‘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.

What have been some of the highlights?

We were endorsed by the UN’s Ocean Decade, 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.

What about the challenges?

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.’