Saccorhiza polyschides

So here we were on Ylvingen in the summer and my son and I took a boat on Saturday 22nd July 2023 and sailed the approximately six nautical miles to the area I have chosen to be the location of my farm. We had snorkeling equipment for the water temperature of 65°35 N in summer and a small underwater camera with us. The mission: to see whether, and if so, which types of algae occur naturally there.

We dropped the anchor at a depth of around 3m and shortly afterwards I jumped into the water. Visibility wasn’t that good, but soon I was able to see and photograph / film a whole forest of aquatic plants in front of me. At first glance it seemed that algae like to grow here. Back on board, we pulled up a few of these algae during the anchor maneuver and also brought two on board:

With these photos I asked a marine biologist friend who specializes in algae what kind of species it could be. The answer came relatively quickly and was: saccorhiza polyschides. Of course, that didn’t really mean anything to me at first, but thanks to Google, I soon found out that saccorhiza polyschides like similar growing conditions to saccharina latissima (sugar kelp). The marine biologist confirmed that to me. As you can imagine, that gave me a lot of inspiration and today I sent the application for the use of the sea area to the relevant authorities in Nordland Fylke. Now it’s time to keep our fingers crossed and wait.