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March 1 to 9, Wellington’s will host New Zealand’s first Seaweed Festival, blending science, art, and community engagement to highlight one of the ocean’s hidden treasures: seaweed.
Led by Zoe Studd, co-founder of the Mountains to Sea Wellington Trust and Love Rimurimu project, she and her team aim to inspire environmental care.
She says Love Rimurimu has been a research, education, and scientific endeavour. “We’ve collaborated with Victoria University and NIWA and Taranaki Whānui to bring together knowledge and approaches for the restoration components and so the project, which has been running since 2020, has really focused on building knowledge and restoration know-how.”
During the festival, experts like Wendy Nelson, one of New Zealand’s top marine biologists and exclusive tours of Te Papa Museum’s seaweed collections will be part of the unique experiences on offer, as well as culinary events featuring seaweed-infused gins, tastings, and saunas using seaweed beauty products will highlight seaweed’s versatility.
Zoe says “We will have scientific content, not heaps, and that’s actually almost deliberate because one of the things that we’re really trying to achieve with Love Rimurimu is to take marine restoration and marine science far more into the hands of the community.”
She says “We know that people aren’t always that excited about seaweed. It’s usually the last thing that they look at when they’re going for a snorkel, so we wanted to find lots of really creative, artistic, fun ways for people to get to know it. That’s why the programme whilst containing all the usual things that we do like community snorkels, is also weighted towards new things like seaweed swims, singalongs, seaweed tasting, or foraging tours on the rocks, learning about different seaweed species and how they can be used.”
One of the festival’s exhibits, developed with Taranaki Whānui will focus on using natural fibres in seaweed restoration. Zoe says there will be weaving workshops and discussions around restoration from an indigenous perspective.” The festival also includes a seaweed slippery slide—possibly a world first—created by Octaclel, makers of seaweed-based wetsuit lubricant.
“New Zealand actually has quite a limited culture of seaweed use, except for Māori, who used to gather a few species, kārengō and others for eating, and using species like bull kelp to make storage baskets. There’s lots of fascinating uses, but we don’t have the same kind of culinary engagement with seaweeds as other cultures.” says Zoe.
She hopes the festival will deepen community engagement and encourage conservation.
“Wellington has the most diverse and incredible seaweed forests of any other city, and we really do have the most amazing seaweed forest on our doorstep. Auckland can’t access that in the same way, because of the fact that they’re in the inner harbour rather than along a wild coastline”