration that kelp restoration brings.

 is responsible for two of seven work packages and, alongside 

, is fronting the research and development of urchin-derived products. 

 will be responsible for the marketing efforts of those products.  Wandering Owl contribute expertise to meet the social impacts elements of Ocean Green, while 

 leads the project as a whole, adapting its specialised non-invasive seabed-harvesting technology to urchin catch.

Traditional and indigenous knowledge can also be used: NIBIO on the value of social innovation

Meet the Ocean Green partners: NIBIO  

"We want to make sure that the concept of restoring kelp beds on a large scale can be a self-perpetuating process," says Paul Renaud, a marine biologist and ecosystem expert serving as research and development manager for climate and ecosystems at Akvaplan-niva. "And that costs money".

As the lead on work package five, Akvaplan-niva is tasked with creating a viable financial and ecological model that supports the long-term financing, monitoring and sustainability of sea-urchin removal and kelp restoration projects.

"We want to point to the value of the project: the tangible market value of the sea urchins and the kelp but also the jobs that the small and medium-sized companies who maybe take advantage of this bring as well – from tourism to pharmaceuticals or chemicals that they can extract from these bioactive chemicals," he explains.

There is potential in both sea urchins and kelp within food production. Urchins contain enzymes that carry value. There is the biodiversity and ecosystem services delivered through restoration. There is "the recreational and cultural value of having the kelp beds that have been here for hundreds and hundreds of years, but which in the past 50 years or so have disappeared because of the spread of sea urchins – which in turn is likely linked to overfishing of sea-urchin predators, as well as perhaps the warming of the ocean," adds Renaud.

All these elements and more must be factored into any value assessment. "To actually try to get a composite value of kelp-bed restoration from all its different aspects," is the first step, quickly followed by finding those looking to pay for restoration to continue.

This is particularly appealing "as a mitigation tool for habitat destruction that might occur somewhere else," explains Renaud. "This is done all over the world. When someone wants to build a marina in some place and has to dredge that seagrass bed, they have to plant seagrass or mangroves somewhere else. If Ocean Green can be part of that mitigation process, the money coming in from those carbon credits would pay for future rounds of kelp restoration."

, published in 2023, found that 78% of companies have already implemented some type of carbon-credit purchase programme, with Nasdaq advising companies that their net-zero ambitions would be impossible without carbon-dioxide removal credits. It puts a $2 bn value on the voluntary carbon market, noting that the compliance carbon market value is close to $270 bn.

For Renaud and Akvaplan-niva, one current challenge is simply pulling together all the elements in the urchin-kelp value chain, work that includes an array of ecosystems, businesses and social elements, with input from another Ocean Green partner, NIBIO. "We're working together to split up different elements of the value chain," explains Renaud, pointing to the need to get out and talk to individuals, to companies about where they see value from the project as well. "We’re trying to say, for example, if we restore 20% of the possible kelp-bed area, it could lead to many new jobs in North Norway. But we need to talk to industry as well. We need to ask, If we restore this much kelp bed, what would do for your company?"

All these elements – a boost to business, diversification opportunities for these coastal economies, an attractive and realistic prospect for blue carbon – depend completely on the one thing Renaud says sets Ocean Green apart from others that have targeted the urchin-kelp problem before now: scale.

"This is the potentially large-scale restoration of kelp beds. If the harvesting works as well as we hope it does, it can also be applied to different kinds of habitats," Renaud says, adding that Akvaplan-niva is also linking the Ocean Green possibilities with some of its other work around reestablishing natural predators in the ecosystem, "so we don’t have to keep going back with boats and harvesters".

The goal is not just self-perpetuating finance, but self-perpetuating restoration.

"We want kelp restoration to be a self-perpetuating process": Akvaplan-niva on the possibilities of blue carbon and more

Meet the Ocean Green partners: Akvaplan-niva

“We geared up, squeezing into freediving wetsuits, and then we jumped in into the four-degree water,” says Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, Sustainability Manager at Ava Ocean, which is leading the multi-partner Ocean Green project around Tromsø.


Guided by Delphin Ruche from Wild Lab Projects, Anastassiou was in the water with the Ava Ocean technical development team led by Bjørn Roppen and engineer Terje Stokkavåg, to see not only the urchin barrens that Ocean Green is seeking to drive out, but also the creeping success of existing kelp restoration efforts.


Norway has seen some 80% of its kelp forests disappear over the last half century – a problem replicated around the world as these essential habitats are lost to changes in ocean environments. Around Tromsø, an explosion of native sea urchins that eat the kelp has created the ‘urchin barrens’ that Ocean Green is seeking to restore.

“On one side of the pier, there’s just all these urchins,” explains Anastassiou. “Then we swim around the corner and it’s almost completely restored. It was really beautiful, really colourful.” This restoration has been done by hand, taking the not-for-profit organization Wild Lab Projects many weeks and many volunteers to clear this one small area.

Wild Lab projects is part of the Ocean Green team and brings to the mix a focus on citizen science. Anastassiou and the team got to experience firsthand just how hard it is to stem the spread of these prolific sea urchins that are responsible for the widespread decimation of kelp forests around northern Norway.

“We were given hammers, and Delphin said, Have at it! Try to kill a few,” says Anastassiou. “You see how hard it is to remove these urchins – I was lucky to do maybe three or four in one breath. Meanwhile, I was thinking about how many thousands there were just around the jetty.”


In recognition of not just the need to restore the kelp forests but also the economic potential of the harvested urchins, the Ocean Green project won 47 million NOK in Green Platform funding from the Norwegian government last year. Now in the early stages, the project is set to run for at least three years.
Anastassiou explains the next steps.


“This trip highlighted how a one-size fits all approach won’t work,” she says. “When you look out at a fjord it’s hard to appreciate just how varied the seabed is. Being able to come up with a solution that can work across large, flat areas as well as small, dense, rocky areas is going to be a challenge. We also need a solution that can handle all the elements: we're on the Norwegian coast where you've got proper, natural elements that you're fighting against.”


This is also about balance. “These urchins are not alien and we need to harvest them without damaging anything else,” continues Anastassiou. “These are fragile ecosystems: you don’t want something too industrial but you need to be effective too. There are a lot of things at play.”


This is where the Ava Ocean technology comes in. The lead partner on the project made headlines when its patented, gentle harvesting solution saw it successfully petition to have the Barents Sea scallop fishery reopened after 30 years. That technology is now being adapted to harvest urchins instead – and Anastassiou reiterates the need for multiple solutions.


“Not only are we making technology for large-scale restoration, we are also designing something that locals, that citizen scientists, can use,” she explains. “We want something handheld but that is more effective than freediving with a hammer.”


Ava Ocean’s engineers get familiar with the urchin problem and challenge ahead during trip to Tromsø.

Ocean Green project kicks off below the surface in Tromsø

The project aims to develop a sustainable value chain through restorative harvesting, developing novel products of the harvested sea urchins which pose a serious threat to coastal ecosystems in Norway and many other locations worldwide.


Building upon Ava Ocean's revolutionary seabed harvesting gear, already successfully employed in Arctic scallop fishing in the Barents Sea and recognized as the only one of its kind globally, the patented technology will now be adapted for effective yet gentle harvesting of sea urchins.

Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, Sustainability Manager at Ava Ocean, states, "Through the Ocean Green project, we intend to showcase how our innovative seabed harvesting technology can play a crucial role in the restoration of kelp forests. By employing our unique harvesting system, we can address the challenges posed by invasive sea urchins and explore new avenues for utilizing these resources sustainably."


Green Platform to drive green transition in Norwegian industry


The Green Platform, supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Fisheries and jointly administered by the Norwegian Research Council, Innovation Norway, and Siva, has allocated a total of NOK 573 million in this year's call for projects aimed at driving green transition initiatives.


Minister of Trade, Industry, and Fisheries Jan Christian Vestre emphasizes the importance of the Green Platform's support in advancing sustainable practices, stating, "Green Platform's goal is to accelerate green transition in business. The substantial support we provide to these impactful projects is a vital contribution to the government's objectives for green transition and economic growth."


Ocean Green Consortium: A Collaborative Effort for Sustainable Impact


Ava Ocean leads the Ocean Green project consortium, which includes key partners such as Wild Lab Projects, NIBIO, NIVA, Akvaplan Niva, Hofseth Biocare, Across Nature and Wandering Owl. Together, they represent a strategic collaboration between industry and research environments, working toward the ambitious goals of the project.


"We are thrilled that the Green Platform has entrusted us and our esteemed partners with the responsibility to embark on this exciting journey. The Ocean Green project potential extends beyond Norway's borders, offering positive impacts, and aims to derive economic value from sea urchins that pose a significant threat to coastal ecosystems," comments Anastassiou.


Restorative Harvesting: Addressing Challenges and Creating Opportunities


The three-year project, starting early 2024, focuses on addressing the challenges posed by extensive sea urchin populations in the Tromsø area. The development of specialized harvesters for sea urchins, based on Ava Ocean's patented technology, will be a key aspect of the initiative.


Anastassiou explains, "The lack of effective and gentle harvesting systems has been a challenge. With millions of these sea urchins present, including the very small ones, almost all need to be harvested to provide the necessary foundation for kelp forests to recover."


Beyond simply removing sea urchins, the Ocean Green project aims to create commercially valuable products from these otherwise overlooked creatures. Anastassiou adds, "We aim not only to efficiently remove sea urchins but also to develop products from them that can be traded, establishing a sustainable, circular value chain."


With effective control over these often called "zombie" sea urchins, the project envisions the restoration of kelp forests along the coast, acting as vital nurseries for juvenile fish and other seafood, carbon storage, nitrogen recycling, and erosion protection.


In addition to its environmental objectives, the Ocean Green project strives to create awareness and engagement within the local community, involving businesses, schools, and tourism in Tromsø. Wild Lab Projects, based in Tromsø, will play a crucial role in this novel aspect of the initiative.


Delphin Ruché, leader of Wild Lab Projects, emphasizes, "We aim to ensure that people enjoying the Northern Norwegian coast, whether as visitors or residents, can actively participate in the project and gain insights into the importance of these often overlooked natural areas for biodiversity and marine life."


The Ocean Green project, led by Ava Ocean, secures NOK 47 million from the Norwegian government Green Platform grant to eliminate sea urchin deserts and rejuvenate kelp forests along the Norwegian coast.

News

Meet the Ocean Green partners: Ava Ocean

Meet the Ocean Green partners: NIVA

Meet the Ocean Green partners: NIBIO

Meet the Ocean Green partners: Akvaplan-niva

Ocean Green project kicks off below the surface in Tromsø

Ava Ocean receives 47 million to tackle urchin barrens and restore kelp forests in Northern Norway