The Moonrise Seaweed Co. has been working towards the farming of seaweed for the past 3 years. They say that “seaweed farming has the potential to be a win-win-win form of agriculture – producing versatile, nourishing crops, reviving coastal economies, and regenerating local marine ecologies”. They need, however, a lot of start-up capital. Should they “follow the blueprint of fish aquaculture (large corporations growing monocultures at an industrial scale), or revive the idea of the working waterfront, where small farms operate with an eye to supporting ecosystem functioning rather than with an extractive mindset”.

They have now launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their pilot seaweed cultivation project.

(They say that “Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform, where we are offering our products and other rewards to people who want to back our project. Kickstarter operates on an all-or-nothing funding basis, where our project will only move forward if we reach our funding target. The platform has been around since 2009 and has funded 214,700 projects, to the cost of $6.3 billion. Crowdfunding is an alternative to grant funding, loans or taking on investors. In this case, we have secured several large government grants that will match us $:$, so we are seeking to raise the cash required to access this more traditional funding. We are approaching this as a “pre-sale” campaign and have spent a long time developing our seaweed products to make sure we are offering real value to those that choose to back us.”)

They say that people can support them by any of the following three steps: –

  1. Subscribe to our Kickstarter page today, so you will get an automatic notification tomorrow when we launch. We will also send a launch email to you tomorrow, but you won’t receive any further emails from us unless you subscribe to our page or make a pledge.
  2. If within your means, please consider making a $1 donation to our campaign. Getting as many pledges as possible in the first 48 hours will create momentum and mean the Kickstarter algorithm will work in our favour so we can be featured on the front page. Plus, every dollar helps! Projects that get at least 20% of their funding goal have an 80% chance of being fully funded.
  3. Share our campaign with anyone you can think of that might be interested. We are really looking to reach beyond our immediate network, and connect with seaweed enthusiasts around the world. We have attached some social media tiles to this email, which you are welcome to use (make sure you link to our campaign in the caption), or you can share our campaign link (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/seaweed/moonrise-seaweed-co OR rb.gy/5fds5c) via email, text, etc. You’re also welcome to fwd this email if you’d like.

A million thanks for your support.

Chloe & Brad Darkson, Moonrise Seaweed Co. ” http://www.moonriseseaweed.farm/

By Steve Reynolds

Steve Reynolds is the current President of MLSSA and is a long-standing member of the Society. Steve was a keen diver, underwater explorer & photographer before illness struck. He is chief author of the Society's extensive back catalogue of newsletters and journals.

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