Project 6 · Northwest Pacific
Hokkaido Kombu Coast
South-east Hokkaido · Japan
Working with Hokkaido’s kombu growers — custodians of the world’s oldest seaweed-farming culture — to buffer wild kombu forests against warming currents.
- Status
- Established
- Launched
- 2024
- Hectares seeded
- 160
- Program target
- 420 ha
- Program lead
- Dr. Theo Nakamura
Progress to target
38%
Illustrative program figures, part of Tidewright’s fictional record.
The program
The story so far.
Hokkaido grows kombu the way Burgundy grows wine: named coasts, inherited knowledge, fanatical grading. When wild kombu beds started failing recruitment in warm years, the growers’ guild came looking for nursery science, not lectures.
Tidewright’s role is deliberately narrow: Holdfast nursery capacity for wild-stock seeding, genetics matched to each named coast, and Canopy Ledger mapping shared openly with the guild. The kombu wisdom flows the other way — Tidewright’s graders now train in Kushiro.
Milestones
The record, season by season.
2024
Guild partnership signed; wild-stock nursery opens near Kushiro.
2025
160 ha seeded across four named coasts; recruitment survival 2.1× control beds (illustrative).
Work near this coast?
Councils, fisheries, dive operators and community groups — every Tidewright program runs on local partnership.
Tidewright is a fictional company created as a design and content demonstration.