Through non-invasive urchin harvesting, Ocean Green is helping to bring back kelp forests, boost biodiversity and find new, commercially-viable uses for sea urchins.

Kelp forests are one of the most diverse ecosystems on earth, boosting biodiversity, protecting our coasts and acting as a carbon sink in the fight against climate change. But these forests are disappearing. In the north of Norway, more than 80% of original kelp forests disappeared over the last 50 years– replaced instead by urchin barrens as a result of the overfishing of natural urchin predators and climate change..

The Ocean Green project is adapting Ava Ocean’s unique non-invasive seabed harvesting technology, to pick urchins . A circular-economy project, these urchins will then go into R&D to find commercially-viable uses for the whole urchin – with zero waste. At the same time, the rehabilitation of kelp forests will bring their own host of benefits, from ocean protection to providing nurseries for commercially important fish to diversified income opportunities for coastal communities currently focused on Northern Lights tourism.

Ocean Green is a cross sector collaboration between partners from top Norwegian research institutions and industry players in fisheries, biotechnology and tourism.

Overfishing and other human activity around the world has resulted in a huge reduction in the number of fish that eat sea urchins. Allowed to proliferate, these urchins eat the kelp, creating barrens where kelp forests once flourished. As forests – a natural habitat for urchin predators – disappear, a negative loop is established with urchin populations growing even larger.

Kelp is an essential, foundational species and the impact of these barrens is huge: kelp forests act as nurseries for a variety of species, they protect coastlines by absorbing some of the impact of storms and they absorb CO2 at a scale surpassing forests on land, making their rehabilitation key to the climate crisis fight.

Traditionally harvested by hand targeting an exclusive seafood market, the worldwide urchin fishery has dropped from 120.000 tonnes in 1994 to 75.000 tonnes in 2014.