Sea6 Energy’s SeaCombine Could Revolutionize Ocean Farming

 
Sea6 Energy sea combine

Sea6 Energy’s prototype Sea Combine operates on a seaweed farm off the coast of Indonesia.

by Nell Lewis, CNN Business

Ocean farming is in the “stone ages,” according to Shrikumar Suryanarayan, co-founder and CEO of Bangalore, India-based Sea6 Energy. “It’s like using a trowel and a pick to farm land.”

Just as tractors did for agriculture, Sea6 Energy wants to mechanize ocean farming with its SeaCombine, an automated catamaran that simultaneously harvests and replants seaweed in the ocean. The machine travels back and forth between lines of seaweed, harvesting the fully-grown plants and replacing them with freshly seeded lines. Each SeaCombine unit is designed to farm about 50 hectares of the ocean surface.

A prototype is currently deployed at the company’s seaweed farm off the coast of Indonesia. As the technology develops and the market widens, the company intends to deploy more SeaCombines, including in its home country.

Dr. Suryanarayan hopes the SeaCombine will cut costs and make seaweed cheaper, so it can be more widely used. Doing this won’t hurt local livelihoods, he believes, as village cooperatives could lease the machinery, allowing them to farm a larger area.

The SeaCombine is just “a tool” in Sea6 Energy’s wider operation, says Dr. Suryanarayan. The company, which has raised $20 million in funding since its founding in 2010, currently uses the seaweed harvested by the machine to manufacture products including animal feed and agricultural fertilizer on a small scale.

All rights reserved. Permission required to reprint articles in their entirety. Must include copyright statement and live hyperlinks. Contact david@algaeplanet.com. Algae Planet accepts unsolicited manuscripts for consideration, and takes no responsibility for the validity of claims made in submitted editorial.

Algae Biomass Summit 2023
Seagriculture EU 2024
AlgaeMetrics

Subscribe

EABA AlgaeEurope23

Breaking-News

  • September 25, 2023: South Korean food ingredient company HN Novatech has announced that it has secured $4 million in a Series-A bridge round to commercialize its flagship ingredient ACOM-S, a seaweed-extracted heme for plant-based meat applications, such as burger patties, BBQ beef, and sausages. READ MORE...
  • September 21, 2023: Sea Forest, a Tasmanian-based company that grows seaweed to mitigate cow and sheep methane emissions, has been named a finalist in the prestigious global environmental award, the Earthshot Prize, set-up in 2020 by Prince William and world renowned wildlife filmmaker and environmentalist Sir David Attenborough. READ MORE...
  • September 18, 2023: Chitose Bio Evolution PTE. Ltd. has concluded a total of 21M USD in new share issuances through a third-party allotment with several large organizations. The funds raised will be allocated towards the expansion of the microalgae production facility and R&D of product applications to accelerate MATSURI, the project to build a microalgae-based industry to replace the petroleum industry. READ MORE...
Seaweed Industry Job Board

A Beginner’s Guide