Transcription of Marine Plant-Based University with Firestarter Interactive:

Alissa – Thank you very much for the time. And so the reason why we I decided to start this marine plant based organization is again, we I wanted to explain people what’s the benefit and what’s also how to use the seaweed in general. Because the people in the US. Mostly they think that how to say if they hurt seaweed, they got an image like sushi or those kind of a stuff. But as you know, the seaweed has a much more potential not just sushi or onigiri but also we can use for sweets, beverage, soup, skincare, hair care, plastic alternative and also medical cup sales as well. There’s massive opportunity. So I wanted to educate people that there’s so many potentials that’s wanted and also I also wanted to educate people that there’s so many health benefit and also sustainability benefit as well. So that’s why I decided to establish this marine plant based organization and in the future I would love to create like how to say like. Organic certification or those kind of category. Because if the old brand using this if the old brand using this icon on their packaging, it’s going to be a perfect education and people are going to know that it’s like, oh, because of the organic certification, people know that, oh, organic is really healthy. I wanted to do the same strategy for me. Why? I’m not going to ask any money for the corporation company because I just wanted to educate and I wanted to make this opportunity more bigger and bigger. But in the future, if the category become bigger, everybody going to have the same benefit. So that’s why I decided to invest my time and effort to this organization. But thank you very much again for the wonderful opportunity. I really appreciate it.

Willa – Very exciting, everything that you’re doing. And we obviously have a shared philosophy and ethos and all this is very kind of in like a grassroots stage. So I think it’s just so important to kind of connect behind the scenes, have these kinds of conversations to hopefully educate a broader audience and make it a little bit less grassroots and more mainstream because that’s where it can start to have some of the big impacts that has the potential too.

Vanessa – All right. Yeah. So, Willow, really what we want to do is we want to open the floor up for discussion for what you do, what your organization does for marine plant-based, why you chose to go into this field, and why you’re passionate about the sustainability of the planet. So really, it’s an open conversation to learn more about you and educate the public about what it is that you do. And we’re trying to get partners and more organizations that have the same mission and vision as we do so that we can collectively come together and say, this is why marine plant-based sustainability is important.

Willa – Absolutely.

Vanessa – We’re really interested and invested in what you do for marine plants and your story. So this is really for us to understand more about you and your background. 

Willa – Sure. So my name is Willa Cameron, and I’m a filmmaker and a storyteller with a background in documentary. I grew up by the ocean, coastal Rhode Island, and so seaweed was always something that I was familiar with. It was what we saw walking along the beach and what I looked at in tide pools. As I moved on later in life and began my professional career, I thought that I wanted to be a public radio producer. And so about 15 years ago, that’s the pathway that I started out on. And to be a public radio producer, you have to try to get stories picked up by shows and out there to audiences. And so one of the first and really only stories that I came across and tried to get on a radio show was about the first US. Based seaweed farm off the coast of Portland, Maine, where I was living at the time. And so I visited the farm this was back in 2009, and I visited the farm. I took a lot of photographs. I interviewed the two seaweed farmers. And the show at the time was not interested in the story. They just thought it wasn’t going to be interesting American audiences, even though it was part of this, as you know, massive global industry. And there are so many positive benefits of seaweed improving ecosystems right now. Seaweed. There’s buzz around seaweed. But back in 2009, there just wasn’t. So I’m glad to see the direction that it’s gone in the meantime. So I didn’t forget about Seaweed for a good decade, but I basically just focused on other things in my career and left Public Radio behind and became a filmmaker, establishing a company called Firestruger Interactive. And a couple of years ago, Seaweed just came back on the radar. I started hearing about it on podcasts. I met someone here in Rhode Island where I live who made a kelp based beverage, a morning drink to give you energy and start your day off right. And my personal obsession with Seaweed was reignited. And we as a company came together. We have a mission to improve the well being of people and planet through the work that we do with real strong interest in the environment. We’re a member of 1% for the planet, so 1% of every dollar that we make goes to environmental causes. And so everything just came together to really crystallize our passion for focusing on Seaweed and how we can support, through the documentary process and storytelling, this industry really moving forward and expanding in the best way that it possibly can, and we see a real kind of important place for storytelling as part of that process. So we began to develop a documentary film project called Celt Movement, Regenerative Ocean Farming and the Power of Blue and have been working on that for about a year and a half, doing some interviews across the US. And fundraising to try to make the full project a reality, but really engaging in the subject in the community. And even in that year and a half that we’ve been closely tracking it, it’s been really amazing to see the trajectory of Seaweed in the US. And really. Europe and around the world. I see it as kind of the new seaweed industry and the old seaweed industry. 

Alissa – That’s beautiful. So through the documentary, you said that you find the traditional industrial and then the new industrial. What do you find the differences between the new and then also the old industrial?

Willa – Well, I mean, I think the older traditional industry has a lot of deep cultural ties, and it’s embedded in the cultures where it’s traditionally cultivated with that more Asian cultures and places korea, China, Indonesia, but Japan. But with that said, the seaweed does have these roots in North America, in Europe. They’ve just been lost. We have filmed with indigenous seaweed farmers, the first indigenous seaweed farmers in the northeast of the US. The shinycock tribe on Long Island. And they historically used seaweed that they gathered along their shores in agriculture for building materials. So part of their seaweed farming project has been getting back to the roots while also working to clean up their coastal waters through planting seaweed because of all the development that’s happened in the area. So kind of stepping back. I think traditional seaweed farming in Asia tends to be at least. I haven’t been there yet to see it in person. But a lot of it, at least in Korea and some other places tends to be, it seems like, smaller scale farmers. But then places like Indonesia, from what I kind of observe and gather, the traditional seaweed industry in some places at least, seems smaller scale businesses, farmers using maybe less technology. And it’s just like, very embedded in the cultural practices of the society. I’m thinking about what I’ve learned about, for example, in Korea, but then I also know Indonesia, for example, is one of the top places where seaweed is produced, red Seaweed, I believe, and there’s a lot more industrial production that happens there, I think, as well. So I think it’s a spectrum. But I think what seems to differentiate the new seaweed industry is a focus on all of the other applications that seaweed can be used for, whether it’s incorporated into kind of new food products that are outside of sushi restaurants. So, for example, burgers and seaweed bacon and seaweed chips and things like that, and trying to familiarize American palates with it. It’s looking at seaweeds have long kind of cultivated in the old traditional seaweed industry, or have long had industrial applications for alginates and things like toothpaste and ice cream and coatings for fruits and vegetables and various industrial products. But I think it’s. Taking another look at the processing of seaweed and how the various components can be used for cosmetics and food products and agricultural applications, even potentially biofuels. Bioplastics. So I think there’s just in places around the world where there wasn’t previously attention to both cultivating and processing seaweed and seeing how it can be used. I think there is just a zeitgeist and attention to that right now, which is very exciting.

Alissa – That’s beautiful. So through 1s your documentary, do you explain if it was kind of a transition or new, or what is your most focus on your story?

Willa – Sure. So the story which is very much in development, in process, our real interest in it is talking about the new seaweed industry. For sure. The traditional industry is part of that story because that’s the lineage of it. And there’s a lot of interesting work being done, actually, of sharing research, you know. Things that are happening in university labs in Korea or in research happening at Woods Hole in Massachusetts. There’s cross-pollination and there’s relationships between those scientists and between those research institutions. So both are definitely part of the story. But we are we’re very focused on first just educating general audiences about the fact that you can farm in the ocean. Why would you do that? How do you do it? And then if you grow a lot of seaweed, then what do you do with that seaweed? What’s the potential of it? And exploring all those potential applications, but also asking some of the hard and important questions as the industry scales so that it can hopefully scale in the best and most sustainable and hopefully regenerative way that it can. We as humans have a history of thinking that we know all the answers. And it’s really important to think about. Just to evaluate where the science is. As we make big decisions about, say, growing a lot of seaweed and sinking it to the ocean floor, what’s the life cycle of that seaweed? What’s the impact going to be on marine environments long term? Will that disrupt ecosystems in the deep sea floor?

There’s companies that are monetizing a lot of things that are based on shaky science and it’s important to be hearing all the perspectives. There’s questions about most seaweed is being grown on a fairly small scale. Yet to have some of the there’s a lot of headlines about the potential of seaweed to solve climate change and be a huge carbon sink and all of that, and for the scale, for it to be able to really realize those kind of big climate impacts. Do we? You know, what’s the impact of growing that amount of seaweed on the ocean? So saying all that as a huge seaweed proponent, and I sure hope that all of that, that we can really scale the industry for it to realize that positive global impact.

Alissa – Right. So there’s a lot of a problem between using seaweed nowadays. If we harvest too much, of course it’s going to be a damage to the ocean. However, the seaweed is a really great resource that they can grow quickly than the other forests are visible. So we always like to need to debate how to save the Earth, but on the same time, how to have our own industry. That’s totally understandable. And then I love that how you chose that category in your story. Is there any success story that do you have with a marine plant? 

Willa – I would say personally, I love using it in the kitchen, but that’s a personal success story. But I think kind of as a storyteller. One of the early stories that I mentioned is the Sheena Cock tribe on Long Island, who have their six women, the Shinica Kelp farmers. And we’ve spent some time with them, filming them, what they’re doing, interviewing them. And in just a couple of harvest seasons, it’s been really amazing to see the positive impact that they’ve already seen in their coastal waters. They. Historically have relied on gathering shellfish and other marine life for their sustenance. And in recent years, the past decade or so, they’ve just seen dwindling populations of all of that. And so they’ve been having a harder time maintaining their cultural traditions and ways of eating. So shellfish, because of increased ocean acidic vacation, have been disappearing from their waters. So they learned about seaweed and began cultivating it. They learned about the possibility of cultivating seaweed rather than just foraging kind of wild seaweed and began cultivating it. And already in just a year, they have seen some of that marine life returning to their water. So that’s a real success story. 

Alissa – That’s so beautiful. Are you going to put those stories in your documentary too? 

Willa – Yes, absolutely. And as we’re producing the documentary, we’re releasing short videos along the way, two minutes to five minutes.

Alissa – We’re going to be like a short version and then multiple stories?

Willa – Exactly. The main kind of final product will be a feature length, like 90 minutes documentary that could be seen in theaters or online. But along the way we’re releasing shorter stories just to share as we go build the community, because this is all about community as well. So that’s one that there’s already something online from the shinica on our social media.

Alissa – So your goal for this documentary is to educate people. Is that a correct understanding?

Willa – Absolutely, yeah. Educate, inspire, ask some of the important questions along the way. There’s a lot of documentaries and films that are done about movements that have already happened and then you can kind of like what went right, what went wrong. But this is the movement that’s currently happening, which is why we have called it Kelp movement. 

Alissa – What’s your goal for this documentary? What do you wanted to do? I love that you wanted to educate people. Yes, I totally wanted to support that. But what is your real goal? For example, how many people do you wanted to educate this? Or do you have any big dream or any big pictures for these activities?

Willa – Well, I mean, I think the larger kind of big picture, kind of global impact is to what inspired the project from the beginning was wanting to have a positive impact on the industry itself so that it can scale and scale in a way that is scale in the right way. And that’s going to take just a lot more people knowing about it, engaging in it, whether they’re farmers, entrepreneurs, investors, young students who learn about this in the classroom. Because as we produce the film, we’re going to be getting this in classrooms as well, in science classes. So one of the things I love about Seaweed is there’s literally kind of a doorway in for everyone.

Alissa – How can we support you? So, of course, we would love to post about your documentary in my LinkedIn or Marin plan based organization, but is there anything that we can help you? What’s your request from us? How do you want to get some support from our side?

Willa – Thank you. Well, right now it is all about building communities. So I’d love to encourage you and your listeners to visit our website, kelpmovement.com. We’re on LinkedIn at Kelp Movement and you can connect with me personally there as well. Willa Camera and we’re on Instagram as well. That’s probably where we’re most engaged, at Kelp Movement. If you’re an invest us are listening and want to make this documentary a true reality, then we’d love to connect. And I will say just, I love what you’re doing with your company and we are going to be creating events along the way as well, sharing footage, creating dinners with Seaweed. And so I think having some of your treats as a dessert on the table would be absolutely.

Alissa – I’m going to send you our sweet later. 

Willa – oh, so exciting.

Alissa – My dream is I wanted to do a marine plant based festival or those kind of.

Willa – I love that. Yeah, no, let’s collaborate because similarly, we are wanting to create that kind of in person community sharing.

Alissa – Let’s do it.