Sargassum seaweed is a major problem in the Caribbean, with overgrown seaweed rafts filling up the shorelines, because of eutrophied oceans.
We are now working with great partners in the Dominican Republic to harvest sargassum from the Caribbean. We have an amazing alliance of partners with each one contributing their world-class skills and expertise:
- SOS Carbon is an MIT startup, that was founded on the technology for sequestering sargassum in the deep ocean and turning the problem into an opportunity for carbon offsetting. SOS Carbon has also developed the most cost-effective and low-impact solution for sargassum harvesting, the Littoral Collection Module (LCM), which mounts on any small boat.
- NODO Logistics is a world-class logistics solutions company headquartered in Santo Domingo, which offers storage solutions and transportation from the port of Río Haina to anywhere in the world.
- Grupo Puntacana is one of the largest tourism companies in the Dominican Republic. The Puntacana Foundation, part of Grupo Puntacana promotes and assists in the sustainable human development of local education, health care, and community organization of the underserved in and around the Punta Cana region of the Dominican Republic.
Our alliance has been phenomenal in mobilising the coastal communities, handling the logistics and working with the local officials to turn their curse of overgrown sargassum rafts into a blessing.
Watch the video shot in Punta Cana, which features the members of our alliance, each with their own point of view of how our new model of washing the oceans benefits them.
At the moment, Origin by Ocean is generating a solution to the problem by cleaning up the oceans, helping with the ecological cleaning of the beaches, and providing an environmentally sustainable product, which can bring economic dynamism and jobs to the people living along the coast of the Dominican Republic.
We are also the only company producing multiple useful products from the invasive sargassum and adding value to it. We have imported containers of sargassum from Antigua previously, this will be our first to come to Finland from the Dominican Republic. We hope to wash the whole Caribbean and this was an important step in that direction.
Cheers to our crew in the video Marcos Diaz and Laura Cappelatti, who are sporting their new Origin by Ocean branded gear!
If you read Spanish, here is a story from the local news channel CDN.