2024 in reviewSteven Hermans

Hermans’ motivation for this trip partly stemmed from his ambition to share the lessons from the region’s hugely successful seaweed sector with the West’s fledgling practitioners, who still have much to learn.

“I had been reading and writing a lot about seaweeds in Europe and the US but it felt pretty ridiculous to be talking about seaweed so much without really discussing Asia, where most of it is coming from,” Hermans says.

“I hope it all helped to increase understanding of this part of the seaweed world, and I think it's important to keep it in people's minds. Most of the money is elsewhere, and a lot of the nuances are kind of flattened from a distance, so I tried to bring some colour,” he explains.

The Asian seaweed industry has made an important contribution to the lives of many people over the last five or six decades, according to Hermans. For many, seaweed farming is not simply an alternative to fishing for overexploited wild fish populations but also represents a way of life and a route out of poverty.

An eye on the West

Despite his travels, Hermans has also kept a keen eye on how the seaweed sector in the Western world has been faring.

It is no secret that it has not been an easy time for seaweed farmers and, bearing this in mind, Hermans’ summation of the industry at the end of 2023 included some bleak predictions. However, looking back on this year, the picture looks a little brighter.

“Last year I predicted quite a few bankruptcies because we saw this fairly significant lack of money and funding, and so I felt that, with the market being what it is, some of these companies are going to have to keel over, and that didn’t really happen,” he says.

“There were a few casualties – Running Tide was the big one and there were a few others – but despite there still being very little movement in terms of the market and demand, most of the startups that started around 2020 are still there. I think that's definitely a positive for me,” he reflects.

Despite the pervasive sense of market stagnation that has settled upon the Western industry over recent years, Hermans’ makes a point of highlighting the seaweed success stories that may have quietly gone under the radar over the last year.

“Kelp Blue is one that I would like to highlight, as when they started five years ago, all the people I asked all said ‘it's crazy, they don't know what they're doing, it's total madness’. Five years later they have hit their milestones, the seaweed is growing and they're selling their products,” he says.

“Acadian Seaplants is another I would like to highlight. This year they grew at least 300 tonnes of dulse through land-based cultivation. Other people are also growing dulse land-based but on a small scale. To be able to grow this amount of dulse heralds a new era for the sector. I think it really marks the shift from wild harvesting dulse to commercial scale cultivation. That’s quite significant,” he remarks.

The struggle continues

Whilst it is of course important to celebrate each and every achievement of the global seaweed industry as it grows and develops, it is hard to ignore the challenges. As far as Hermans is concerned, one of the biggest changes to occur this year is one of attitude, with the bright-eyed optimism that was common throughout the nascent industry beginning to fade.

“All those challenges with ocean health, the market, husbandry and policy were there before and they're still there. It just seems as though a kind of realism has descended on the seaweed industry. All of the big claims that people were making before have been toned down a lot. I think at the moment it's really just about trying to push on and trying to make this work,” he explains.

Despite the gloomy picture this may paint, progress continues to be made, little by little, as Hermans reflects.

“Once again it's about incremental improvement. People have gotten a little bit better at processing, a little bit better at different types of farming, and there are people working on new strains, for instance in tropical cultivation. Despite that, I don't see in the near future any kind of magic switch that will get everything figured out. So people have improved, I think across the board. The industry is very diverse with different species, different types of cultivation, and different markets, and people have pushed on in all of those markets, but I can’t point at any one place where there has been a step change this year. Let's say the pieces of the puzzle are being readied. Now it's about putting it all together,” he says.

An outlook for the future

One of the key challenges faced by the Western seaweed industry – a lack of demand – is one that Hermans believes can be solved and, as with many problems, the key to the solution is communication and collaboration.

“In countries such as Korea, Japan, and China, their seaweed markets are very well developed. There is demand for much more, but production has been unable to keep up. Conversely, in Europe we could be producing more seaweeds, but we don't have the market to produce for. Obviously the first idea that comes to mind is ‘why don't we just ship European seaweed to Asia?’ It's a bit more complicated than that, otherwise some people would have already done it, but I think it’s definitely possible,” he says.

Whilst this idea is still very much in the early stages, it is encouraging to think that the very different issues experienced by seaweed producers on either side of the globe could provide mutually beneficial solutions in the future. With plans to travel to China, Japan, and Vietnam over the coming year to continue to document seaweed production, Hermans will perhaps be able to give some expert insight into this potential solution sooner rather than later.

As for the wider industry, Hermans hopes that 2025 will bring a greater focus to the growing problem of harmful algal blooms which plague coastal ecosystems across the world, from the Caribbean’s Sargassum woes to the rapidly spreading Rugulopteryx okamurae, which is invading coastlines around the Mediterranean.

“There just isn't enough entrepreneurial energy going towards this issue. So, from businesses, government policy, and environmental NGOs we need to start seeing that effort. It's an enormous amount of seaweeds, and if we want to reduce carbon emissions, this is where I think we can make a huge impact by picking up that seaweed before it reaches the beach and starts to rot,” he explains.

Summing up his outlook for the near future, Hermans seems quietly optimistic, although still retains a down-to-earth realism.

“When we look at the challenges, they have been discussed ad nauseam the past few years. We know it’s not easy. But on the other hand, looking at the drivers, in particular the need for more biomass for materials, chemicals et cetera in a future bio-economy, they haven’t disappeared either. While I sometimes struggle to think how we’re supposed to surmount all the difficulties in growing the seaweed industry, I also cannot imagine the opposite: a future where seaweeds do not play a much larger role in powering our everyday lives. It might still take a while. But I think it will happen,” he concludes.