Finally it’s done, I’ve brought the first algae back into their element. “Only two lines!” the pessimist might say. My answer: “At least!” Everyone started small.
I announced my participation in the algae sowing in Bergen in the summer of 2023, only to cancel again shortly afterwards. In between, I came up with the idea of spreading test lines myself in the area of my future farm. Also because the application for the use of the sea area is unfortunately taking a longer time.
Booking the trip to Ylvingen in mid-October wasn’t a big problem, but finding a partner who would organize two test lines for me was a little more difficult. Two times 20 meters, once with saccharina latissima (sugar kelp) and once with alaria esculenta (winged kelp), are not exactly lucrative deals, but that may change in the near future. In the end, my favorite was positive and I ordered my two lines from Seaweed Solutions AS in Trondheim for late morning on October 20th. The company is on the way from Oslo to Ylvingen. So it really wasn’t a problem to pick up the lines in person.
On October 17th, 2023 in the evening I got on the train to Kiel, from where I took the ferry to Oslo. There I rented a car to drive to Ylvingen with two stops. The first was due to an eCoaching, which I wanted to give on the evening of the 19th. For this I rented a small cabin at a campsite. That worked great. On October 20th I had to leave early so that I could be in Trondheim for the second stop later in the morning. Late morning again was necessary so that I could catch the last ferry from the mainland to the island on the evening of October 20th. Logistics down to the last detail, but it worked out well and I sank into bed that evening, tired from the long car ride, but happy that everything worked out so well.
I actually would have liked to get some rest the next day, but the weather had other plans. There was practically no wind and no clouds, and that was only on this one day, so I just had to start setting out the lines. Of course, I thought about several versions in advance of how I wanted/should do it. In the end, we came up with the solution with a buoy, from which one of the lines goes diagonally into the water on either side and is anchored to the bottom with a large stone. That was the plan!
Since I had also arranged an hour-long eCoaching this Saturday, I had to get up early to think about and do a few things beforehand. For example, I chose two stones and tied them on, one of which later actually made it onto the borrowed boat. The other one was so badly shaped that it wanted to fall out of the ropes when craned. But fortunately there are enough alternatives on the island of Ylvingen…
After the coaching, I went to visit our friends on the farm and shortly afterwards I even had two more strong hands on board for my project. Bjørnar, the farmer, has now become a bit of a sea farmer thanks to me. Together we loaded the stones, the baby algae, additional lines, boat hooks, underwater camera and of course the fender, which had been converted into a buoy, onto the boat. Then we went out to sea for the 20-minute crossing.
After a short discussion, we deployed the first line with stone attached, then connected the line to the buoy, tied the second line to the buoy and slowly drove it in the direction in which we wanted to align the whole rig. In the end the second stone also went aground and I have to say, it couldn’t have gone better! Both lines are beautifully slanted in the water in an east-west direction. And the lines should be roughly diagonal because one of the hoped-for results would be to find out at which water depth the algae grow best. And with this orientation, the algae will shade themselves as little as possible. We’ll see and we just have to wait now…