The Genesis Story

Who are we and why should you care?

Who are we and why should you care?

In 2016, I went to Bora Bora to celebrate a personal milestone. Sailing from Tahiti to Moorea and various other uninhabitated as well as minorly inhabitated islands, we had a magical time.

Prior to this though, I was a nerdy brown girl (engineer) who travelled across the world but other than the occasional holiday to the seaside, had neither experienced the joy of the water nor was a great swimmer. In fact half the time I was scared of drowning and when I saw the kite-surfers in California- I really thought they must “be Gods who risk their lives”.

Imagine my shock and pure pleasure upon discovering scuba, ocean walking, gorgeous reefs, smiling stingrays, black tipped nose sharks who swim quietly past you, dolphins in their natural habitat and the entire aqua culture of communities who live, dream and breathe water. Their songs, weddings, homes, joys, music, sorrows- everything is about the ocean.

Thus started my incredible love affair with the ocean- Samudra ( “Sanskrit for oceans”) became the centre of my paintings, my future escapades, the source of my books, the several advanced swimming coaches who were hired, the houses I moved to live close to swimming centres and eventually - my career.

In October this year I cofounded ‘Samudra’- a startup- with Alexander Facey.

Born and raised in Jamaica, Alex does not know what it means to not “live with and for the ocean”. A talented swimmer, designer and engineer - the oceans provide both personal enjoyment from swimming, scuba diving, surfing and professional motivation through the immense challenge of engineering for marine environments.

When I met him at Carbon13 at Cambridge- it was but natural that our mutual love of the ocean will bond us deep. (Also the geek out on hardware engineering really helped!).

Samudra is our brainchild. We believe the ocean holds the key to a lot of the present climate crisis.

Blue Carbon

In July, more than 7,000 marine and climate scientists, human rights experts and others urged world leaders to include legally binding targets for blue carbon in their emission-reduction plans.

Did you know that Seaweed has been removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for at least 500 million years. Recent studies suggest that wild seaweed continues to serve humanity by sequestering 173 million metric tons annually. The average square kilometer of seaweed can capture more than a thousand metric tons.

Kelp (a subgroup of seaweed) are essentially the ocean's equivalent of trees. They absorb carbon dioxide and nitrogen compounds, helping clean the atmosphere while capturing up to 20 times more carbon per acre than land forests. This means acidified water unusable by fish and crustaceans are fixed- what a hero! Lush beds of seaweed sustain coastal food webs, cycle essential nutrients, clarify water, foster fisheries, and shelter sea life.

It has additional use of being used as food, protein substitute, cow feed, cosmetic supplements, alginates, toothpastes, shampoos, salad dressings, puddings, cakes, dairy products, frozen foods, fertilisers and even pharmaceuticals.

Seagrass potentially sequesters even more carbon. Their sequestration of carbon is 35X faster than the rainforest. Britain has very little rainforest to soak up carbon dioxide emissions but it does have roughly 11,000 miles (17,700km) of coastline, dotted with salt marshes and seagrass. Both habitats, alongside tropical mangroves, are the best understood stores of “blue carbon” – the carbon held in marine ecosystems (as opposed to the “green carbon” of terrestrial habitats). In Scotland, blue carbon stores sequester 28.4 MtCO2e (tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent) a year, about three times more than Scotland’s forests combined. They cover roughly 0.1% of the ocean globally but provides 18% of its organic carbon storage, is shrinking by 7% each year – equivalent to a football pitch worth vanishing every 30 minutes! But restoring seagrass, even by half a hectare, is labour-intensive and complex work. In August, 40 volunteers in wetsuits and snorkels swam over the Loch Craignish meadows to collect fronds full of seeds for a small region.

Mangroves and other coastal wetlands are another potent natural carbon sink that have been degrading. They store vast quantities of carbon in their soils, more than 6.4 billion tonnes of carbon globally! Other co-benefits include increasing coastal resilience, protecting coastal communities by reducing wave energy, providing habitat and nursery for many of our important fish stocks.

We want to learn from those who came ahead of us. We are actively seeking advisors and those who wish to join our journey. Join us in this epic global journey to save the planet?

That’s all for this post, we will be posting weekly updates on our development as well as passing on what knowledge we can on blue carbon, and the oceans as whole.