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.

Basil and strawberries

"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."

Greenland to Sicily – and Norway

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.

NIBIO is responsible for two of seven work packages and, alongside Akvaplan-niva, is 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, while Ava Ocean leads the project as a whole, adapting its specialised non-invasive seabed-harvesting technology to urchin catch.