March 2025 Edition
A monthly round-up of news and trends important to the AltaSea community.
AltaSea Community Spotlight
Kelp may be one of the first species to show how coastal ecosystems will respond to the L.A. fires.
Forests of kelp, a fast-growing brown algae, provide food and habitat for hundreds of marine species and absorb greenhouse gases that might otherwise hasten climate change.
Yet kelp is also highly sensitive to environmental changes.
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The port approved a general outline for a new development in 2009 and two development firms – The Ratkovich Company and Jerico Development – in a partnership with the port and city, have been laying the groundwork ever since.
But the complications have been many. The project, after all, involved a private developer working on land controlled by the Port of L.A., and required building and other permits that had to go through Los Angeles, a city known for its red tape.
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The star of the program is a blue, sedan-sized piece of metal sitting on the pier, waiting to get put in the water. Its whole purpose is to bob up and down on the ocean’s waves. When a bunch of these floats sit next to each other, they look like a series of piano keys that move up and down every time a wave comes in.
AltaSea, a nonprofit that develops the sustainable ocean economy, is shepherding the program at the Port of Los Angeles.
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Four aquaculture startups and one blue carbon company arrived in Hawai’i this week for the start of Hatch Blue’s latest Crest accelerator programme.
While there, the companies – AlgiSys, Grolink, Scape, Seatopia, and Sensor Globe – will be based in the Pacific’s aquaculture and marine science innovation hub, HOST Park, which is managed by the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawai’i Authority (NELHA).
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The ocean is nature’s most powerful carbon sink—absorbing 25 percent of annual carbon emissions. Over the past century, the ocean’s ability to capture and store so-called blue carbon has been significantly reduced by coastal development, pollution, and habitat destruction.
by: Terry Tamminen and Emily Vidovich
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Upcoming Events
The Rolex Los Angeles Sail Grand Prix on March 15-16 is the fourth event of the 2025 Season. Expect plenty of drama as the U.S. SailGP Team defends home waters for the first time this season.
Situated on the Port of Los Angeles, the racecourse is one of the tightest on the calendar – promising fierce, fearless, and formidable racing as the 12 teams fight to put maximum points on the board.
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Join us at AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles for a day filled with insightful discussions, innovative ideas, and networking opportunities. Held in honor of Earth Day 2025, the Urban Renewable Energy Summit is a unique event dedicated to advancing climate resilience, energy equity, and sustainable innovation within Los Angeles County’s urban marketplace.
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IGNITE22 takes place at AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles in an industrial creative space directly on the LA waterfront. Experience technology exhibits and demonstrations on land and in the water.
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Marine Science
The ocean plays a key role in regulating our climate, absorbing 30% of carbon dioxide emissions and 90% of excess heat. With scientific consensus that carbon dioxide removal is needed to complement deeper emissions reductions, there’s growing interest in leveraging the ocean’s natural processes to pull more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
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Using only fins, divers wild-harvest abalone off eastern Australia’s coast. The marine snail, known for its beautiful iridescent shell but sought for its meat, is a fishery worth more than 150 million Australian dollars ($93 million) annually. But the divers’ craft is changing as the coast’s kelp forest — an abalone home — has succumbed to urchins. Droves of the spiky creatures munch down the forest, leaving so-called urchin barrens in their wake.
Shocked, the abalone divers started a kelp forest restoration cooperative in 2011, one of the first ever. But despite some successes, including restoring 42 hectares (105 acres), the forest continues to dwindle.
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In a new study published Feb. 6 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, Aburto and a multinational team of marine scientists and economists unveil a comprehensive framework for Marine Prosperity Areas, or MPpAs. With a focus on prosperity—the condition of being successful or thriving—this science-informed effort aligns human well-being with the restoration of designated marine and coastal environments.
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Florida Keys coral restoration groups and scientists from Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary planted resilient, heat-resistant species of coral at Carysfort Reef on February 28, 2025 commemorating the fifth anniversary of the sanctuary’s Mission: Iconic Reefs program. The bold undertaking encountered a major challenge due to a marine heat wave in the summer of 2023 that caused devastating mortality at many restoration groups’ in-water coral nurseries and areas of the Florida reef.
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Sustainable and Innovative Business
This thought leadership series aims to build climate intuition—to understand future probabilities and ask smarter questions about climate issues, where technology or demand for solutions may evolve, and how policy and geopolitics can lead to a variety of financial outcomes. To develop a more nuanced and proactive approach to climate change.
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AI has quietly, but powerfully, woven itself into the fabric of our everyday lives. It’s not flashy tech anymore; it’s an integral part of our critical systems, reshaping how we live, work and progress. AI is at the heart of everything we do, from how we receive medical care, manage our finances and plan our holidays, to how we shop, commute, travel and manage our social engagements.
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Education
As part of the climate showcase, the players wore special shooting shirts made of recycled polyester: plastic bottles which are cleaned, shredded into flakes, converted into pellets, and then spun into a high-quality yarn. Nike, which produced the shirts, said in the manufacturing process, recycled polyester lowers carbon emissions by up to 30% compared to virgin polyester and diverts plastic bottles from landfills and waterways.
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Researchers from UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and NOAA Fisheries’ Southwest Fisheries Science Center were collecting samples off the California Coast when the Palisades, Eaton and other fires broke out. The smoke that billowed from those fires dropped ash and debris that coated the ocean surface as much as 160 kilometers (100 miles) offshore.
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The Global Youth Climate Training Programme (GYCT) is a free, fully online capacity development programme that equips people aged 16-35 with the knowledge and confidence necessary to engage in international climate policy. Young people are increasingly being given a seat at the table in domestic and international climate policy, and therefore require appropriate capacity development to ensure their interventions are cogent and relevant.