Return to audio interview | Next episode | Explore UC Science Radio
Molly Magid: Welcome to UC Science Radio, where we interview a range of postgrad students to tune into the fresh voices entering the world of science and learn what sparked their passion. I’m Molly Magid, a Master’s student in the School of Biological Sciences.
Today I’m talking with Finn Ross. He's an honours student studying ecology. His research is about using seaweed to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. He won the UC Centre for Entrepreneurship 2019 Social Enterprise Challenge for his business plan based on his research called "The Seaweed Solution."
Kia ora Finn, welcome to UC Science Radio.
Finn Ross: Kia ora Molly, thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk!
So, you're getting your honours in ecology, but specifically, what are you researching?
FR: So, broadly, looking at how we can draw down a bunch of our emissions into the Southern Ocean, and mostly using seaweed at the moment, is my honours research. So large-scale climate intervention using seaweed.
How do you go about doing this—growing the seaweed, putting it into the Southern Ocean? What's your day-to-day sort of look like?
FR: Yeah, so my honour’s research is looking at a bunch of different species, 17 different species, and which one grows the fastest under a bunch of different conditions really. There's a bunch of different ways you can facilitate seaweed growth to grow carbon dioxide. The three ways are through aquaculture, so the seaweed industry globally is exploding – bioplastics, biofuels, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, stock feed, methane reducers, sushi, everything – so many different products for seaweeds, so there's all the carbon that's being sequestered in those. Then there's carbon that's naturally being sequestered in kelp forests, which is very substantial but declining as climate change impacts kelp forests. And then the third part, which is sort of the high-hanging fruit in the blue carbon seaweed world, is growing seaweed specifically for carbon and then selling that as a carbon credit. And that's what we're sort of going at.
So the top layer of the ocean exchanges carbon really readily with the atmosphere. And so any carbon that's in the top layer of the ocean that you sequester using mangroves, salt marshes, sea grasses, or in our case, seaweed, is locking that carbon out of the atmospheric pool. But then if it breaks down, it just goes back into the water and then can be back in the atmospheric pool, so we've actually got to lock it in. And in the case of seaweed, transport it to the deep ocean, so get it down to a thousand meters depth. And so to do that, you've got to either grow it near the coast and dump it off shore, or actually grow it out at over a thousand meters depth. And we've got a concept that is these bamboo and hemp rafts, these free-floating pyramids that grow the seaweed macrocystis, which is the fastest growing thing on the planet, up to 0.5 meters a day which is a pretty phenomenal growth rate. And so they float around in the Southern Ocean up to eight months growing macrocystis. And then, as a carbon capture, it all gets shot down to the deep ocean. The ultimate goal is to be able to sell that then to the carbon market as an alternative to some of the pine forestry credits in New Zealand which have some very adverse effects that come with the large scale pine plantations. So hopefully that's a quick intro to what we're doing.
Yeah, so you're having this seaweed grow and instead of it decomposing in the top layer of the ocean, releasing that carbon back, you're shooting it down to the deep ocean so nothing can break it down and release that CO2. And then, in terms of the carbon credits, is that companies that are releasing carbon will buy it to offset those emissions? Or how exactly are these being sold?
FR: The demand for carbon credits really worldwide is exploding, so there's a bunch of different trading platforms you can sell your carbon credits on. New Zealand's got the Emissions Trading Systems, so it's sort of a wholesale market, anyone can sell their carbon credits to it. Most of them are pine credits. And Air New Zealand, Z, the Government buys some credits, or any company can just buy credits from it. But what we're trying to from the start is do it on a voluntary market, before the methodology is completely established. So a company, say a big oil and gas company, who are looking to mitigate a bunch of their emissions, they'll buy a huge amount of credits, say a hundred thousand credits or a hundred thousand tons, and ninety-five percent of their credits will be from more legit, established markets and then five percent of their credits will be from voluntary markets where it's a project like ours that, although our methodology isn't verified to the extent of some of the other ones, it's still a really cool project and we sort of use that funding retrospectively to fund it. But I mean, we're early days, for sure.
So you turned your honours basically into a business, but this isn't your first time running a business or having an idea like this, so could you talk a bit about your previous entrepreneurial or ongoing entrepreneurial ventures?
FR: So, yeah, I came from quite an enterprising family and then also a very outdoorsy family, so it was sort of entrepreneurship and the environment and climate that I've always been really passionate about.
So I've been involved in a few ventures over the last few years. The first one was Let Them Fish, which was in my last year of school. That was collecting second-hand fishing gear from around New Zealand and sending it to impoverished communities in the Pacific and Fiji and Tonga. And I actually ended up leaving school early and going up to Fiji and Tonga and spending time with church groups and charities up there working on Let Them Fish, on sort of livelihoods around fishing and providing for more sustainable fishing gear. So that was the first venture.
And then I went to the States for uni. And then I came back and started working on Live Ocean. Well, I was an employee of Live Ocean, so I didn't start it myself, but I was involved in a small team that got that off the ground. So a year and a half ago now, a little over a year and a half ago, which is a charity lead by Blair Tuke and Peter Burling, the Team New Zealand Sailors and gold medallists.
And then I've also been involved with my family in getting our farming operation off the ground, which is pretty cool. So another sort of completely different business angle. The first two were NGOs, and then this one is establishing a farm with all our markets.
And then the more recent one is obviously the Seaweed Solution, so I've got the business model alongside my honours research. So my honours research is a sort of small component that's contributing to our business. So it's me, four mechanical engineering students, and an industrial product design student, and really it's been the six of us doing a cross-department collaboration, having a pretty amazing opportunity to do a year-long brainstorm, and just throw a bunch of ideas out there. I guess we're all pretty young, passionate people motivated by climate change and what we can do.
And then the last one is Bomb Bucha, which is me and my flatmates last year started an alcoholic kombucha company. And we actually launched at the start of this year, and we're two-hundred percent climate positive as well, so offsetting our emissions. So I got my eco-angle in that as well. So if you want to support a climate-positive brand, go out and buy some Bomb Bucha.
That's awesome, and you sound so passionate about the environment and involving that in everything you do, so where did that come from?
FR: Yeah I think it was two things. I get asked it quite a bit, actually, sort of where did your deep passion for the environment come, and specifically for climate. And I think it was two things – I was from a really outdoorsy family. So my mum was a tramper, so we always went on family tramps with my mum growing up. And then my dad was a mad-keen spear fisherman. So me and my brother, our upbringing was either tramping with my mum or a lot of long days out on the water spearfishing with my dad and then I developed a bunch of more outdoor hobbies from there.
But I guess spending a lot of time in the environment, spending some time in the Pacific and witnessing the extent of coral bleaching. I mean, not many people realize, we go on holidays to Fiji and things now, and it's literally, it's all dead. Everything's dead. You know, it's already at a phenomenal scale, this mass bleaching has already occurred. And that was a real shock for me to sort of witness that. I mean places I'd gone to when I was younger on a family holiday, now it's just all gone.
And that with education as well. So I was lucky enough to study in the States, and then South Africa, and then New Zealand. And the more I learnt, and the more I continuously learn, the more I realize that hey, this is something that really matters, and you know we've got to act pretty swiftly.
So my last question is, what big change would you want to see come out of your research?
FR: So New Zealand has the fourth largest EZ or marine area in the world of any country, which is pretty amazing. And I guess I don't really believe we're capitalizing on it, on a few different fronts, but the biggest front is blue carbon. There's massive draw-down capacity in our ocean that's already happening, and I believe with further research, we can find ways to promote that. So starting the conversation around how we can include our ocean as an accelerator, as the massive sink that it is potentially. And ultimately, having the first little steps in getting certified as a carbon credit would be super cool.
Thank you so much with talking with me!
FR: Awesome, thanks very much!
Return to audio interview | Next episode | Explore UC Science Radio
