Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: A Morning on the Urchin Cull
Dawn on Tasmania's east coast: four divers, two hammers, and a barren the size of a football pitch. What an urchin cull actually looks like from inside the vis.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes
Dispatches from Tidewright’s own restoration sites — what the crew saw, measured and learned on the water. (Tidewright’s own stories; fictional.)
85 articles
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Issuing Our First Biodiversity Credit — What It Took
The first biodiversity credit we ever issued took eleven months, three verifiers and one metric we threw away. Field notes from inside the process.
Priya Raman ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: The First Harvest in Lofoten
Eighteen months after Lofoten's polar-night seeding, the sugar kelp belt met its first harvest. Field notes from the week the fleet got paid in kelp.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Ground-Truth Day With the Catalina Dive Co-op
Satellites and drones draw the canopy maps; divers make them honest. Field notes from a ground-truthing day with the Catalina Dive Co-op.
Tom Okafor ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Night Shift Under the Nursery Lights
A Tidewright field note from the Holdfast hatchery: the red-lit night shift, quiet alarms, and what 3 a.m. teaches you about kelp seed quality.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The Sonar Anomaly We Mapped at Mendocino
A routine Drifter survey off Mendocino returned a signature that matched no chart: hard reef where the map said sand. Field notes on what we found below.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Spore Fall in Kudjela Gulf, a Week Among the Rangers
Golden kelp drops its spores for two short weeks in Gulf St Vincent. Field notes from a collection week run on the Kudjela Rangers' calendar, not ours.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Tagging Giant Sea Bass off Catalina
A Tidewright field note: acoustic-tagging giant sea bass near the restored kelp lines at Catalina — and what the receivers heard when the giants came back.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: The Harvest That Paid for August
A ranger-led golden kelp harvest on South Australia's Gulf St Vincent just funded an entire seeding season. Field notes from the week the flywheel turned.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes10 min read
Field Notes: Five Days as a Trainee in the Holdfast Hatchery
Five days as a trainee inside Tidewright's Holdfast hatchery: spore releases, cold rooms, seeded lines and the unglamorous real work of restoration.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: The Storm Damage Report We Didn't Want to Write
A February storm took eleven of sixty seeded lines off the Mendocino coast. This is the honest write-up: what failed, what it cost, and what changes.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Counting the Urchin Front
Join Tidewright's dive survey team as they count an advancing urchin front on Tasmania's coast — the methodical, cold, essential math of kelp restoration.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: When Drifter 7 Came Home
After 90 days alone on the Great Southern Reef, autonomous vessel Drifter 7 returned with 4.2 million images and one bent propeller. This is its story.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes, Mendocino: Diving the Urchin Barrens
A Tidewright field note from California's north coast: two weeks inside a purple urchin barren, counting what kelp loss looks like and planning its way back.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: The Settlement Plates We Bolted to a Barren
What settles on an urchin barren, and what survives? We bolted ceramic settlement plates to Mendocino reef to find out — before and after seeding.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes, Tasmania: First Light on the Holdfast Lines
A Tidewright field note from Maria Island, Tasmania: deploying Holdfast seed lines onto heat-struck reef at dawn, and what we found three months on.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: First Canopy at Stumpy's Bay
Seven months after seeding, the first kelp canopy breaks the surface at Stumpy's Bay. Tidewright's crew logs the milestone — and what it actually means.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Five Years, One Transect: What Staying Still Teaches You
Tr L-7 is a single 30-metre transect off Tasmania surveyed every month since 2021. Five years of unglamorous re-measurement turned out to be our sharpest instrument.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
The Night the Power Failed: Holding a Kelp Hatchery Together in Tasmania
A mains failure at 2 a.m. puts a Tasmanian kelp hatchery's season on a countdown. Field notes on triage, generators and the order in which things die.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Seeding Season in Kushiro: Learning Kombu From the People Who Named It
A field note from Hokkaido's kombu coast: autumn seeding with the Kushiro growers' guild, and what a century of kombu craft teaches a restoration nursery.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Storm Season on Catalina
A Pacific storm season tests Tidewright's Catalina restoration site. Field notes on survey dives between swells, storm-torn kelp, and which Holdfast lines held.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes10 min read
The Gear Graveyard: Every Prototype That Sank, Snapped or Tangled
A respectful tour of Tidewright's failed hardware: flooded hulls, fouled reels, an anchor that walked, and the eleven lessons that built the working fleet.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Week One Seeding the Tinderbox Reefs
Tidewright's field crew logs their first week seeding Holdfast lines at Tinderbox, Tasmania — survey dives, southerly swells, and 40,000 metres of seeded line.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: First Soundings on a New Atlantic Site
Ten days scouting Nova Scotia's eastern shore for what could become Tidewright's first Atlantic restoration site: sonar, charts and community halls.
Jack Callum ·