Norway’s Kelp Revolution

Okay, it might be dramatic to call this a “revolution”, but I’m nothing if not dramatic some days.
Anyway, Norway is doing something cool, and more people should know about it.

If you stand on the wind-whipped coast of Norway (as I hope to one day!) and let your eyes rest on the gray-blue line where sky gently kisses sea, you might never know what’s happening below the surface.
Ropes made of kelp, miles and miles of kelp are growing under the surface.

Down there, something old is learning to become something new, and in the process, helping to save the environment.

Kelp as Architecture

I like to imagine vast curtains of the strange green/brown kelp unfurling in slow motion as baby kelp descends like the savior of an underwater jungle.
As they grow, they sway and bend, swaying to nothing but currents and fish passing through.

Kelp has always been a survivor. It doesn’t whine for freshwater, it doesn’t demand rich soil, it doesn’t need fertilizer trucked in from half a world away.
Just give it some rope, saltwater, and sunlight, and it will build itself into a forest.
Not in decades…but in months.

And these aren’t just pretty curtains that I have nightmares about tangling around my feet.
Each long blade of kelp pulls carbon from the water, pulling it from the air, and storing it in tissues that stretch ten to twenty feet long.
Some of that carbon returns when the kelp dies, and some sinks to the deep sea, where it rests for centuries.
All of it adds up to a quiet math that could matter more than we realize.

The Pilot Beneath Trøndelag

Off the coast of Trøndelag, Norway, 20 hectares of ocean are now part of an experiment.
It’s called JIP Seaweed Carbon Solutions, and it is equal parts science, hope, and sheer audacity.

The project is backed by names that make you raise your eyebrows: SINTEF, DNV, Equinor, Aker BP, Wintershall Dea, and Ocean Rainforest.
A crazy combination of oil giants, research institutes, and engineers.
The very companies whose rigs have long pulled carbon out of the Earth are finally now leaning toward kelp as a way of pulling it back in.

In winter 2023 the ropes were seeded.
In the summer of 2024, the first harvest was completed.
The initial yield estimate remains true in 2025, which is about 150 tonnes of kelp, capturing approximately 15 tonnes of CO₂ across its first season.
Almost laughable if you’re measuring against the billions of tonnes we release each year…but every oak tree begins as a sapling.
Every garden starts with dirt and tiny seeds, and our lives are made up by little moments that stack up into memory.

This is a start, and this start looks like rope stretching down into cold saltwater.

An Oil Company Grows a Forest

You don’t expect a company like Aker BP (an oil and gas heavyweight company) to spend time talking about biochar and kelp blades.
But there they are, near the island of Frøya, seeding fields of ocean forest.
Guilt? Sense of obligation? Tax break?

I guess who really cares? Because the math makes sense.
A single square kilometer of kelp could capture up to 3,000 tonnes of CO₂ a year.
Scaled up, those numbers can get serious pretty quickly. Scaled up large enough they can even rival some land-based forests.

The harvested kelp might be turned into biochar, buried in soil as a stable form of carbon.
Or it can be sunk deliberately into the deep sea, where light never penetrates and decomposition slows to a crawl. Out of sight, out of the atmosphere.

There’s something practical about the idea: oil companies, once masters of carbon extraction, now trying to master carbon destruction and burial.

History of the Forgotten Forests

Why Norway you might wonder?
Norway knows kelp (what a thing to know!).
These waters have always been home to dense kelp forests, teeming with fish, seeding biodiversity, and protecting coastlines.
But like too many ecosystems, they’ve also been lost before.
In the 1970s, sea urchin outbreaks (of all things) ravaged thousands of square kilometers of kelp along the Norwegian coast.
What had been green forests became underwater deserts within a decade.

When they came back, researchers realized kelp forests weren’t just ecological wonders. On paper, their ecosystem value (from sheltering fish to buffering waves to storing carbon) could rival, or even multiply, that of land forests.
Some studies put the number at dozens of times higher per hectare.
Food, shelter, carbon, oxygen…kelp is extremely generous when allowed to grow.

If climate change is a fire, kelp is one of the damp cloths we can throw over it to slow the spread.

Why Kelp Works

There’s a few reasons kelp feels almost too good to be true:

Incredibly fast growth: in the right conditions, kelp can grow up to half a meter a day. Imagine forests that regenerate faster than we can measure! It reminds me a little of bamboo in it’s vigor.

No land needed. This is huge in my mind, as it doesn’t compete with farmland or forests. No one’s clearing rainforests for kelp farms.

No freshwater or fertilizers needed for these brownish green plants. At a time when agriculture drinks rivers dry (hello California), kelp sips only on seawater…which we have plenty of.

It’s even an ecosystem booster: kelp forests filter water, soften acidification, and give fish places to breed and hide. Also reminds me of oyster farms that leave the water cleaner than it found it.

The golden jew is still carbon capture. Every blade is a sponge for CO₂.

It’s like discovering that one of the most stubborn weeds in your garden also happens to cure fevers, feed livestock, and fix your roof all at once.

Maine’s Kelp and Mussels

Norway isn’t alone in this.
In the Gulf of Maine, shellfish farmer Carter Newell of Bangs Island Mussels discovered something strange.
His mussels were growing thicker shells and healthier bodies, when kelp grew alongside them.
Kelp absorbed carbon, softened the water’s acidity, and created a kinder home for mussels.
Sadly, Carter Newell has passed on from this life, but his discovery inspired more than one of these farms in the area.

In an age when oceans are acidifying faster than ever, that discovery is gold.
It suggests kelp can be more than a carbon sink, it can be a lifeline for seafood itself.
Which…if you’ve been paying attention is in need of some serious help.

But here’s the beauty of kelp farms in the mix: we don’t need just one miracle. We need a thousand small solutions.
Solar panels won’t solve it alone, electric cars won’t solve it alone, and neither will kelp. The earth is dying a death of a thousand papercuts and we need more than one solution to keep us afloat.

Float On Norway

So picture Norway again with their gray skies. A restless sea throwing waves around like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Beneath, ropes hung with brown-green curtains grow taller every day.
Fish dart between them and build their homes.
Carbon is being pulled into their veins.
Scientists in yellow raingear (that’s what they wear in my mind) watching from boats, knowing they might be looking at one of the simplest, cleanest, most natural tools we have left.

Kelp doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be allowed to grow.

Because if the ocean is a desert, kelp is its possible forest seeds, and right now, the world could use a song that heals.

Get yourself a 4ocean bracelet! For every one sold they remove 1 pound of plastic from the ocean and it’s made with recovered plastic from the sea.