One of SeaForester's main seaforestation techniques consists of taking seaweed spores, spraying them on stones and then deploying them in the sea.
Photo: SeaForester.
Marine restoration company SeaForester announced today that it has raised USD 1.9 million from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Schmidt Marine Technology Partners, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation. The new funding will accelerate the company's global expansion and further development of its breakthrough seaforestation technologies, which in turn will help to scale ocean reforestation.
"The planet has been losing its kelp forests at a truly alarming pace, which means we're losing the habitat critical for healthy fisheries, and one of the planet's largest carbon sinks," said Mark Schrope, Director of Schmidt Marine Technology Partners. "We've got to reverse this trend and Seaforester's technology is one of the best examples we've seen of how innovation and science can work together to restore nature at scale."
"SeaForester is proving that we can reforest the ocean with the same ambition that we've applied to land," commented, for his part, Paul Dobbins, Senior Director of Impact Investing at WWF. "Their model delivers measurable gains in biodiversity, carbon storage, and sustainable aquaculture—all while supporting coastal communities and industries that depend on healthy seas."
Based in Portugal and Norway, SeaForester offers low-cost solutions to restore degraded coastal ecosystems by replanting native kelp forests—the oceanic equivalent of tropical rainforests—which provide habitat for marine life, improve fisheries, absorb excess nutrients, and permanently sequester carbon.
"This investment is a testament to SeaForester's vision and strategy, it allows us to accelerate our work in the sea, improve our techniques and expand partnerships with industries that depend on a healthy ocean," said Pål Bakken, Founder and CEO of SeaForester. "Together, we will bring back the 'forgotten forest' and create more life on the 'blue front yards' around the world."
The funding will support the expansion of these restoration efforts—its mission is to restore 100,000 hectares of kelp forests by 2040—as well as the deployment of enabling technologies such as the ROOTS (Restoration Oriented Ocean Technology System) kelp nursery platform and KelpOS, a digital monitoring and analytics system that integrates satellite, ROV, and eDNA data to track ecosystem recovery in real time.
The completion of this funding operation—for which SeaForester has relied on the impact-driven blue economy investment bank Aquamarine - Impact Capital Partners as its financial advisor—comes at a time when demand for kelp forest restoration is surging, driven by EU regulation and a shift in corporate restoration commitments toward the ocean.
One example of this corporate commitment is Nestlé Purina Petcare Europe's Ocean Restoration Program, which aims to restore 1,500 hectares—equivalent to around 3,700 soccer fields—of marine habitats by 2030, with SeForester as one of the participating expert partners.
Its experience in successful projects in Portugal, where it holds Europe's largest restoration permit, has led SeaForester to also accelerate its restoration activities in Norway, implementing large-scale restoration pilot projects across sea urchin barrens in the North and lost seaweed forests in the South.
In addition, the company has also begun testing new cutting-edge techniques designed to dramatically reduce the cost of restoring lost marine forests and will soon announce several major strategic collaborations with global players in genetic R&D and monitoring that, it claims, will cement SeaForester's leading edge in ocean restoration.
