Seaweed: What a World it Could Be

I have been doing a deep dive into seaweeds for the past year and have become a seaweed junkie. I started to work with seaweeds in my natural dyeing projects, both for color as well as in my eco-printing designs. In so doing, the magnificence of these life forms became revealed to me.

Seaweeds, technically mostly algae, are a true gift of the natural world, growing with just sunlight, saltwater and the nutrients in the sea. Seaweeds grow far more rapidly than land plants and tropical forests, absorb vast amounts of carbon (more than land vegetation), can withstand crazy conditions of extreme winds, water-force and temperatures, and provide a range of essential food, nutrients and medicinal properties to land and sea animals, humans, the ocean and soil. A fascinating example of this is on the Orkney Islands, off the northern most tip of Scotland, where the sheep thrive solely eating the seaweed that washes up on the shoreline.

In addition to using seaweeds in my dyeing work, I now also eat at least two kinds of seaweed a day and use them as skin care. Nothing new there as seaweeds have been used as food, body care, animal feed and fertilizers around the world for millennia. Crafting them into fibers is a newer prospect, at least on a commercial scale.

In Vincent Doumeizel’s, The Seaweed Revolution, he details countless stories about innovative projects of all kinds with seaweeds from around the world. Nienke Hoogvliet talks about her pilot projects into seaweed fibers in her gorgeous Seaweed Research book, and she also highlights the work of Stefan Kraan and The Seaweed Company in Ireland and the Netherlands. There is research happening around the globe trying to figure out how to make seaweeds into yarn and fabrics in a sustainable way without harsh chemicals. A few places are coming close like Kelsun®, Vyld B2B, and Seacell (a combo of cellulose and brown seaweed).

While on vacation last week, walking and swimming on a magnificent turquoise beach, I was devastated to see the amount of plastic washing up on the shoreline intermixed with the mostly sargassum seaweed. Blue, white, and black bottle caps were the most plentiful, but bits of rope and other plastics were laced throughout as well. As I was gathering some seaweed and taking photos it was nearly impossible to find any that was uncontaminated.

In the water, as my eyes feasted on the greens, blues and different shades of turquoise and my body absorbed the healing seawater, I realized I was swimming with visible plastics. At first I mistook a clear plastic baggie for a jellyfish—probably the only time I wish it had been a jellyfish!

What should have been pristine water and sand was overcome with the detritus of our synthetic petroleum world.

During an illuminating walking meditation along the lapping surf I got the inspiration to design a line of bathing suits made from seaweed—Selkie Swimwear©—a nod to my Irish ancestry. It came to me fully formed, envisioning kelp fibers as the basis of the material and imagining a world where swimmers and surfers wore swimsuits made from the ocean.

What a world it could be.