Listen to the chat with Don Lechito about Seaweed Fest 2025 on Radioactive.FM’s Amplifier show!

Check out the latest issue of TUAONO which features Love Rimurimu, Seaweed Fest 2025 and Indigenous Natural Fibres Research conducted by Māia Holman-Wharehoka.

Read Pretoria Gordon’s article for RNZ on the launch of the programme for Love Rimurimu’s Seaweed Fest 2025, the first ever seaweed festival for Aotearoa.

Hear from many of the collaborators at Love Rimurimu - on this segment with RNZ Our Changing World and Clare Concannon.

The Love Rimurimu team took the Seven Sharp team out to meet our seaweed babies and learn about the project. Features many of our fantastic collabortors including the students of Te Kura Kaupapa Māori o Ngā Mokopuna - aka - The Kura Kelpers!

We feature in the new six part series about our marine environment. This hopeful, solutions-focused series tells the stories of researchers, kaitiaki, and community members across the motu who are pooling their knowledge and resources to support the future health of our moana.

Community Science is a key part of the Love Rimurimu project and our Intern Journey Luond talked with Nikki Macdonald about what it’s like monitoring seaweed plant-outs around te Motu Kairangi (Miramar) in winter! Journey has been interning with Community Science Coordinator Rachel Parry since doing her training as a Kelper in 2023.

Engaging community is what we’re all about!

In case you missed it: here is the full interview of our project coordinator Zoe talking to Jesse Mulligan on RNZ about the mission of the project, the challenges of growing seaweed babies, what role kina play, the benefits of healthy seaweed.

Image credit: Nicole Miller

Monitoring is a crucial part of the work of Love Rimurimu and thanks to the dedication of Rachel Parry, our Science Lead & Kelper trainer we’ve been closely tracking the progress of our community plant-outs.

This is story of death, of murderous intent and of survival. It’s the story of C2, B3.

First we’d better set the scene. It’s a week after our first seaweed plant-outs and things have been looking pretty dicey out there. We’ve had big swells and rainfall, keeping us out of the water, and worrying. Are our seaweeds faring ok?

It’s September. The water is a cool 12 degrees. And it’s time for our first seaweeds to travel from the lab at NIWA to the community plant-out site at Worser Bay. We’ve waited a long time for this, but finally all the pieces of the puzzle are in place.

The Kura Kelpers are ready with their freshly woven toka (baskets) to begin the plant-out process.

Inviting others to take the plunge into the world of seaweed is what Love Rimurimu is all about. The Love Rimurimu Immersion Day was a great opportunity to share everything we’ve been learning with others.

The Love Rimurimu project enters an exciting phase with the plant out of giant kelp into regeneration sites across Wellington harbour this winter. Keeping a close eye on how the young seaweeds grow and survive is important information to collect, and a group of passionate local volunteers are helping to make this happen.

Our seaweed finally made it into the ocean!
Despite the unsettling weather we had over the last month, the seaweed seem to be doing great and are now developing multiple blades and bladders!

They have made themselves at home and are thriving out in the ocean! This is just the beginning of the many seaweed forests to follow them!

Heather from Sea Change interviewed Mareike and Nicole about how the Love Rimurimu project was initiated, their roles within the project and the challenges and opportunities they are facing.

We Received a Major Funding Boost for our Community-Led Seaweed Regeneration Project!

As the only project of its kind in the country, we were able to secure a substantial funding boost from Wellington-based Clare Foundation, in collaboration with existing partner the Wellington Community Fund, whose three-year funding commitment enabled our project to get off the ground in 2021.