Now, Rissa CS teamed up with local architects and Tromsø kommune to use the guano from kittiwakes and the shells of urchins as feed for local wildflower projects.


This is all part of Rissa CS’s plan to shift perceptions of these animals. Kittiwakes are often criticised for nesting in urban areas, while sea urchins – left to proliferate after their natural predators were overfished – are often blamed for devastating kelp forests.


The regeneration of northern Norway’s kelp forests is the ultimate goal of the Ocean Green project, which is working to restore the natural balance beneath the water through a radical reduction in urchin numbers. A byproduct of this goal is, of course, a multitude of urchins.


Ocean Green partners are exploring a number of ways in which harvested urchins can be put to use – and the partnership between Rissa CS and ViNN – Vejetasjon i Nord-Norge – a research and development project exploring the use of local, wild plants in urban areas is a perfect match.

While Ocean Green works to develop its large-scale harvester, Ruché and a huge team of volunteers have removed more than 70,000 urchins by hand, with impressive results in kelp restoration. At the same time, Rissa CS leads another group of volunteers (The Kittiwalkers) to monitor Tromsø’s kittiwake hotels – artificial nesting structures designed to support the endangered black-legged kittiwake while reducing conflict with local residents. Sea urchins and seabirds’ guano are rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and calcium that plants need to grow.


When Ruché met landscape architect Mari Anneline Aston Bergset through colleagues involved in the kittiwake project, their overlap was obvious.
‘We realised that we had research interests,’ Bergset says. ‘Since we were working with plants, both guano and sea urchins could be interesting.’
Their initial conversations grew into a practical experiment in one of Tromsø’s central parks.


‘We established a series of planting plots,’ explains Ruché. ‘One receives sea urchins as a soil amendment, another receives kittiwake guano, a third combines both materials, while a fourth serves as a control. Nearby, another planting site sits directly beneath the kittiwake hotels, allowing birds to fertilise the soil naturally over time.’


The experiment explores a simple but important question: can locally sourced sea urchins and kittiwake guano replace imported fertilisers while helping plants grow healthier and more resilient? And, at the same time, can using these local resources contribute to nature conservation? Guano is exceptionally rich in nitrogen and phosphorus but is also acidic. Sea urchin shells contain high levels of calcium, which researchers believe may help buffer that acidity while making the nutrients more available to plants.

In the far north of Norway, Bergset highlights a unique challenge in growing everything from ornamental plants to food – the very short growing season.
The Arctic north has months of darkness, but it also has the midnight sun. ‘The result is a very short window for growth,’ she explains, adding that ‘that window is 24/7’.


What this means is that preparing soil well at the start of this very active growing season is essential. ‘For these short months, the continuous daylight of the Arctic summer allows plants to grow around the clock. If the soil contains the right balance of nutrients from the outset, newly established plants may develop more quickly before becoming largely self-sustaining,’ says Bergset.

Changing perceptions, right on the high street

This collaboration between Rissa CS and Bergset’s isn’t just about finding new ways to feed soil but part of a wider project exploring new approaches to urban planting. Bergset talks of the traditional approach: where neatness is emphasized and the focus is often on imported ornamental species, grown using manufactured fertilisers, irrigation systems and continual maintenance.
Working with ecologists, Bergset and her team are exploring whether native vegetation, supported by locally available nutrients, could reduce both environmental impact and long-term costs – ultimately delivering healthier, better integrated ecosystems.


Like the kittiwakes or the sea urchins though, it seems local plants have something of a negative image. Bergset explains how the city planting project attracted criticism almost immediately.


‘The day after it was planted, there was a lady in the paper saying how upsetting it was to see all of these weeds in our main street,’ she recalls. ‘Even though we have signs explaining that the planting is part of a research project, many people only saw untidiness.


‘I definitely think that there’s a lot of outreach and communication needed to help people understanding why we’re doing this,’ Bergset continues. ‘That includes discussing and developing aesthetics and an understanding of – or appreciation of – wild plants in urban spaces.’
The planting trials are still in their early stages and it will take time before the data shows whether sea urchins and kittiwake guano offer measurable benefits for urban planting.


But the collaboration – and how visible it is to local people – serves another purpose: that conservation is not only about protecting nature but about changing how people see it.


‘As with local plants and birds, which are, by their nature more visible, it is really important that people better understand the reasons for kelp loss in northern Norway,’ stresses Ruché. ‘The green sea urchins itself is not the problem – and we are not trying to eradicate this native species. What we are trying to do at Rissa Citizen Science and through the Ocean Green project is to reduce numbers to allow a more natural balance that in turn allows kelp forests to regrow. The proliferation of sea urchins and the resulting urchin barrens are the result of historic overfishing of urchin predators, probably combined with other factors such as climate change.


‘We’ve seen through hand removal just how effective urchin reduction is in regenerative restoration. What we also need here is for these waters to be protected. We have to stop fishing urchin predators if we are going to have anything like a sustainable solution.’



In Tromsø, innovation isn't confined to laboratories. It can be found beneath the waves where kelp forests have been replaced by urchin barrens and on the city’s on rooftops where kittiwakes nest. Delphin Ruché, founder of Rissa Citizen Science – a key member of the Ocean Green consortium – has a soft spot for each of these often misunderstood species.

From sea urchins to city parks: how zero-waste initiative is bringing new life to gardens

‘Sea urchins are bizarre animals – and they really are a bit of a mystery,’ says Johan Johansen, one of the lead researchers at Ocean Green partner NIBIO, who is working on quite literally unravelling the secrets of these spiky creatures.


Talking about his first interactions with urchins as a child, he recalls finding them picked clean by seagulls in the summers. ‘If you were very lucky, you could find one with a small hole, and then you could actually keep it. That was a thing of beauty.’


Fast forward to today and Johansen and the NIBIO team have been working on finding ways to use the urchins that will be harvested though the Ocean Green project, which has the ultimate goal of reducing urchin density to levels compatible with the return of kelp to northern Norwegian waters.

While the urchins are a native – and needed – species, the over fishing of urchin predators in recent decades has resulted in an overpopulation of the creates, with the result that estimates put kelp forest loss in the region as high as 80% over 50 years.


So, as Ocean Green develops its system to remove large quantities of urchins from so-called urchin barrens, NIBIO is working out what to do with them – including exploring their use as a biostimulant in food production.
Johansen says the urchins have proved surprising from the get go.


‘They have some really cool stuff going on, that we still don’t fully understand,’ he says. ‘At the same time, much of what we thought would work well based on previous experiences proved to be less effective than expected,’ he continues. ‘That meant retracing some steps and, in some areas, starting from fresh.’
The sheer strength, responsiveness and adaptability of Norway’s green sea urchins were all surprising to Johansen.


‘Urchins use hydrostatic pressure to sort of push out an arm and attach to something,’ he explains. ‘I thought that mechanism would be ruined if the shell broke, but that is not the case. They seem to be programmed to go around and nibble at whatever they come across – which might well include a neighbour. It doesn’t matter, they just nibble away. So you get urchins with a hole in the shell. These damaged urchins can climb the walls of the aquarium just as well as any other. That was a surprise to me.’


Then there is their strength – and the fact they make choices around how well they need to be attached. ‘We learned that they can adapt their attachment. If you are poking around at them, they’ll assume you’re a predator and do everything they can to grip on – it’s as if they have glued themselves to the substrate.’


In their study environment, where urchins have access to the glass aquariums that Johansen describes as ‘a perfect surface for sucking onto,’ he says their power ‘would be equivalent of lifting several kilos of weight’.

As well as studying how urchins work from the outside – in order to be better removed from the substrate – the NIBIO team is looking at what can be made from a harvested urchin with the goal of establishing a zero-waste system.


‘As well as exploring biostimulants derived from urchins, our immediate thoughts went to egg-laying hens, because acquiring enough calcium to lay all the eggs that they’re producing is a challenge,’ says Johansen. ‘We know that egg-laying hens have a problem with fragile bones that become further depleted the more they lay. We think that feed using calcium-rich urchin shells could make a difference here.’


He also points to potential in aquaculture – already a huge industry in Norway and another area where new approaches to feed are urgently needed. Research has pointed to feed production accounting for as much as 57% of total greenhouse gas emissions in aquaculture. Using urchins that already need to be harvested to make way for the return of kelp could also help bring in more nutrients into the value chain.


‘I’ve done experiments demonstrating that the micronutrients – the minerals that are supplied in fish feed – are often more efficient when they come from an organic component. I would expect that to also be the case for minerals from sea urchins.’


And still, Johansen talks of yet more mystery and magic in the urchin world.
‘We reached out to another group – not part of this project – to tap into their knowledge. They have a camera to record fluorescence from marine organisms and saw that one sea urchin started emitting this light. After it dimmed, the next one started.


‘We don’t know what that is but it is another example of the mystery of these creatures. You uncover something and it leads you to the next question – they are so interesting and it is very easy to be tempted to just keep on that path of discovery.’

However interesting – and beautiful – Johansen finds northern Norway’s sea urchins, this is still all about kelp restoration. To make that goal sustainable, he stresses how important it is protect the areas where restoration is happening.


‘When you reach a tipping point, the ocean is less forgiving than if you went out and cut down a forest. These kelp forests are not as resilient, so we need to make sure that we close off these areas. We cannot allow these areas to be fished,’ he says. ‘We need to make sure that we have the top predators there to keep that balance.’



Johan Johansen is head of research for the division of food production and society, and the department of biomarine resource valorisation at Ocean Green partner NIBIO

Meet the researchers unlocking the mysteries of sea urchins

I am 35 years old and originally from Belarus, a landlocked country. My day job is running our mobile app, Seabook, which I co-founded with my husband. He handles the development and technical side, while I am in charge of all the content – both inside the app and across our social media platforms.

How did the ocean become a passion for you?

Growing up in Belarus, the ocean felt like a different planet. To me, bodies of water were just places to swim or sunbathe. I only saw the sea during childhood health programmes in Ukraine on the Black Sea (after the Chernobyl disaster, children from my region were sent there to recover).

I remember collecting pretty seashells, but I honestly had no idea they were actually homes for living creatures! I never even thought about putting my head underwater.

Everything changed when I was 24. My husband and I went on vacation to Cyprus, saw a dive centre and decided to try a discovery dive just out of curiosity. The marine life there was quite scarce, but we saw a lionfish and it blew my mind. We realised there was a whole hidden world down there. We wanted to feel confident in this new environment, so we decided to get certified. Since Belarus only has lakes, and they are cold and murky, we went to Thailand, where we trained all the way up to rescue diver level.

When did you begin posting to social media and why does this medium work for you? Which posts have resonated most with your followers?

I started my Instagram simply to share whatever we filmed on our dives. In the beginning I loved everything equally: every fish and every reef felt like a discovery worth posting. I’d also repost footage from other underwater photographers, with notes about what the creature was, partly to learn for myself and partly to show others.

That reposting is actually what changed everything. Through other people’s footage I discovered the incredible animals living around the Philippines – and that’s what made us go there. After diving the Indo-Pacific, our whole perspective shifted: we stopped looking for big fish and fell for the ‘macro’ world of nudibranchs, cephalopods and tiny critters. 

One night, we saw a creature we couldn’t identify using the books on our boat (later we found out it wasn’t even a nudibranch, but a mushroom coral with its tentacles out). That’s when the idea for Seabook was born. We just wanted a tool to identify what we were seeing by its features. Since then, it has grown into something much bigger. Divers can log their dives and sync them straight from a dive computer. But it isn’t only for divers: snorkelers, tide poolers, anyone who spots something in the water can log the sighting and identify it through the database or with AI.

Social media works for me because it’s so visual, and because it genuinely connects people. It’s how I found my own way to these creatures. Interestingly, my most popular videos are about nudibranchs. People absolutely love them because they look like real-life Pokemon. The comment section is always full of people saying ‘I had absolutely no idea creatures like this existed!’

What do you get out of social media in this way?

For us, social media is a powerful way to build a community and promote our app organically, which is crucial for a small family project. It’s also a way to stay connected to the ocean. Due to life changes, we had to relocate from Belarus to Poland, and we haven’t been able to dive for almost three years now. We are currently ‘divers without diving’, focusing entirely on building the app. To keep my social media alive, I now buy high-quality stock footage, research the animals and edit videos about things that fascinate me. It keeps my own passion alive while growing our audience.

What has been your most exciting underwater encounter so far?

It was definitely watching a pair of flamboyant cuttlefish during their mating season in the Indo-Pacific. I got to see them walking along the seabed, hunting by shooting out their tentacles and communicating with each other. The male was following the female and each were constantly changing colours, sending mesmerising waves of colour across their bodies. It was absolutely spellbinding.

What animal or plant would you most like to see and why?

The way I plan my trips is heavily driven by social media: I’ll see a video of a fascinating creature, check the geotag and then start researching the entire area. I never travel just for one specific animal. I want to know about the whole ecosystem: what else lives there, what the underwater landscape looks like and whether it’s worth the journey. For a long time, my feed only showed kelp forests in California or Australia, so I thought it was something too far away and out of reach. To be honest, until recently I didn’t even know that Northern Norway had these massive kelp forests. It’s much closer to me now, so exploring that cold water ecosystem and seeing what kind of macro life lives there is definitely something I want to do.

What surprises people most about your work in the water?

Personally, I am obsessed with the ‘superpowers’ of marine creatures: sacoglossan sea slugs that can photosynthesise like plants, or pleurobranchs that produce compounds being studied for anti-cancer activity and the mind-blowing symbiosis where predators and prey cooperate (like moray eels hunting with groupers/wrasses, or cleaner shrimp working inside a fish’s mouth). 

However, what surprises my audience the most is simply discovering that these creatures exist at all.

Can you tell us about some of the ocean conservation issues that impact your local area?

When we moved to Gdańsk, Poland, I was so excited to live right by the Baltic Sea, thinking about the diving opportunities. Sadly, the reality is quite heartbreaking. The Baltic is heavily impacted by agricultural runoff, which causes massive cyanobacteria blooms in the summer. When these blooms die and sink, they consume all the oxygen, creating ‘dead zones’ on the seabed where almost nothing can survive. Even walking along the beach, you notice how quiet it is and how few shells there are.

What advice would you offer other young ocean enthusiasts looking to find their community online?

Never stop being curious! The ocean is changing rapidly. It is already very different from what it was when I took my first breath underwater over a decade ago and it will look different a decade from now. My advice is to share what you love, even if you live thousands of kilometres from the nearest coast. You don’t need to be a marine biologist to advocate for the ocean.

The more you learn, the more you love. And the more you love, the more you want to protect.

New series shines a spotlight on people using social media to showcase their local underwater biodiversity, build community and inspire others to look below the surface as Ocean Green calls on Tromsø locals to get involved.

For the first in our series, we talk to Olika Kuryan, who co-founded species identification app Seabook with her husband Stas. Ocean Green is looking for local marine enthusiasts to get involved in the project and here, Olika tells us how the ocean became her passion – and her job – despite growing up in a landlocked country. You can join Olika’s 11,000+ Instagram followers using the handle @seabook.app for inspiring footage of nudibranchs, cephalopods and other creatures on the macro scale. 

If you’re local to Tromsø or visiting the city, you can also see the nudibranchs that have been photographed for the 

 along the Sørsjetéen jetty, showcasing the return of biodiversity alongside recovering kelp forests.

Ocean influencers: ‘Nudibranchs look like real-life Pokémon’ 

No. the urchins that have overgrazed Norway’s kelp forests – mostly green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis) – are native and the goal is not to get rid of them. When in balance with their surroundings, these creatures play an important role in their ecosystems. That’s what Ocean Green’s regenerative harvesting is all about: harvesting the right number of urchins in order to allow kelp forests to return.

Small, spiky sea creatures – maybe green, pink or purple – urchins are found in every ocean of the world – from shallow tidal pools to depths of up to 7,340 metres. Since they can’t swim, you’ll typically find them on rocks or the sea floor. Their main diet is algae – of which kelp is one type – but they will also reportedly eat sea cucumbers, mussels and sea sponges, scraping food into their mouth – which is on their underside.

 they typically eat between 1.3% and 4.1% of their body weight a day but, depending on factors such as food availability, this could range from 18% of their body weight per day, to nothing. They have been shown to live for a long time in a ‘zombie’ state, with almost no nutrients – meaning urchin barrens don’t go away by themselves simply because the food has run out.

This has led to urchin barrens becoming an ecosystem challenge across multiple regions: from California to Japan, Norway to New Zealand, scientists and policymakers and researchers are trying to come up with solutions to the problem, which is caused in some cases by overfishing, but might also be due to disease, changing ocean temperatures and other effects of climate change.

In northern Norway, the main culprit is historic overfishing. While it is important to stress that the urchins we see covering the sea floor in many parts of northern Norway are native to the region, it is as important to explain why they have managed to reproduce to such scale. And the problem goes back decades. Overfishing of urchin predators meant not enough of these animals were eaten. This led to a boom in numbers and the decimation of kelp forests. In fact, the largest overgrazing events ever observed in the North East Atlantic were seen in the early 1970s – and the problem of urchin barrens has persisted since.

Researchers from Ocean Green partner NIVA compared the loss of kelp to what we see in the world’s most important land forests. ‘We all think about deforestation and the devastating disappearance of forests on land, from the burning of the Amazon to wildfires in southern Europe, Siberia and California,’ 

. ‘But something similar has happened under the ocean completely out of view that destroyed Norway’s kelp forests across an estimated 8,400 km2.

‘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,’ they added.

For regenerative harvesting to work, there should be around two urchins per square meter – down from around 30 today. You can 

do your bit to join the urchin count using the ‘urchin sudoku’ app

With funding from Norway’s Green Platform – a vehicle providing support for research- and innovation-driven green transition in business – Ocean Green has brought together science and research, engineers, commercial seafood and citizen science to deliver a new approach to the urchin-kelp challenge.

Led by Ava Ocean, which uses patented technology to gently harvest scallops from the Barents Sea, the team are working to 

. But the goal goes well beyond removal. As they work on the technology, Ocean Green partners are also going inside the urchins, exploring products that could turn an abundance of urchins into a new, economically viable fishery. One such example has seen promise as 

NIBIO researchers turn urchins into a biostimulant to boost lettuce growth

 – something that could offer a nutritional boost to people spending months of every year in the dark of northern Norway.

You might well have. Urchins have long been fished – and prized. But this isn’t a viable solution to the urchin barren problems, mostly because these ‘starved’ urchins have little flavour or nutrient value.

If you do get hold of some high-quality urchin roe – or more specifically gonads – you might want to try it in the Japanese style as sashimi or on rice, Italians also have a taste for sea urchin, added to risotto or a creamy pasta.

‘The long-term hope is that, once urchin numbers are controlled and kelp has returned, natural checks and balances will do the hard work, without the need for human intervention,’ says Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and management lead for the Ocean Green project. But that is a big ask – especially since the drivers of urchin overpopulation go beyond overfishing. Still, overfishing can be better managed locally than climate change and NIVA researchers have suggested setting up protected areas where kelp restoration is happening. This would control fishing activities, allowing for the established return of larger predators, giving local ecosystems more time to really rebound.

‘Given the likelihood of some degree of monitoring and removal – Ocean Green funding was originally designed to support the project for three years – we are also working hard to secure self-sufficiency. One avenue is blue carbon credits, but establishing an economically viable fishery that makes real use of harvested urchins is key to the zero-waste, circular goal of restorative harvesting,’ adds Anastassiou.

Around northern Norway, green sea urchins have overgrazed kelp forests at an alarming rate: just 20% of the region’s kelp forests remain; the rest replaced by urchin barrens.

Kelp forests are essential, foundational habitats that support a host of marine life as well as serving the wider ecosystem through coastal defence and 

Norway’s green sea urchin: understanding their role and how Ocean Green is working to reduce numbers and bring back kelp

How do you go about establishing a brand-new fishery? This is a topic that Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and project lead for Ocean Green, spends a good amount of time thinking about as she works to establish a reliable funding stream for kelp restoration efforts in northern Norway.

‘Our kelp forests need long-term support,’ she says, adding that there is more at stake than funding. ‘At the same time, we don’t want to remove anything from the ocean only for it to go to waste. Urchins are not invasive and they are not a pest, even though we do need to reduce their numbers in order to allow kelp to return. And when we do that, we want to make full use of the urchins we take out of the water.’

Working with Ava Ocean, she already has experienced reestablishing a fishery: the tech-fuelled fishing firm was able to use its patented gentle harvester to reopen the Barents Sea scallop fishery after a 30-year closure. 

But the plan for urchins is something different. The goal here is not to supply an existing demand but to create new products that build that demand for the first time – all without losing sight of how vital it is that kelp forests are given the chance to return to northern Norway. This is a key task for the Ocean Green consortium, made up of researchers, engineers and experts from the commercial world that have come together for a whole-value-chain solution to the urchin-kelp challenge.

Examples of some of the areas of interest that researchers are looking at include specific, high-value enzymes found within urchins and the possibility of using harvested urchins as 

a commercial biostimulant to boost vegetable growth in northern Norway. 

Even at the smaller scale, people are already doing useful, interesting and beautiful things with urchins. 

Sara Roosvall’s art is a perfect representation of a small-scale circular economy. Taking an urchin that has been harvested from the seas of northern Norway, dries it and mills it. In this way she can create a pigment – from which comes beautiful seascapes.

Roosvall is not just an artist, but a marine biologist who is currently working with Ocean Green partner NIBIO, where she is studying antioxidants in kelp as part of her master’s thesis. Through this research, she discovered that algae change their levels of antioxidants and pigments as they age. And taking inspiration from other artists online who she saw grinding minerals to make paint, Roosvall experimented with pigments from dried, milled algae before adding urchin water colours to her repertoire too. 

‘You get these wonderful, surprising colours,’ she explains. ‘For example, even though I use green sea urchins, what I get are these beautiful pink and purple tones. With the algae, I’ve made pigments from bladderwrack, which is a green, as well as dulse, which gives these red-brown hues.’

Working with Ocean Green partner Rissa Citizen Science, Roosvall has even run workshops using her urchin and algae paints, bringing her love of art and marine science to the local community. 

Delphin Ruché, founder and director of Rissa Citizen Science, which spearheads local outreach on behalf of the consortium, has already had his own commercial success using urchins to grow food. 

As well as working on urchin removal and local kittiwake conservation, Ruché used to co-run a successful mushroom farm. Through Tromsopp – sopp is mushroom in Norwegian – Ruché and his team grew and sold shitake, lion’s mane and oyster mushrooms to Tromsø restaurants and supermarkets.

‘Mushrooms are so economical,’ he explains. ‘They require little electricity, no farmland and you can grow them year round. They also help to address local food insecurity and a reliance on fertilisers.’ The Tromsopp mushrooms were grown using waste material collected in the city – coffee grounds, woodchips, eggshells. And for every 1kg of waste, 1kg of mushrooms was being produced. Because Ruché also runs the teams of volunteers that dive to remove urchins from local waters, he gave crushed urchins a try too. ‘We didn’t do anything very scientifically,’ he explains. ‘We didn’t even rinse them. It was just crushed urchins – the juice mixed with shells. And the result was spectacular: it may be the calcium in the shell – one of very few things mushrooms need to grow – but the mushrooms responded really well.’

Eventually the warehouse they used changed owner and Ruché wasn’t able to find a new site for Tromsopp – but he does have plans to continue testing the effects of urchins as a biostimulant, right in Tromsø city center, in collaboration with landscape architects Lo:Le Landskap and other local stakeholders.

‘The plan is to run an experiment on three plots: a control patch, one enhanced with crushed urchins and a third using guano from kittiwakes that we will gather from across the city. We want to bring some positivity into the narrative around sea urchins and kittiwakes in Tromsø,’ he says.

This might be the most surprising thing we’ve seen someone do with an urchin, but it actually makes perfect – and beautiful – sense. A company on the other side of the world is turning urchins into marble. 

Marblis is the ‘agricultural surfaces brand’ of California-headquartered biodesign lab Primitives. As well as working in biodegradable packaging and other solutions to environmental challenges, the company has a product called Urchinite – a ‘biomarble’ created from sea urchin shells. ‘For architects and designers, it offers a material rich in texture, origin and story – a surface you can trace back to a marine restoration event, one that is about beauty, but also about repair,’ the firm says.

Like Ocean Green efforts to establish an urchin fishery in Norway, Urchinite grew from the impact that an overabundance of purple sea urchins – among other factors – is having in California. More than 96% of northern California’s kelp has vanished over the last decade, leading to biodiversity loss and economic strain across coastal communities. In northern Norway, loss is not quite as high, but at an estimated 80%, it remains one of the most decimated areas of the world for kelp forests. 

‘With Urchinite, we’re not just designing a product, we’re designing a material interface that bridges land and sea – where the construction of a dining table triggers the rewilding of a habitat,’ says Virj Kan, CEO at Primitives, in a statement that also points the possibilities of products like this for restoration. The company says that every 50 units of Urchinite biomarble – created using the calcium carbonate found in urchin shells that is also the main ingredient in marble – has the potential to clear 1.1 acres of purple urchins.

Establishing a fishery is key to long-term kelp restoration, but people are already finding interesting uses for harvested urchins.

Mushrooms, marble and art: Three unusual things you might do with an urchin

‘You can’t put a price on real experience,’ says Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and project lead for Ocean Green, coming out of the January waters around Tromsø. Her dive marks two years since the consortium came together with the ambitious goal of establishing a brand-new fishery in order to reverse the decimation of northern Norway’s kelp forests, through a new approach of restorative harvesting.

We caught up with Anastassiou to hear what’s gone well, where things got prickly and what she expects from Ocean Green in 2026.

It’s been two years of Ocean Green. How would you sum it up so far?


Two years have passed so quickly! If I were to try to put this into three words, I’d say: exciting, challenging, and hopeful – like a dive in cold water.

, which is a huge achievement for a project that has only really been going for a short time. That was a real vote of confidence in the work we’re doing. As part of that, 

we also joined the GenOcean campaign at the end of 2025

, where the focus is really on engaging citizen scientists around the world.



Then there’s been so much progress internally. The work that Nibio is doing into urchin research is going to prove so vital to the project. We don’t want to remove urchins only to throw them away, so establishing a viable urchin fishery is essential to the sustainability of the way we’re doing kelp regeneration. Their research with biostimulants – 

using enzymes from the urchins to boost the growth of food plants like lettuce

 – is so exciting. It shows huge potential for high-volume products that leave very little waste.

I can’t stress enough the importance of this circular thinking. It has to be part of the solution: simply removing the urchins and destroying them is not enough. Doing so would not only be a waste of the valuable resources the seabed provides, but it would be a massive, missed opportunity. I would almost go so far as to say it would be disrespectful to nature not to invest the time and money needed to valorise these urchins.

What you need for a successful fishery is a portfolio of products and Nibio has also been doing a great job of developing new partnerships with research institutes across Norway and internationally – even as far as China – in order to expand our understanding of what we might produce from each part of the urchins we harvest.

Looking back to when the project launched two years ago, we had a lot of ambition around the idea of a new fishery but very little idea of what we might realistically do with these urchins. It’s amazing to see how far our research has come.

Then there is the work that Akvaplan-niva is doing with Across Nature in 

driving understanding of the market for carbon credits or nature credits

. That is an essential element of this restorative fishery plan – which is the first of its kind. And it's not just about science gaps, it's about getting methodologies approved by the correct certifying bodies, for example. It’s about understanding the risks and the assumptions that go into credits that will help provide long-term funding for kelp restoration. This is the kind of work we need for Ocean Green 2.0 – that phase beyond the current funding.

Citizen science is also a key part of the project. How has that evolved?


Having Rissa Citizen Science on board really drives home how important citizen science is to the project and how keen people are to learn, engage and get involved.

Last year in particular really saw activities ramp up on that front: the number of volunteers coming down to the water to help remove urchins by hand has soared, Delphin Ruché, founder of Rissa CS, helped stage documentary screenings that highlight the urchin-kelp challenge and we now have a new, permanent exhibition along the jetty in Tromsø.

All this has shown just how important it is to have people at the centre of Ocean Green. It’s through these experiences that we see the ripple effect that drives more and more change.

The R&D definitely took longer than expected. The engineering challenge is all about creating a solution that can go into the shallows, that works on rocky, uneven areas, that is powerful enough to take up nearly all urchins but gentle enough to avoid wider damage – all while keeping the urchins in good shape for later processing. This has meant a lot of prototypes, testing and concept designs.

Although the urchin harvester is based on Ava Ocean’s scallop harvester, 

the final design will be so unique that it will be a patented technology in its own right

. That points to just how much work has been involved already.

So, the tech side has definitely been the biggest challenge to date. But it is also where we have huge strengths. Ava Ocean’s harvester grew from the unique perspective we brought to existing technology: we took parts from marine operations, from the oil and gas industry, from the aquaculture industry, and we looked at them differently. We brought them together in a way that delivered a new technology and a new concept for how you harvest from the seabed.

This ‘outside-the-box’ approach is what we’re applying to our urchin solution, but it’s also what we need to expand monitoring and biomass assessments – 

the tools we use to drive our understanding of exactly what’s going on under the water

 – which are also key to the success of the project.

So, while the tech has been the most challenging part of the project so far, I think 2026 will be the most exciting year on the technology side. This is when we’re going to see all the cogs come together.


Finally, you’ve just come from a freedive in Tromsø. Why is it important for you to get in the water?


Diving isn’t just about the project for me. It’s amazing to see the progress and galvanising to take a fresh look at the problem firsthand. But it’s also just a fantastic experience. Diving with Rissa CS was
exactly what I needed to start this year off.

Before I worked for Ava Ocean, I managed a citizen science and conservation project in the tropics, where diving was a huge part of my life, as was that connection with volunteers and citizen scientists. It showed that you can’t put a price on real experience: something happens to a person when they’re in the water.

When you float in the freezing water, hammer in one hand, ready to dive down and a tiny, clear jellyfish with a bright orange body and a pulsating light moves past, you are hit by the awesomeness of the ocean. Ava Ocean’s motto is so true: 

‘The bottom of the sea is the most exciting place on earth.’

Product exploration, UN Ocean Decade endorsement and a January dive: Dagny-Elise Anastassiou reflects on the highs and lows, as Ocean Green enters a new year.

Two years of Ocean Green 

Those heading to Arctic Norway to explore the northern lights should look down as well as up – peering into the icy fjords through a new outdoor, exhibition showcasing kelp restoration efforts around Tromsø. 

On January 9th, 2026, the unique exhibition at the Sørsjetéen jetty in Tromsø was officially opened, inviting locals and visitors to explore the vibrant underwater world with stunning photography by Clément Brun, Ann Cools, and Liga Sirava which documents the journey from barren seabed to thriving kelp forest.

For decades, northern Norway has faced a dramatic decline in kelp forests, up to 80% of the kelp forests have disappeared over the last 50 years, largely replaced by urchin barrens. These ecosystems are vital for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and fisheries. Ocean Green is tackling this challenge with a large-scale, sustainable approach that combines research, innovation, and citizen science.

“Kelp loss is a global problem, and here in northern Norway, the scale of decline has been dramatic,” says Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, Chief Impact Officer at Ava Ocean and Ocean Green project lead. “What we’re doing with Ocean Green is creating a sustainable solution that not only restores biodiversity but also supports fisheries and carbon capture—delivering benefits far beyond the ocean.”

The exhibition showcases the transformation made possible by volunteers from Rissa Citizen Science, who have been diving into the fjords to remove sea urchins by hand. One side of the jetty remains untouched, while the other bursts with life - kelp, shrimp, fish, and sea slugs—illustrating how quickly nature can rebound when given a chance.

“This exhibition is a way to thank the volunteers who made this possible,” says Delphin Ruché, founder of Rissa Citizen Science. “By reducing urchin density, we’ve created space for kelp to return, bringing back an abundance of marine life.”

Beyond restoration, Ocean Green is exploring how to use the harvested urchins, while working toward a circular economy that benefits coastal communities like Tromsø. 

 is working with Rissa Citizen Science and the rest of the Ocean Green team to bring knowledge and engagement around the urchin-kelp issue locally and internationally. 

The exhibition is free and open to the public, offering a rare glimpse into the Arctic’s underwater jungles.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ocean+Green+kelp+restoration+exhibition/@69.6442329,18.9542758,17z

Ocean Green exhibition opens in Tromsø: A window into kelp restoration 

The Ocean Green project is all about the restoration of northern Norway’s kelp forests, which have been lost at a massive scale over the past half century. It is estimated that some 80% of the region’s kelp forests are gone – largely replaced by urchin barrens. The Ocean Green goal is to remove enough of these native urchins to reset the natural balance and allow kelp to return.


Around the coast of Norway, different species of kelp grow up to four meters in length, in waters where they can still get the sun in order to photosynthesise. This means that kelp take in CO2 – and release oxygen. They also play a vital role in local biodiversity as well as delivering a surprising number of other benefits.


Because of ecosystem services role that kelp plays, we have to look at its loss as a big picture issue.

Why kelp is important: multiple ecosystem services

When a kelp forest is lost, it is not just a local, physical loss. Because kelp provides such a range of ecosystem services – from nursery grounds to coastal protection, support for fisheries and more – when kelp forests disappear there is a knock-on affect across each of these ecosystem benefits.

A healthy kelp forest is a vibrant, diverse ecosystem. NIVA – one of Ocean Green’s research partners – 

describes kelp forests as ‘among the most ecologically and socioeconomically important habitats on the planet.’


In Norway, the contribution of kelp can be shown in the astounding numbers of species supported by kelp forests – including commercially important fish and species on the red list. An established kelp forest supports other forms of microalgae and seaweeds, while at the invertebrate level, these marine forests boast densities of more than 100,000 individuals of snails, crustaceans, molluscs, brightly coloured marine worms and other invertebrates per square meter.


Moving up the food chain, kelp forests provide habitat, nursery grounds and food for larger species: red-list species like the Atlantic coastal cod as well as commercial species such as cod and pollock, which play an important role in Norway’s economy. These fish in turn support other, larger predators such as seals and seabirds.

Being the wonderplant that it is, kelp does so much more than provide a safe habitat for fish and other species. 

, sequestering CO2 and depositing it at the bottom of fjords and in the deep sea.


Research shows that Norwegian kelp forests bind an estimated 18 million tonnes of CO2, with around 1.8 million tonnes of CO2 exported and stored in coastal and deep-sea sediments each year. ‘If the remaining overgrazed kelp forests recovered in response to improving environmental conditions and restoration actions, a one-off binding of 12 million tonnes of CO2 within living biomass would be achieved,’ wrote NIVA in a 2021 report. ‘This would also increase the annual deposition in coastal and deep-sea sediments to around 3 million tonnes of CO2.’


Coastal defence, nutrient recycling and more

In addition to its contribution to biodiversity and carbon sequestration, kelp plays a stabilising role in its waters. This includes creating acting as a coastal defence system by creating a drag that serves to reduce wave size – which in turn protects coastal lands by reducing erosion.


Kelp also improves water quality by absorbing excess nutrients and pollutants and, though its process of photosynthesis, it increases pH levels, reducing the acidity of surrounding waters – something that further benefits marine life.


What happened to Norway’s kelp forests?

A number of factors have contributed to northern Norway’s kelp forest loss but key is overfishing, which has reduced the numbers of urchin predators like wolffish and crab. This in turn allowed native green sea urchins to spread unchecked as they overgrazed kelp. Even if the urchins are removed and kelp returned, without reestablishing their natural predators as well, the risk of overgrazing remains. NIVA says that marine protected areas or no-fishing zones across areas of restored kelp forest, coupled with quota reductions for known urchin predators, would ‘facilitate predator recovery and maintain low urchin abundances to sustain restoration efforts’. In southern Norway, climate change and warming waters appear to be bigger factors in kelp loss, according to the Norwegian Blue Forests Network.

Kelp loss is not a Norwegian problem but a global issue. Where the problem is caused by too many urchins – an issue itself driven by multiple factors including overfishing and climate change – urchin barrens replace kelp forests. These urchins have traditionally been removed by hand – a time and labour-intensive process that is used by volunteers who go into the water with Rissa Citizen Science, Ocean Green’s citizen science partner.


The Ocean Green plan is to develop a harvester that can remove urchins from much larger areas, much faster. Basing the technology on Ava Ocean’s gentle scallop harvester, the new urchin-removal system will speed up kelp restoration: for kelp to return, urchin density must come down from more than 30-plus per square meter to around just two urchins per square meter. Once that is achieved – and maintained – kelp can reestablish itself with remarkable efficiency.

‘Despite the challenges in removing urchins en masse, kelp makes an excellent target for restoration,’ explains Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and management lead for the Ocean Green project.


‘We know the cascade effect that a healthy kelp forest delivers – from serving as a nursery to multiple species to providing shelter to larger predators. We know how kelp protects the coastline and captures carbon. At the same time, we have seen firsthand – through the work of Rissa CS – just how fast kelp can reestablish itself given the chance. And how quickly fish and other species return too. And that is the ultimate goal of Ocean Green: to tip the balance back in favour of kelp – which would in turn deliver widespread benefits to the local ecosystem.’


She also points to the dual economic focus of the project as a marker of success. ‘We are not just looking to clear urchins from the seabed. We are looking to harvest them and turn them into an economically viable fishery, with 

our science partners working hard to uncover new, urchin-derived products

. This circular-economy approach is designed to ensure the long-term sustainability of our regenerative restoration project.’


Healthy kelp means healthy waters – but these vital forests have been disappearing around northern Norway

Norway’s underwater rainforests: why kelp matters

In the cold waters around Tromsø, volunteers are restoring kelp forests by hand. They dive in to take photographs, monitor species and to remove sea urchins one by one. It is slow work. It is also essential. More than eighty percent of Northern Norway’s kelp forests have disappeared as urchin numbers have increased and predators have declined. The same pattern is seen in many places across the world. When kelp is eaten down, the seabed is left bare and almost nothing grows back on its own.


This local challenge is part of a global story. 

Ocean Green was created to address it at scale.

 The project brings together science, technology and community involvement to restore kelp forests and rebuild ecosystems that have been lost.


The newest step in this work is also the most surprising. It is a small activity that feels almost like a game. It is calm, simple and strangely addictive. It is called the Urchin Density Challenge.

Rissa Citizen Science has launched the challenge through the 

, which has been developed by designer Philip Redecker. Anyone anywhere can now take part in the research happening in Tromsø. You are given a photograph of a small frame placed on the seabed. Your task is to count the urchins you see inside the square. That is all. Yet each count becomes part of an important dataset used by researchers at the University of Tromsø. These data help them follow changes in the restoration areas over time and understand when kelp is able to return.


Delphin Ruché, founder and director of Rissa Citizen Science, describes it this way:
‘The Urchin Density Challenge takes citizen science to the next level, inviting people around the world to document biodiversity changes in areas where volunteers are restoring kelp forests.’


Some images show many urchins. Others show none. Sometimes a bright starfish appears. Users begin to recognise patterns. They learn what a barren looks like and what recovery looks like.

Ocean Green brings together advanced engineering and hands on monitoring. Ava Ocean is adapting its gentle seabed harvesting system so that urchins can be removed at scale without harming the seabed. NIBIO, NIVA, Hofseth Biocare and Akvaplan niva are studying 

new uses for the harvested urchins, from food and fertiliser to enzymes and biomaterials

. Together they are working to build a circular value chain that supports long term restoration. The project is part funded by Norway’s Green Platform and is endorsed by the UN Ocean Decade.

But citizens remain at the heart of the work.


Dagny Elise Anastassiou, Ocean Green project manager and Chief Impact Officer at Ava Ocean, explains why:
‘We made citizen science a core part of this work because people matter. Many ocean issues stay invisible and are easy to ignore. When people are part of the process, projects are more likely to become long term solutions.’


She adds:
‘The app is easy to use and fun. Some photos show lots of urchins, others none, and suddenly colourful starfish appear. It is quite addictive.’

The challenge builds on a wider programme of outreach. Volunteers in Tromsø meet every month to take photos, monitor species and help reduce urchin density by hand. A new permanent exhibition will open on the town jetty in January. It shows the shift from urchin barren to recovering kelp forest in the water below. Schools across Northern Norway have also taken part in screenings of 

, a visually rich documentary by Ismaele Tortella, followed by discussions about predators and ecosystem change.


Together these activities help make the invisible visible. They give people a direct view of the problem and the solution. They build a shared understanding of what is happening below the surface.

The app requires no training. A few minutes is enough. Yet the data collected supports real science and contributes to a growing body of international knowledge. It shows where kelp may return and how quickly. It helps researchers understand how restoration works over time. Anyone can take part. Schools. Organisations. Families. Individuals.

Ocean Green invites the public to join the challenge and become part of the story.

 The work is serious, but the entry point is light and accessible. A simple count. A global contribution. A small step towards bringing kelp forests back.


The story behind the launch of the Urchin Density Challenge

Introducing “urchin sudoku”: gamification of citizen science

How do you map a sea floor for kelp restoration? How do you accurately map the impact of urchin removal or monitor the return of biodiversity?

At Ocean Green partner akvaplan-niva,Pierre Priou – a researcher specialising in active acoustics – has been doing something new: adapting a technique used to map the ocean floor, to look at whether the substrate is sandy or rocky for example, to also look at kelp and turn data into a map of the water column.

‘The novelty here is that we are using a small, autonomous vessel together with a type of sonar. or multibeam echosounder, to map kelp forests,’ he explains. ‘Most of these instruments were designed to map the seafloor but here, we are not only looking at the sea floor but also what is going on above, in the water column. This has not been done a lot – and in particular not from an autonomous vessel.’

The autonomous vessel in question is an Otter, an un-crewed, multi-beam seabed mapping device, which Priou has been using to gather data for the first test site of the Ocean Green project. There, a harvester developed by Ava Ocean will remove large numbers of native urchins in order to help restore a more natural balance in the water that allows kelp forests to return.

Northern Norway has lost some 80% of its kelp forests over the last 50 years, partly due to an over abundance of native urchins, which have become prolific in the face of fators including predator overfishing and climate change.

‘The Otter was originally developed to map the sea floor,’ explains Priou. ‘What we’re doing here using it to record sea floor data, but also what's going on in the water column. That is something new. When we send sound into the ocean, we get everything that's in the water column – fish, plankton, the seabed and some noise as well,’ continues Priou, who came to the project from a background in fish and acoustics. ‘It is more complicated than this but usually, the sounds you don’t want are discarded and the data is used to map the sea floor. We want to use it to also monitor the return of kelp.’

Because there currently isn’t much kelp around Tromsø, where the Ocean Green project is taking place, Priou explains that he has been mapping areas that are mostly urchin barrens – but is also developing the tools and analysis methods to manage kelp in the future. ‘I'm trying to find some areas where there is some kelp, so that we can work on the methodology and have an idea of what to expect when we begin to see the restoration we expect.’

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