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 ·
#holdfast
16 articles
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 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 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 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 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 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 ·
Science7 min read
Holdfast Biology: How Kelp Grips Rock Without Roots
Kelp has no true roots — its holdfast is a branching biological anchor built for storms. Explore holdfast anatomy, how kelp really feeds, and its hidden biodiversity.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
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
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 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
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
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 ·
Science9 min read
Holdfast Biomechanics: The Anchor Engineering of a Storm-Proof Seaweed
A kelp holdfast holds tonnes of drag through a storm with no glue and no roots. The biomechanics of nature's toughest anchor, and what engineers learn.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·