The founder and executive director of the Climate Foundation, Brian’s love of the sea started at the age of two on a boogie board. An avid diver, Brian remembers watching favorite dive spots change from vibrant underwater communities to a mostly empty ocean. That helps drive his current work on large scale seaweed mariculture programs that can provide food and fertilizer as well as supporting ocean ecosystems and acting as blue carbon sinks.
Brian talks with Better Worlds Ocean Host Kate Wing about watching Greenland ice melt into 100-foot-deep blue water pools and learning how to protect seaweed farms from local communities. He describes the Climate Foundation’s technology for mimicking natural upwelling processes -- bringing cold, nutrient rich up from deeper water to nourish ocean plant life -- as a game-changer for scaling the carbon sequestration needed to meet global climate goals.
Tune in to learn more about Brian’s innovation journey, and what’s next for the forests of the sea.
#about
Brian Von Herzen Ph.D. graduated magna cum laude in three years from Princeton University with a degree in Physics. He holds a Ph.D. in planetary science from California Institute of Technology where he was awarded the prestigious Hertz Fellowship, and has been awarded numerous patents. After two decades developing system solutions for companies such as Intel, Disney, Pixar, Microsoft, HP, and Dolby, Brian launched the Climate Foundation in order to investigate groundbreaking nature-based solutions to the climate and other environmental challenges.
Marine Permaculture uses marine solar and wave-driven pumps in the ocean to restore natural upwelling and primary production to grow seaweed ecosystems. Seaweeds fix significant amounts of carbon and have multiple uses including food, feed, fuel, biostimulants, and fertilizer. After sustainable harvesting, residual seaweed can be sunk to the bottom of the ocean sequestering carbon for centuries, facilitating drawdown of carbon from the atmosphere with extended SeaForestation. Once deployed at scale Marine Permaculture can regenerate life in seas and soils and restore a healthy climate while building a multi-billion dollar seaweed export market over the next decade.
