Please join us in congratulating @lkapphahn of Hueneme Sea Farm LLC! We look forward to learning more about your project.
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Thank you so much for this opportunity. Our location Ventura County, CA, is known for its agriculture and coastlines but has limited oceanographic environmental health data readily available for residents and visitors. The dev kit will allow us to collect multiple types of data to host or contribute to open-source GIS databases. Some parameters we’re looking to measure are: Conductivity, Temperature, Depth, Chlorophyl, Salinity, pH, Turbidity, Flow rate and dissolved oxygen levels. Locations to be surveyed are public serving and degraded. Once a baseline survey is completed. We will assess if it is possible to grow seaweed to improve the water quality. If so, we’ll continue to propagate. This project will help propel the progression of regenerative coastal mariculture in California. Sea farms in California are currently limited to a select few up and down the coast, none of them located in Ventura County. Quality and consistent environmental data within a GIS Interface will help our company provide a needed service to our community and validation of our regenerative goal to grow seaweed feedstocks and provide them to formerly petroleum-based industries. Our “seaweed raft” is in development to provide a modular dock side garden for live aboard boaters in the harbor. There was a large harmful algal bloom earlier this year, high levels of domoic acid made marine animals sick and they washed up dead or bit people all over Southern California. Growing seaweeds near urban outfall points can limit these harmful events by absorbing nutrients like a sponge and limiting the amount of nutrients harmful algal species can up take. These data can also be used to assess climate impacts. In the end our project provides local husbandry opportunities, cleans ocean water, collects missing and needed data, provides market disruptions and above all it provides a case study or model for other urban/coastal farms.
I look forward to our collaboration and launch,
Lauren Kapphahn
Founder
Hueneme Sea Farm, LLC
This is such an awesome project Lauren! We look forward to learning more. @zack_j and the rest of our team are huge seaweed lovers!