Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Abalone Back in the Quadrats
Seven years after seeding began on Tasmania's Lumeriah Coast, juvenile blacklip abalone are turning up in the monitoring quadrats again. Here's why that matters.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
#field-notes
83 articles
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes, Humboldt Coast: First Season Learning From Chilean Divers
Tidewright's first Humboldt Coast season: working alongside local diver unions, learning huiro protocols, and finding out what the Chilean coast teaches back.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Refit Day — Taking Drifter 7 Apart to Find Its Faults
A mid-life refit of Tidewright's hardest-worked vessel: what two seasons of reef surveys did to Drifter 7, and what the wear patterns taught the design team.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes10 min read
Field Notes: The Bay of Fires Baseline Survey, Day by Day
Six days on Tasmania's kelp front line: a day-by-day diary of the baseline survey that will decide where Tidewright's next restoration lines go.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes10 min read
Field Notes: First Soundings on the Humboldt Coast
A Tidewright field note from Chile's Coquimbo coast: twelve days of sonar, CTD casts and dive transects to write the first baseline for our newest kelp program.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Reading the Wrack Line with Volunteers
A Tidewright field note: twice a year, volunteers walk Tasmania's beaches counting cast kelp — because the wrack line tells us what the reef can't.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes8 min read
Drifter Nine Goes Quiet: Finding a Lost Robot at Sea
Drifter Nine stopped phoning home mid-survey off Mendocino. Field notes on the search, the recovery at sea and what the fault log told us afterward.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The March Canopy Census, Twelve Drone Flights a Day
Every March we fly every southern-hemisphere site at peak canopy. Twelve flights a day, dawn tides, and a data pipeline that turns pixels into a season's verdict.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Mapping the Mendocino Canopy by Drone
A week flying multispectral drone surveys over Mendocino's recovering bull kelp: fog windows, canopy maths, and where the map still needs divers.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Retiring Our First Carbon Credit
Field notes from the day Canopy Ledger's first verified carbon credit was retired — the registry paperwork, the hesitations, and what the crew made of the moment.
Priya Raman ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The Buoy That Marks a Thousand Hectares
A Tidewright field note from Tasmania's Lumeriah Coast: anchoring a monitoring buoy over the thousandth seeded hectare, and what a big round number is actually worth.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Open Day at the Hatchery
A Tidewright field note from Triabunna: 300 neighbours, forty schoolkids and one microscope queue at the Holdfast kelp hatchery's first community open day.
Naomi Reyes ·
Field Notes7 min read
Field Notes: What Hokkaido's Kombu Farmers Taught Us About the Harvest
A field note from Hokkaido's kombu coast: stone-beach drying, grading tables and the harvest craft that reshaped how Tidewright handles its own kelp.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: What the Holdfast Census Found in the Urchin Zone
Field notes from a winter holdfast census across a Tasmanian reseeding site: urchin counts on treated vs control transects, and what we changed for next season.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes7 min read
Field Notes: Pulling the First Holdfast Lines, Three Years In
The first Holdfast lines we ever laid are three years old and due for retrieval. What biodegradable seeding lines look like after three winters — and what they taught us.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Sea Trials for Hull Nine
Four days off Fortescue Bay putting Drifter hull 9 through its first sea trials — what we test, what broke, and why the slow tests matter most.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Spawn Night with the Kudjela Rangers
A Tidewright field note from Gulf St Vincent: collecting golden kelp broodstock by torchlight with the Kudjela Sea Country Rangers, two hours either side of low tide.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Returning to Lofoten in the Dark Season
In eight weeks the light goes at 68° north. What Lofoten's first seeded lines did through their first summer, and the plan for going back in.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Holding a Nursery Together Through the Winter Storms
Tidewright field note from Lofoten: how a kelp nursery survives December — storm triage, line tensioning, and what three Atlantic gales teach a young crop.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes7 min read
Field Notes: A Ranger Knowledge Exchange in Lofoten
Four Kudjela sea-country rangers fly north to our Lofoten project. A week of sugar kelp, winter light, and two very different coasts trading what they know.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The School Group That Met a Forest
Twenty-four fourth-graders, forty masks, and one restored kelp bay. Field notes from a Tinderbox school snorkel day — and why it matters to the program.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Spore Season in Southeast Alaska
Tidewright field note: three September weeks on Sitka Sound collecting kelp sorus — the wild reproduction tissue that seeds every Holdfast line we grow.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
The Harvest Window: Fourteen Days to Pay for a Forest
Fourteen days, one weather window and a quota the reef wrote first — field notes from the harvest fortnight that funds a season on the Humboldt coast.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes7 min read
Field Notes: A New Urchin Crew's First Week on the Reef
Five trainees, two instructors, one Tasmanian barren. What it actually takes to turn working divers into an urchin-removal crew, and what the first week teaches them.
Jack Callum ·
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 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 ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Mendocino, Second Season
Two growing seasons after the barren survey: the first bull kelp fronds are up, the urchins are walking back in, and the blocks are holding. A field note.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Second Season in Kushiro: What Year One Taught Us
Kushiro's second kombu seeding season changed almost everything from year one: timing, donors, dive inspections and the local farmers' verdict. A field log from Hokkaido.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Reading the Winter Swell on Mendocino's Barren Edge
A Tidewright field dispatch from Mendocino's winter monitoring season: working the barren-edge transects in the windows between storms.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
The Site We Left Alone: Why We Don't Seed Every Reef
A Tasmania survey block scored high on every restoration metric and we still walked away. On suitable habitat, restraint, and the reefs that don't need us.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
The Storm That Ate Line Twelve: Salvage, Lessons and a Better Anchor at Mendocino
Of eleven lines the February storm took at Mendocino, Line Twelve earned its own note: a two-day salvage, a pinnacle that adopted it, and the anchor that came next.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
When the Canopy Came Back in Summer
A field note from the Mendocino coast: the morning sonar and diver eyes confirmed bull kelp canopy over our first seeded corridor, and what that number means.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Counting Otters at Catalina: A Dawn Colony-Watch and What the Numbers Told Us
Sea otters are strangers at Catalina — so when one appeared over Tidewright's restoration block, we built a dawn count around him. What the survey found.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes9 min read
Spore Season: Collecting Two Weeks of a Forest's Future
A field note from our Tasmanian nursery: two autumn weeks diving for fertile giant kelp blades, racing spores to tanks, and banking a forest's next generation.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
The Genetics Drawer: Inside Tidewright's Gametophyte Bank
A Tidewright field note from the coldest corner of our hatchery: the gametophyte bank, where microscopic kelp cultures wait in the dark for the reefs that will need them.
Dr. Elias Brandt ·
Field Notes9 min read
Training the New Dive Crew: A Fortnight with the Kudjela Rangers
Two weeks in Tasmania building the Kudjela Rangers' dive survey crew: skills assessments, safety drills, and the moment a new surveyor out-dove her instructor.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes5 min read
Drone vs Diver: A Week of Matched Canopy Counts
For one week at Tinderbox we counted the same kelp canopy twice — once by drone, once by diver. Here's what each method caught, missed and taught us.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Wintering Over in Lofoten: Seedstock in the Dark
Wintering over at Tidewright's Lofoten hatchery means seedstock care in the polar night: light discipline, cold rooms, slow work and a culture lab that never sleeps.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Field Notes8 min read
Hatchery in a Hailstorm: Saving a Season of Seedstock at Triabunna
A Tidewright field note from our Triabunna hatchery: when a freak hailstorm killed the power mid-season, the crew had eleven hours to save a year of kelp seedstock.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
The Long Fog: Summer Operations in Mendocino
A field note from three fog-bound months on California's north coast: working around the marine layer, and why the fog and the kelp are the same story.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: A Week with the Kudjela Sea Country Rangers
Five days on sea country with the Kudjela Rangers off Tasmania's east coast: eDNA sampling, seasonal calendars, and what genuine co-management looks like on the water.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Counting the Neighbourhood Inside a Holdfast
Inside a kelp holdfast census at Tinderbox: bagging, sieving and counting the hundreds of small animals that tell us whether a restored reef is alive.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes8 min read
The First Transect After the Storm: Notes from a Mendocino Monitoring Dive
After the February storm that took eleven seeded lines at Mendocino, the first formal belt transect told a calmer, stranger story. Notes from the dive.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Line Fourteen Tangles: A Storm Lesson in Line Design
A southerly storm wrapped two Holdfast lines into each other off Tasmania. The dive to untangle them — and the line-spacing rule that came out of it — from the field log.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Sounding the Edge of a Barren
A Tidewright field dispatch: transecting the moving edge of an urchin barren by Drifter sonar and drop camera, and deciding where next season's Holdfast lines go.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The Long Swim — Monitoring a Forest on Fin Power
Why Tidewright's sharpest fish census is a diver swimming 400 metres at dawn on fin power alone. A field note on roving-diver surveys off Tasmania.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: Midnight Satellite Pass — Verification Night at Canopy Ledger
Once a season, Tidewright's canopy maps get their night of judgment. Field ops lead Jack Callum logs a verification night inside the Canopy Ledger.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
The Battery Swap: Powering a Survey Fleet by Hand
On Tidewright's solar-electric survey vessels, the battery pack is payload and lifeline at once. A field log of at-sea battery swaps — and what they taught the design team.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes5 min read
The Urchin Weigh-In: Three Tonnes and a Turning Point
Every autumn we weigh the urchins culled from the barren edge at Boomer Bay. This year the scales told a different story — and changed next year's plan.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Training for the Dark Months: Sea-Ice and Low-Light Operations at Our Lofoten Site
Before Tidewright's second Lofoten winter, the crew trained for sea ice, four-hour twilight and frozen shackles. Field notes from the course we built.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: Why We Lay Lines at Forty Degrees
Why Tidewright crews seed Holdfast lines at forty degrees to the prevailing swell — the fieldcraft, physics and early failures behind a deceptively simple rule.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: The Tide That Took Line Seven
A September swell off Hokkaido took one Holdfast line whole. What losing Line Seven taught us about anchors, graceful failure and honest reporting.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: First Lines in Lofoten — Seeding Sugar Kelp Through the Dark
Tidewright's northern-most program seeds sugar kelp through Lofoten's polar night, working from fishing boats at 68 degrees north. A field operations log.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: A Sunflower Star Back on the Quadrat
A Tidewright dispatch: the first sunflower star recorded on a long-running transect since the wasting years, and an honest crew argument about what one animal means.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: A Year at Tinderbox — The Little Bay That Grew Back in Public
Twelve months at Tidewright's most-watched restoration site: a school snorkel program, 400 volunteer dives, and a kelp forest visible from the walking track.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes6 min read
Genetic Swab Week: Two Hundred Blades, One Freezer
Once a year we swab restored and wild kelp beds across Tasmania for the provenance program. Two hundred blades, five sites, and what the lab read in them.
Dr. Elias Brandt ·
Field Notes9 min read
Field Notes: The Day the Otters Came Back
Two years after Tidewright reseeded an urchin barren off the Monterey Peninsula, a raft of sea otters moved in. Field notes on what that return really signals.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes8 min read
Field Notes: What Drifter 12 Found Off St Helens
A routine survey sweep off Tasmania's northeast turned into the discovery of the season: wild giant kelp recruiting on a reef the charts had written off.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes6 min read
Field Notes: The Seedlings' First Winter
A newly seeded kelp bed meets its first storm season. Notes on depth, spacing and which lines came through the winter with their heads up.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes6 min read
Field Notes: Showing the Forest to the Council
Four councillors, one RIB, two spare wetsuits and a young kelp bed. Notes from a field day with the people who sign our permits.
Jack Callum ·
Field Notes6 min read
Fogbound: Surveying a Reef You Cannot See
Three days of camanchaca fog shut down every camera we own on the Humboldt Coast. The survey didn't stop — it changed tools. How to work a reef blind.
Jack Callum ·