We had our first green gravel out-planting of the season on Wednesday, 2 April; 120 little seaweeds went into the water at our site over in Mahanga Bay. This is the earliest in the winter season that we’ve ever managed to get seaweeds into our restoration sites, and the hope is that this will maximise their time in cold winter oceans, allowing for them to grow and establish more before next summer.
Keeping the little kelpings in the temperature-controlled nursery over the summer, slowing their growth by limiting their light and available nutrients, has allowed us to respond to falling ocean temperatures almost instantaneously.
Along with our green gravel rocks, we are also revisiting the suspended substrate trials, with the first seeded rope hopefully going in next week. There was some initial success with the rope trials last winter, and we’re hopeful that through everything we learnt, we’ll see more success yet.
This will be our last season of active kelp outplanting, which in many ways will be sad, but we’ve started strong and there’s so much more to come… watch this space!
