Speaker

About the speaker: 

Caroline Haukeland is a Norwegian marine business developer working with SeaForester Norway, focusing on scaling kelp forest restoration. Seaforester operates at the interface between industry, research, and public sector stakeholders to translate marine restoration from pilot projects into deployable, financed, and operational programs.

Caroline has a background in marine biomass commercialization and has worked across the full seaweed value chain, including harvesting, processing, and international market development. Her current work focuses on developing partnerships, funding pathways, and implementation models for large-scale restoration of kelp ecosystems in Norway, including projects targeting sea urchin overgrazed areas.

Company info:

SeaForester is a Portugal and Norway-based environmental impact company pioneering large-scale kelp forest restoration. With advanced seaweed nurseries and innovative seaforestation techniques, SeaForester provides low-cost solutions to restore marine ecosystems, strengthen fisheries, and sequester carbon at a meaningful scale. SeaForester has a proven business model offering clients worldwide an alternative to planting trees on land.

Presentation:

Norway once had some of the world's most productive kelp forests — until sea urchin barrens stripped 500 000 hectares bare. Seaforester is developing scalable, nature-based methods to restore them and has been pioneering kelp restorationin Portugal since 2016. In Norway, one of their methods is sea urchin removal: by reducing urchin pressure, kelp forests regenerate naturally, delivering measurable gains in carbon sequestration, biodiversity, and coastal habitat.

Through active projects in Norway they are developing and testing restoration at scale. One example is their collaboration with Seaweed Solutions, exploring how active outplanting of seeds and development of climate-adapted strains could further strengthen restoration outcomes.

They are building the science, regulatory frameworks, and commercial infrastructure to unlock what Norway's northern coastline represents: one of the largest untapped restoration opportunities in Europe.