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.’

So far, the Otter has mapped – and Priou has reported on – an area around 700m by 1 km. ‘The goal is to map kelp – to create maps of the density of returning forests.’ To do this, he sent the Otter into areas that volunteers have restored by hand. ‘We send sound into the ocean and get a raw output from the instrument that covers everything in the water column. The first step is then to clean this data, to remove unwanted echoes.’

Capturing density from the echo sounder is not straightforward, he explains. ‘The way we usually evaluate density is through extremely fine-resolution imagery, where we could almost count single kelp.’ In reality though, he says this is not doable because of the simple fact that kelp moves in the water column and even an air bubble within the forest can impact the echo. The solution ‘is to take a small volume and study the echo within that, meaning that this back scatter would become representative of kelp. It requires some careful work.’

The size of the data set also poses a challenge. ‘It is a gigantic data set – probably the largest I've worked with. We’re talking about several hundreds of gigabytes.’ At the moment, that data is just point data – depth and coordinates – but Priou sees potential to develop it in a lot of different visual ways – including the possibility of 3D mapping.

Because what Priou is doing is relatively new, it is also being backed up by the work of human divers. At the pilot area, this has been done by Camilla With Fagerli and the team from niva, another Ocean Green partner. They have been conducting ‘ground truth’ research designed to assess the accuracy of the echo data – to ‘estimate or detect the kelp forest and the biomass of the kelp when the harvest is done,’ she explains.

Having been to both the pilot site – where an overabundance of urchins means there is no longer any kelp – and a restored site, Fagerli talks about how drastically different the two areas are. ‘It’s two very different environments. In the area where we will test the harvester, we were diving with a frame that we put out every second meter for 60 meters, counting everything we saw – and it was urchins, maybe a few snails, maybe some blue mussels and nothing more. It's not very diverse. It's very heterogenic with quite a high density of sea urchins and it was a quick count.

‘The day after, we did this same thing in the small area where volunteers have restored the kelp forest. Even though it's only 18 months since the first kelp returned, it's already very different. We dived for just six frames but it took two hours to record every species we saw.’

New method for autonomous echo sounder offers scientists alternative view into the water column – as well as the sea floor

Ocean Green scientists adapting ocean floor mapping to track kelp restoration 

When director and wildlife cinematographer Ismaele Tortella moved from Italy to Norway, it was in pursuit of an encounter with a wolffish, an apex predator that lives in the kelp forests of the north. When he got there however, he found a problem: urchin barrens.

His documentary, 

, tells the story of Tortella’s move to Northern Norway and his dive into the world of urchin removal and kelp restoration – all with the elusive wolffish in mind.

That documentary, with support from Ocean Green partner Rissa Citizen Science, is being shown at the 

 in October. After the screening, which seeks to highlight how Northern Norway’s kelp forests have been replaced by urchin barrens – and what is being done to bring these essential habitats back to life – underwater cameraman Tortella will join Rissa CS director Delphin Ruché for a talk with the audience.

The Stone Biter really puts the spotlight on kelp, highlighting just how vital these beautiful forests are to Norway’s waters, says Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and project lead for Ocean Green.

‘We talk so much about the urchin barrens and there’s so little kelp left in some places that you do need to bring the focus back to why we’re doing this – and that is to restore Northern Norway’s hugely important kelp forests,’ she says.

As well as showcasing the wonder of a returning kelp forest, Anastassiou points to the cumulative effect a documentary like this can have. It will also be aired for some 80 students at 

 in October. ‘Ocean literacy is an important element in the Ocean Green project and, along with the hands-on citizen science work that Rissa CS does, documentaries like this really expand our reach, helping even more people understand their connection to the sea.’

The urchin-kelp problem that Northern Norway is grappling with is not unique. From California to New Zealand, along coasts around the world, overfishing of urchin predators has led to an abundance of urchins. These voracious creatures eat their way through once dense kelp forests – leaving barren seascapes in their wake – and this is not the only stressor threatening kelp forests, explains Aaron Eger, founder and programme director at the 

.

‘Kelp faces two main stressors: kelp likes cold water so warming oceans is one problem – either a chronic, slower warming or acute warming, in the form of the sudden heatwave spikes that we’ve seen more often in recent years. Sometimes coupled with that is an over-abundance of sea urchins, which can be caused by the warming water or by a lack or urchin predators often due to overfishing.’

A loss of kelp can even change the way that urchins feed, continues Eger. ‘As they lose kelp, they go from a more passive feeding mode to a more active feeding mode, creating this negative spiral.’

Through the KFA, Eger and his team work towards a number of goals: the KFA connects interested parties involved in kelp research, protection and restoration – from small actors up to national level policy makers – with a goal of shared knowledge and an avoidance of repeated mistakes. It also lobbies on behalf of these underwater forests, working to keep kelp on the radar as much as possible. Eger talks about the alliance’s efforts to get recognition for the kelp problem and how it is working to encourage policymakers to incorporate kelp into their local, regional and national strategies.

At perhaps the most local level, this lobbying comes down to everyday perceptions: ‘many people don’t even know what kelp is. And if they do, they often have a negative perception because maybe it’s washed up on the beach or they touch it as they swim – it’s slimy and they’re grossed out. People don’t know how important kelp is in coastal food webs, local biodiversity, coastal economies.’


Documentaries like The Stone Biter help bring kelp into the spotlight, replacing negative perceptions through the awe and beauty that few get to experience without going into the water. Increasingly though, Ruché and Rissa CS are turning the abstract into something tangible for more and more people, through the citizen science work the NGO does on a regular basis. Taking volunteers into the water around Tromsø, the organisation already restored a very visible area in the city. ‘Because we purposely restored just one side of the jetty, and because of the location of the site – part of a new promenade being created by the city to help reconnect people with the water – people can see the difference that urchin removal makes on their daily walk,’ explains Ruché. ‘On one side it is still an urchin barren. On the other, there is this incredible kelp forest already thriving.’



Rissa CS recently began work at a new site in Telegrafbukta

, which he hopes will expand the opportunities for urchin removal. As Rissa CS’s work has expanded, so too have the number of ‘Kelpers’ that come along to help out. The most recent urchin removal day brought in around 50 volunteers, says Ruché.

Although the objective at these events is urchin removal, he stresses the need to keep the project’s end goal in mind. ‘Kelp restoration is what we’re working towards, even though we spend so much time focused on urchin removal,’ he says. ‘This documentary really showcases kelp and the vital work these forests do as nurseries for diverse species, as carbon sinks and as natural coastal defence systems. It also shows people the beauty of these underwater rainforests.’

It also serves to expand Ocean Green’s literacy goals, he continues. ‘Most impressive to me so far has been the community that we’ve created,’ says Ruché. ‘It’s fantastic to see people come along – some know very little about urchins or kelp, many have never been in the water before. They leave the experience as part of our community and with a far better understanding of what’s happening below the water. This is the kind of ocean literacy we want to spread even further with The Stone Biter.’


Even with teams of up to 50 people or more going into the water to remove urchins, Northern Norway’s barrens remain huge. ‘Hand removal is a great showcase tool, with proven results, but Ocean Green is taking that further. We are using our technology to deliver the largest-scale urchin removal system to date,’ says Anastassiou. And, given the global nature of the urchin-kelp problem, she believes Ocean Green has potential to go far beyond the north.

‘The technology we’re using in Ocean Green is itself adapted from Ava Ocean’s unique gentle scallop fishing methods,’ she explains. ‘And we’re working hard to get an urchin harvester out that can remove these creatures at scale. This is essential if we’re to make any real headway against the many thousands of hectares of urchin barrens in northern Norway, though we also know the problem is about much more than simple urchin removal.

‘Our hope is that the Ocean Green solution could one day help others in their kelp restoration,’ she adds.


Ocean Green partner Rissa Citizen Science brings ocean literacy to life with screenings of new kelp forest documentary from Ismaele Tortella

The Stone Biter: kelp regeneration steps out of the water with new documentary 

‘We’ve been looking at the impact of our urchin biostimulant on lettuce for 67 days now,’ says Abirami Ramu Ganesan, a research scientist with NIBIO, talking mid-April. Her work has a dual focus: on food production and society as well as biomarine resource valorisation – disciplines that come together on the Ocean Green project.


‘What we’ve found is a significant increase in biomass production compared to the control – and compared to a seaweed-based extract as well,’ she says.

The results point to the urchin biostimulant as a highly effective growth enhancer. At the right concentration, the urchin biostimulant performed as well as, and in some cases even better than, the commercial product, though the commercial one was more consistent overall. Such a marked improvement in yield suggests strong potential for scalable, sustainable agricultural applications.

This difference is clear to see from photos of the lettuce Ganesan has been growing in her lab in Bodø, more than 1,000 km north of Oslo – and some 70 km north of the Arctic Circle – where she explains that the team chose lettuce largely because it was likely to grow well in the limited space of the lab.


There is another factor too. Ralf Rautenberger, another research scientist at NIBIO, explains that, up in the north of Norway in particular – where people spend multiple months of the year shrouded in night – the choice, supply and quality of fresh vegetables leaves room for improvement.

‘Here in the north we don’t have any farmer’s markets, for example,’ says Rautenberger, ‘and there isn’t always a huge variety available, so green-leaf lettuce is a great choice for us to work on’.



At the moment, iceberg is one of the more commonly found lettuce options – but it is also one of the least nutritious lettuce varieties. On top of that, there is evidence of a global reduction in the nutrition we get from fruit and vegetables, something that goes hand in hand with the need to find new fertiliser and biostimulant sources. .

‘The range of what we eat needs to be expanded – if only for nutritional reasons. So, if you could introduce a new vegetable for Norwegians to eat, then green lettuce is a good choice,’ says Rautenberger.

It is also a theme tied to much wider issues. There are the sustainability questions around the global fertiliser supply chain as well as the impact of geopolitics here. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for example, sent global fertiliser and food markets into turmoil, with fertiliser prices remaining high. Diversification is needed, home-grown solutions, derived from a source that needs managing – such as northern Norway’s urchin barrens – presents a great opportunity to tick multiple boxes with a single, spiky pest.


The research to develop biostimulants from the urchins harvested as part of the Ocean Green are still in the early stages with a lot to be uncovered. Ganesan explains, for example, that she is also looking at the shelf life of the biostimulant, which must be reliably stabilised in order to begin thinking about any scale up.

All this has implications that go to the very core of the Ocean Green project. ‘The most important thing is to stabilise the chemical components of the urchin,’ says Ganesan. And that influences the way that these creatures can be harvested as well as how they’re stored on the vessel or how long they can spend between ocean and lab.

This is what the Ocean Green project is all about: bringing funding opportunities that secure longevity for a project developing a new, circular economy with urchins at its core.

For Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and management lead for the Ocean Green project, this latest development comes back to the ‘poetry of the Ocean Green story’.


‘We have Ava Ocean – a fishing company – trying to play its part in correcting something that our industry helped to break in the first place. But it was not just overfishing that damaged our coastal marine ecosystems. Another culprit is runoffs from the agricultural sector, with fertilisers leading to overgrowth of algae that can have potentially disastrous consequences for local biodiversity.

‘By using the urchins from the fishery to offer substitutes for these products, we add value both financially and ecologically.’

Then, there is the circular economy focus of the project.

‘When you remove urchins for kelp restoration, you address the cause but are left with a huge volume of urchins biomass,’ explains Anastassiou. ‘Instead of wasting these urchins, we are turning them into a valuable resource. Being able to produce fertiliser alternatives is one way of applying a zero-waste approach to one of the causes of kelp deforestation. Ideally, if we want the trifecta, the harvested area would be banned from fishing to allow the larger fish to establish themselves. but that’s a whole other Pandora's box in Norway.



Locally produced biostimulant could deliver broad benefits

From sea to lettuce to better nutrition for Norwegians: early tests show biomass boost with urchin derivatives 

Clearing urchins from bigger spaces, watching kelp forests return and bringing fish and other species along as well. These are the things Delphin Ruché, founder of Tromsø-based non-profit Rissa Citizen Science, talks about when asked what his goals are.


And those ambitions are being realised. Ruché, supported by a small army of volunteers, has been working on a 150-meter-long jetty in the city for some time, removing urchins from one side, watching life replace barrens. After success along a jetty in Tromsø, Ocean Green’s citizen science partner Rissa Citizen Science has broken new ground – or new water perhaps – in Telegrafbukta.


The team’s first real expedition at Telegrafbukta, a wide beach and local recreation area, saw nine volunteers join Ruché in removing more than 5,000 urchins, though he stresses that it’s not about the numbers. Instead it is about the return of essential kelp forests, the boost to biodiversity, the science and the community.

Rissa CS work at Telegrafbukta builds on the success it has already had along a jetty in the city, where urchin removal along just one side highlights in stark contrast the difference between an urchin barren and what a returning kelp forest looks like. Speaking to those who have taken part in that restoration, the sense of community really comes through.


‘You go out there and it’s just this really positive experience – almost an antidote to the huge problems we’re facing on climate. Whether you’re in the water or just making waffles, it’s fun and you’re making a difference for your community,’ says Jamie Hollander, an American who was in Tromsø on a Fulbright Norway research scholarship to investigate methane emissions from glacial and permafrost landscapes in Svalbard.


‘I do climate science, I study the carbon cycle and melting glaciers. It’s easy to get lost in the feeling that there’s not a lot we can do. But in getting involved in Rissa CS, you’re seeing the difference as you’re making it. You start to recognise people and develop this feeling that you're working towards something together.’


Ruché says the project simply would not be possible without the volunteers that Rissa CS works with.


‘Lots of people come but it’s not just that,’ he says. ‘People are coming back and this is creating a community with a sense of belonging in sharing this adventure and of having achieved something – and that is fantastic.’


While the purpose of each meet up is urchin removal, the set up makes Rissa CS’ work accessible for all. Hollander did go into the water for example – something she describes as an incredible but challenging experience for her – but ultimately felt her skills were best used on land, in particular at the waffle maker.


Ruché also talks about the many ways people can get involved. There are parents who come along with their kids for example, with Ruché explaining that ‘we use a remote operated vehicle, or ROV, for people who are too young to go in the water, so they can still explore and have fun, they see what the others are seeing in the water.’

But to remove the urchins, some people do have to go into the water. Ruché says there is no need for previous diving experience, with most people freediving or snorkelling close to shore. ‘We have a lot of people who have never been in the water before – they’re not marine biologists, they’re not divers. But they’re curious – they want to see the situation for themselves and to experience being in the cold water.’


There are also some experienced divers in the community. One is Michael Paul Morreau, a lecturer in philosophy at The Arctic University of Norway, and a New Zealander who arrived in Tromsø via the US. He found out about the work Rissa CS does after attending a lecture on Norway’s kelp problem as a representative of a local diving club. ‘We have a very similar problem in New Zealand, caused by over fishing,’ he notes.


Even as an experienced diver, Morreau says urchin removal helps hone your skills: there’s a lot to learn around buoyancy, technique and positioning. And like Hollander, he talks about the community spirit as being a real draw. Everyone has their role, from providing warm drinks to people leaving the freezing fjord to those who help carry gear or, like Hollander, work the waffle grill. Armed with a dry suit, Morreau plays his part, diving in deeper ‘areas where the snorkelers might struggle’.

The urchin-kelp battle is a long fight. Morreau talks of removing maybe 500 an hour ‘or more if I get mad because one pierced a glove,’ he jokes. Ruché has easily removed 1,000 on a quick check up at the jetty without any volunteers to support the work. And the work is constant. As part of the Ocean Green project, Rissa CS represents the consortium’s citizen science work – which includes educating people on the need to restore Northern Norway’s kelp forests and getting them into the water to help in the removal process as well as monitoring biodiversity below water. But more urchins need to be removed – and faster.


‘What’s needed for long-term restoration is a large-scale solution,’ explains Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and project lead for Ocean Green. ‘And this solution must be something that works in shallow waters, that can handle tides and large changes in weather, that can go on uneven, large rocky areas, on bedrock, on sand. At the same time, it must be gentle enough and bring minimal disruption.’


Ava Ocean is currently adapting the technology it developed to gently harvest scallops from the Barents Sea – a fishery closed for 30 years due to over fishing. ‘This technology will allow the scale needed to make a real and lasting difference in the urchin-kelp fight,’ says Anastassiou, ‘though we’ll always need organisations like Rissa CS to keep banging the drum to make sure that people understand just how valuable our underwater ecosystems are.’


Local non-profit is getting people into the water and into kelp restoration

Breaking new water: Ocean Green partner Rissa Citizen Science begins work at new site in Tromsø

Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean and project lead for Ocean Green, joined 100,000 visitors, 15,000 participants and more than 60 heads of state in Nice, southern France, for the United Nation’s third Ocean Conference.

Co-hosted by France and Costa Rica, the event closed with a number of pledges the UN describes as ‘ambitious’. These include a European Commission investment of €1 bn to support ocean conservation, science and sustainable fishing, a pledge by French Polynesia to create the world’s largest marine protected area and a commitment from New Zealand to strengthen ocean governance in the Pacific. Elsewhere, a 37-coutry coalition launched an initiative to tackle underwater noise pollution.

But private industry was notably absent from the conversations, says Anastassiou as she shares some quick-fire thoughts direct from Nice.


How would you sum up your UNOC experience?

Positive but logistically challenging. It was amazing to see the enthusiasm: so many people showed up from all sorts of countries, including some incredible speakers. The Crown Prince of Norway spoke at a couple of talks for example – he really showed excitement about the ocean space.

The logistics were a challenge however. The Blue Zone – for governments and accredited organisations – and the Green Zone – an open exhibition space – were a 25-minute-plus walk from each other, in the hot Mediterranean sun. That meant people were often late and my carefully planned schedule didn’t really work.

And even though the speakers were great, it was often the same speech with different terminology. We know about climate change and biodiversity loss and we know we want healthier oceans – but we need bold debate that asks daring questions to talk about why we’re not achieving the change we need.


What would you have liked to see more of?

We definitely need to get private industry involved in these discussions, rather than sidelining voices that are being depicted as part of the problem only. Ava Ocean and Ocean Green is just one example of how the industrial fishing industry can be a force for sustainable change, delivering partnerships with science and bringing innovation to a global food problem, a fishing problem and a marine biodiversity problem.


In the same way that COP is criticised for being too focused on private interest, this conference went too far the other way. Even coming from a firm like Ava Ocean, with a sustainable model that has reopened a long-shuttered fishery, I felt uncomfortable telling people I was from the fishing industry.


We need to find that middle ground that doesn’t involve going in guns blazing. It would be great to see some closed debates, where people can speak freely and know they won’t be quoted – and won’t be attacked on social media. Imagine bringing the frankness of the LinkedIn comments section to the stage instead of a series of panels discussing topics we’re already in agreement on.

There was a quote I heard repeated on probably a panel a day – probably because it really sums up what’s needed: If you want to go fast, you go low; if you want to go far, you go together.


Ultimately the challenges we face in the ocean need private collaboration and innovation alongside governments, NGOs and science. And we need to talk more about what collaboration actually looks like for it to work.


I had the chance to meet the iconic oceanographer and marine biologist Sylvia Earle at an event hosted by the Blue Marine Foundation. She is such a huge inspiration to me, and meeting her in person was a highlight for sure.


How would you sum up the conversations you had with other attendees?


There was definitely interest in Ava Ocean technology but that was backed by scepticism too. It is clearly a struggle for people to equate industrial fishing with sustainable practices – even if we know we need more protein from the ocean.


Where did Ocean Green come into the conversation?


Ocean Green piqued the interest of most people I met. Everyone was speaking about 30x30: the idea of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. Ocean green is really unique, in these conversations because it’s one of the few restoration projects that is able to approach the issue with an industry and business case. Our sustainable business model that uses new or undervalued marine resources with the potential for a cascading effect for biodiversity is something that really sparks a lot of interest.


What was the most exciting outcome of UNOC for you?


The European Ocean Pact. It’s the equivalent of the EU Green Deal – but for the ocean. The Green Deal did a lot to unlock funding and make space for innovation. So I’m excited to see how a similar plan for the ocean will translate into action, funding and regulation.


Ava Ocean recently took part in the UN Ocean Conference in Nice, which saw the seafood industry notably absent from discussions and events concerning the future of fishing and seafood. 

"Where are the industry voices?" A UN Ocean Conference summary

In northern Norway, native kelp has been decimated by the march of urchins, a species whose voracious appetite and over-abundance as predators have been over-fished has turned once-kelp-green waters into barrens devoid of their natural biodiversity.

This is the balance that the Ocean Green consortium is seeking to restore. 

 project is a world-first in its scale, scope and ambition, with plans to restore kelp forests over a large scale and for the long term.


“We know that restoring the kelp forests of northern Norway will provide a huge boost to local biodiversity,” says Dagny-Elise Anastassiou, chief impact officer at Ava Ocean, lead on the Ocean Green Project. “We have seen how quickly kelp returns when you clear urchins – and the ocean life comes with it.


“That alone is of huge value but we also know that healthy kelp forests act as a nature-based sea defence system. They offer carbon sequestration. And, by establishing a new urchin fishery to drive a zero-waste, circular economy for clearing urchin barrens, Ocean Green is also delivering social benefits to the communities it serves. These are the kinds of tangible, holistic and long-term benefits that should come with any kind of credit system – be that carbon removal or biodiversity. We should be delivering on all fronts.”

Anastassiou stresses the need for a robust system that makes investment easier and more transparent. “Carbon and biodiversity credits are a real win-win for hard-to-abate emissions – but they must deliver. High-quality credits allow companies to invest in sustainability projects like Ocean Green while also offering an essential funding stream that offers stability and longevity to the projects themselves, allowing them to achieve more over the longer term.”

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