About
Seed is the bottleneck
Spore Bank is a California Sea Grant project. It exists because seed is the bottleneck: without traceable, health-screened, genetically documented seaweed seed, neither a farm nor a restoration project can scale with confidence.
What this project is
California has ambitious plans for seaweed farming and for kelp restoration. Both depend on seed — gametophyte cultures, spores, seeded twine, juvenile sporophytes — and almost nobody talks about where that seed comes from or whether it is fit to plant.
Shellfish growers solved a version of this problem decades ago. Their seed moves under health certificates, from inspected hatcheries, with lot-level records, against a standard states adopt by reference. Seaweed has none of that. It has a facility registration that certifies the building, not the seed inside it.
So this site does three things. It writes down every seaweed seed source in California we can document, with citations. It publishes a draft four-tier certification standard that a hatchery can self-assess against today. And it keeps a public register of the gaps, naming who has the authority to close each one.
It is built to be argued with. If a criterion is unreasonable, an availability row is stale, or an agency already holds authority we have listed as absent, that correction improves the record.
Project leads
Who's rowing. Corrections, additions, and collaboration inquiries can be routed through either lead.
Simona Augyte, PhD
Aquaculture Extension Specialist, California Sea Grant · San Diego
Seaweed biologist and aquaculture extension specialist. Works with California growers, wild harvesters, agencies, and researchers on cultivation, species selection, and hatchery practice — including the unglamorous question of where fit-to-plant seed actually comes from.
Brackish & Co
Project lead — platform, standard drafting & design
Builds tools for the salty margins: aquaculture permitting, water quality, restoration, and the paperwork that stands between good work and legal work. Spore Bank is the seed sibling of California Kelp Compass, built on the same conviction that a clear path is a form of infrastructure.
How we work
Dated sources or it does not go up
Every directory entry, availability row, and gap statement carries a publisher and a date. When something changes, the entry changes and the date moves.
Absence is a finding
The most important thing this site records is what does not exist: no certification standard, no pathogen screen, no third-party seed market. We say so plainly rather than padding the page.
Voluntary before mandatory
Certification only earns authority by being useful first. The tiers are built so a small or tribal operator can start today without a fee, an auditor, or a rulemaking.
Maintained by the people in it
Seed sources keep their own availability current through the hub. A directory somebody else updates once a year is a press release.
Work with seaweed seed in California?
Whether you produce seed, need it, or regulate it, the hub is where you claim a listing, keep availability current, or start a self-assessment.