Human curiosity, creativity, and observation are essential means to realize innovative solutions. Over the last ten years we have taken a personal experiment and developed it into research-informed skincare formulations made with whole aqueous North Atlantic seaweed extract. 

Laminaria Digitata, the primary species that we use in our skincare products

Evolved over millennia, the bioactive compounds in seaweed regenerate damage to its blades through environmental stress. Noticing this phenomenon while walking along the ocean shore in Grates Cove, Newfoundland, co-founders Courtney and Terrence Howell wondered if the aqueous extract of seaweed could also resolve chronic inflammation on human skin. That’s when Terrence, who had developed an allergy to the plastic to his ostomy flange, gathered a handful of seaweed in his hands to apply the raw aqueous gel to his reactive skin. Within a week there was noticeably less inflammation near the area of exposure. Since then he’s been using the seaweed extract in 7 Fathoms’ Seawise products to limit the impact of this unavoidable allergy. 

The Rural Advantage

This serendipity raised a new problem: how were the founders to develop this natural resource, bring it to market, without leaving their rural community of Grates Cove, Newfoundland? 

Observation, stewardship, generations of local knowledge, being located on the shores which give them access and intimate proximity to the seaweed species of their extracts, have been essential to solving this conundrum. These components assemble into “the rural advantage.” 

The Lynchpin of Local Knowledge

There are admittedly hurdles to being rural. The typical strategy is outsourcing to larger companies in city centers. We’ve chosen an alternative route. Proximity to the natural resource we harvest creates advantages a typical approach would easily overlook. Firstly, it foregrounds the knowledge held by people who have spent their entire lives working on the water and under the particular circumstances of rural locations. Secondly, it minimizes the logistics chain separating harvest from extraction, formulation, and production, keeping each stage of the process in our hands to maintain the purest possible quality. When combined with scientific and business development expertise from external partners, this local know-how becomes integrated into the infrastructure that unlocks the potential present at home. 

Problems of harvesting, manufacturing and delivery, also produce strategies based on local knowledge when placed in the hands of our community members. For instance, our boat operator, Darrin, has lifelong knowledge of every harbour, gulch, and waterway. He can instantly locate variations in seaweed species simply based on the marine geography and conditions conducive to those seascapes. Our head of product assembly, Bev, has taken her manufacturing experience from local processing plants and adapted it to develop our assembly line. Her refinement of how we approach production to suit the particularities of being rural positions us to simultaneously develop, harvest, produce, and ship to market, all while maintaining the most natural quality of ingredient because we can stay where the natural resource grows, where the water meets the shore. 

Effectively, this local-knowledge supports a culture and community, the rural advantage, that enables 7 Fathoms to flourish. In this way we’ve fostered a new vertical business model for innovation where rural communities export ideas and products. Through our model, there’s an alternative to following and developing industries elsewhere. Our model puts rural Newfoundland in the spotlight, creates opportunity for present and new generations at home, presents alternatives to rotational work, and most importantly, unlocks the potential in the coastal towns that set this island apart.   

Personal, Provincial, and National Responsibility

We have the responsibility as a company, as a province, as a society, to realize seaweed contains high functioning multifunctional bioactives. How they behave on the skin barrier is analogous to their behaviour in the environments where they naturally occur and live. Hence why they are effective at soothing the skin sensitivity triggered by the immoderation of modern living, changes in season and air quality, or turbulent moments in one’s life.   

The Seaweed Revolution

Despite being a well-developed, mainstay resource in various sectors throughout Asia, the seaweed industry remains in its infancy in North America. It is simply misunderstood and under-appreciated. Advocacy and education about the potential of this resource, the manifold purposes it could have across different industries, will widen public-knowledge, drive public and private investment in this natural resource. The seaweed revolution is coming. A province like Newfoundland and Labrador, abundant in seaweed species, must leverage its rural advantage to live up to its responsibility as a torchbearer of the seaweed revolution at this sensitive moment in Canadian history.