Pebl - Seaweed Cultivators

In this, our first ever episode, we speak to Christian Berger, co founder of PEBL.  Where we talk all things seaweed.  We met Christian and his wife a while ago and visited their seaweed cultivating operation.  They also do community events and underwater camera systems. They are both very friendly and more than happy for you to contact them.

www.pebl-cic.co.uk

hello@pebl-cic.co.uk

Instagram: @pebl_cic

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to Call of the Ocean Podcast. My name's Keris.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

And my name's Neil. And this is episode one of Hopefully Many. My new podcast. We're going to be talking to lots of people with stories connected to the ocean. You never know. Hopefully it might inspire you to make your own stories, or maybe even share your stories of the ocean. If you're up for it, we might come and get you in the future. Anyway, who have we got? This episode.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

So on today's episode, we have actually got a Christian from Pebble. And we met him a few years ago when we were doing CrawlFest.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah, yeah, you were selling your seaweed art, weren't you?

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Yeah, they came over and had a good old chat, didn't they? They were interested in what we were doing or what you were doing. But uh something even more interesting, I think.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

They did, and then and we went and had a bit of a tour and got to see what they do and uh how they work, and it was amazing, wasn't it? It was really good.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

Yeah, pretty interesting. So good guests, I think. Good episode. Definitely. So anyway, enough of us. Um hope you enjoy our little chat with Christian. And we'll see you on the other side.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Enjoy. Hi Christian, thank you so much for joining us for our first ever podcast for Call of the Ocean.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Thank you for giving the opportunity to have a chat with you guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:43

It's a pleasure. Now we'll we've our plan is to ask every guest the same opening question and the same ending question. So if you're up for it, our first question is can you remember your earliest memory of the ocean and how did it make you feel?

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Oh so I was actually born in Munich in the south of Germany, which is very landlocked.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

And my first memory of the ocean is going to Italy, which is uh was a a long drive from where we lived, and I I must have been about ten, maybe maybe eleven, and um it's a very rocky cliff uh exposed coast where we went, and I just remember uh the colour of the ocean and how the the colours are nothing I'd ever seen before, and that really stuck in my mind.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:53

And I think it made me um I think at that time it just made me want to jump in because I was, you know, like a 10-year-old, 10-year-old kid. So I think uh but the the colour very much stays in my head.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Was it was it like a baby blue or green, or was it like sunset or sunrise time?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Um so I have to confess I'm actually colourblind. Oh that doesn't mean I can I can't see colours, it just means I find it very difficult to actually uh describe a colour to you because it's probably looks different to me than it does to you. But to me, um the C can be anything from grey, green to deep dark blue, and I think this was somewhere in the middle, some sort of turquoisey uh blue. Very very inviting.

unknown 3:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Wow, good.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

I'm not sure if that's an accurate description because of my colour blindness.

SPEAKER_02 3:58

Well, it's alright. We've we've painted a picture on our heads anyway. I can see a colour's good now. That's awesome. Well, thank you very much. I think you've thrown the gauntlet down there for with that answer. Yeah. Everyone who follows.

SPEAKER_00 4:13

Yeah, no, definitely. And Christian, you and I met, well, we all met, didn't we, um, when I was doing some crapper selling my seaweed art, and you and you came over and introduced yourselves and told us all about you and what you were doing. And I wonder if you wanted to sort of like update us and tell our listeners what way is it you do?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, so we um must my wife and I, Danny, uh and I we started Pebble in 2019 with um an inspiration to grow or produce more foods for for the UK that have a minimal impact. I think that was kind of our starting point. We'd had a a passion for growing veggies in our little backyard, but felt like growing food on land at a bigger scale was very inaccessible. And at that time, there were some articles online around people in the US, in America, uh North America growing uh seaweeds, and started reading into that, and we uh figured out there was actually some people also growing seaweed in the UK, but um, maybe a handful of people were just starting. And it seemed to us that um considering we have the coast all around us, and we actually have almost all seaweeds being edible, a really amazing opportunity, but but nothing is really happening in terms of a seaweed industry. And so in 2019 we started Pebble to to try and address that issue by um starting a business around seaweed cultivation, and having uh uh a having grown up in Swansea in South West Wales, uh, we particularly had a connection to to Wales and later moving to Manchester, uh, we we wanted to start a seaweed business in Wales. And having spoken to one other person who happened to be at that time moving to St. David's to also start a seaweed farm, and they had a license to start growing seaweeds, we felt like we wanted to be supporting them because they'd already taken the first steps. And the way we figured out to support them was to become a uh to start a seaweed hatchery, uh, which is essentially the the very first part of the process of growing seaweed in the sea. And and so at that point when we first met, we were uh running, I think it was four shipping containers on the north coast of Wales. And in one of those containers, we had seaweeds growing uh from their spore phase into their sort of millimeter size phase, which we were selling to seaweed farmers, primarily to that seaweed farmer in in uh St David's to try and start a seaweed industry in in Wales.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

I remember you growing some kelp, if I remember correctly. Was it kelp?

SPEAKER_01 7:34

Yeah, so it it's it's almost always been kelp that we've been growing, and it still is uh kelp that most people grow around uh the UK and Europe.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Where were the were these folk getting the sort of seaweed from originally then? Before you came along with actually.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah, so seaweed um as you know, is in uh sushi rolls or nori, they call it. I think that's why probably how most people are familiar with seaweed. And almost all of that gets imported from the Far East. Um we have a tradition in Wales of grow of uh not growing but picking seaweed from the rocks, which is uh lava or lava bread, yeah, yeah. Uh as it's called when you boil it down for 12 hours. Um and that's actually the same species or this uh sort of cousin of the same species as Nori that's used as sushi wraps. Um but there wasn't any cultivation happening really before, and and the the the kelp or sugar kelp to be specific, that um isn't used in wraps or in lava bread, but it's actually used um it's called kombu if you go into the Far East, and it's uh it's used as like a stock uh in in broths and soups to create unami flavoring. So if you ever travel to the Far East, you'll for breakfast they'll have a soup with with had which has some kelp in it.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

That sounds nice.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

But uh yeah, so so the the reason for growing kelp actually is not necessarily because there's a big market opportunity, it's actually one of the easiest ones to grow, and uh you get quite quite big yields from it, and it's a lot more forgiving than some of the other ones. So I felt like a good starting point.

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Yeah, but did you experiment with others as well? I mean, do people follow the species of offering?

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We tried to grow nori or lava, which is the more common British name, and it's extremely difficult, yeah. Uh partly because it requires really high precision temperature and um light and control of the conditions in which you're growing them in. You have to be much more precise than you have to be for for kelp. And um the the steps involved in in cultivating it are probably two to three times as many steps as there are in in kelp. So it's like um the difference between you know growing crest, where you just pop a seed in a in a tray and it just pops up, which would be like kelp, and uh you know trying to grow some oriental uh tropical flower, which you know very specific, you know, greenhouse conditions and fertilizers for. So they um the the lava's one we tried to grow but without much success. We we managed to reproduce it, but we couldn't grow it in any quantity that would make a viable business. Um we've also then tried dulce, which is after nori or lava, uh also fairly well known around some parts of the British coast, so especially in Ireland and in Devon, uh they pick a lot of dulce, which um traditionally has been used by the Irish as as a way to supplement like vitamins and um is still used today as a snack. And we we had some a lot more success with that species, but again, getting to the point where you can produce enough uh yield or high quality product to sell was difficult, and we kind of stopped that after about a year and a half of uh of experiments. Wow, and so we we focused strictly on on the kelp cultivation because that was successful and there was quite a bit of demand from people to buy that.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

Yeah, and you you get a lot of it as well, I guess, don't you, when it's uh as a plant, you know, there's a lot of dulce's yeah, quite a small algae, I guess.

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah, exactly. So just to compare um from six weeks of uh of time in the hatchery in in our 20-foot shipper container, we could probably produce enough seedlings for about 10 to 20 tons of final product, and that would maybe uh maybe be enough for a very small scale farm. Um but for Dulce in that same uh space we could probably do uh maybe two hundred to five hundred kilos, so it'd be sort of twenty times less in in volume. But that's that's because the success rate of um the spores germinating and you know producing viable plants was just much much lower, whereas with kelp it it's extremely high, it's like in the you know 80 to 90 percent. In in Dulce it was like five to ten percent. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Um and and and with the kelp, growing the kelp, does it take long to grow the kelp? Is it a fast-growing species or is it quite slow?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Yeah, so the the kelps we're growing, sugar kelp, they have a uh annual the annual uh plants or algae. They release their spores typically in the autumn. When the the temperature of the seed dips down, they release their spores. It's like an environmental trigger. Then those spores will settle in November, October onto some rock or onto a shell, and they will not really grow much during the winter, they kind of grow a couple of millimeters, and then uh, and that's mostly because it's the growth is driven by photosynthesis, so it needs light, and there's not much light in the winter, but also the nutrient levels are uh a little bit lower, and then in the spring, uh when the light starts to come up in February, in March, they grow uh maybe five, ten centimeters in in January, February, and then up to half a meter in March, and then they can just rapidly grow up to maybe two, even three meters by May. And so in that sort of April-May period, uh they can grow more than two centimeters a day in some cases. So it's really really rapid growth. And so for one meter, um and just just to kind of summarize the whole process for anyone who doesn't know or has not seen seaweed grow in the sea before, once we take it out of that hatchery or nursery stage, which is essentially a little aquarium, a little a little water tank in a in a shipping container, which is temperature controlled and light controlled, where we grow these tiny little spores, uh, we we actually grow them on a twine, a one millimeter thick piece of uh string that's wrapped around uh a piece of pipe. And if you imagine like similar to a spool that you use for sewing, you have your twine wrapped around a pipe that's that's about 40 centimeters long, three inches thick, you get 50 meters of that twine on a spool.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Once that's ready to leave the nursery after about six to eight weeks, you see the tiny little seaweeds growing like uh three to five millimeter long hairs on the spool. So the spool turns completely brown. So after that six weeks period, we take them out of the hatchery and we deliver them to the people who've got a license to grow seaweed. And in our case, this was this um pioneering uh seaweed farm down in St. David's called Caddymoor. Um I advise you to check them out if you ever get the chance.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

And they would then take that spool and pass a thick rope through the spool. And as you pass the the thick rope, maybe two, three centimetre thick rope, through the spool, the twine gets tied onto one end of the rope and it unravels in a in a sort of coil fashion onto the rope. So you imagine your thick rope and this this thinner twine with tiny little seaweed blades wrapped around the thick rope. And that's then called a seeded line. And so you'd have these 100-meter sections of this or 50-meter sections of this rope with the little twine wrapped around it, and that's the the final uh sort of growing rope that then gets put out into sea, strung between two buoys, and tied down with some anchors, usually about two to three meter depth, and that's uh that stays there then all the way from October through to May or June when it gets harvested.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Wow. That sounds really interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Goodness. So it's quite a quick turnaround as well, I guess, isn't it, from seeding to harvest.

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Yeah, from uh about six six to seven months, I'd say. Some people some people do like a cut and come again crop, so you could cut it in March, April, and then let it grow back and cut again. Uh so it grows a bit like a lettuce. If you ever grown a lettuce in your garden, you can like pick the leaves and then they come back again.

SPEAKER_02 17:59

So where did you learn to to do all this then? Because obviously, you know, that's you could have learned from anyone else in a few of the first.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yeah, no, it's it was before those publications, you know, that you can I'm I'm um fortunate enough that my wife works at a university so I can get access to all of the academic literature. Right. And so people have been studying this for many, many years and have published the optimal conditions and the optimal recipes. And there is actually some freely available information as well. Um, probably the most useful resource is um it's called the New England Seaweed Handbook. So New England up in the uh North East Atlantic, North America. And they have been studying this for maybe 20 years now and have made lots of amazing guides. And pretty much followed that very, very closely. And yeah, after after a few attempts, it does work, and we managed to make it quite reproducible.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

So you were that was up on Anglesey when you first began, but did I get it right that you've now moved?

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah, so we we we were growing those uh kelps, we were creating these spools, and we package up the spools and deliver them to the seaweed farmers. And at the time when we started, there was a lot of excitement around seaweed farming. Lots of people were starting up farms. Um I say lots, this is probably 10 or so individuals or groups or companies, and it was growing quite rapidly. So it started off with five when I first started, then it the following year was 10, um, maybe maybe 20 a year later. But actually, and so so we forecast you know significant demand and hopefully a viable business. But actually, out of those 20 in in the maybe the third year that were applying for licenses, maybe there's only about 10 seaweed farms actually still operating now. So we're like six years on since we started. And the demand for these kelp spools is actually not enough to make a viable business. And and so we decided that our time and effort is not best becoming a seawood hatchery, but actually through the process of selling these spools or these seedlings, we got more and more involved in uh marine monitoring. So when we were placing these spools out into the sea, we were asked by those who bought them off us, um, how can we actually know whether they're going to grow well or not? My background is actually in electrical engineering and uh building sensors. That's what I did in my PhD in Manchester. And uh, and so whilst we were selling these schools, we were also building bespoke sensors that were measuring things like the light, the temperature, the current speed, and the nutrients, and all these things, uh, these environmental variables, they they determine how well the seaweed grows. And we had a lot of success in uh providing that monitoring. And it was something that wasn't really available at an affordable price. And since starting the the kelp growing, we actually almost 80% of our of our projects and collaborations and uh funds stuff were um were then coming from these monitoring activities. And at the same time, the kelp cultivation was just very intensive in terms of labor time to maintain and clean. The hatchery, you know, to try and keep someone employed when actually most of the work is just a very intense two months in September and October, but then the rest of the year, you know, the seaweeds out in the in the sea, and you you don't, apart from cleaning down the hatchery and getting it ready for the next season, you don't have to do much. So it's actually quite a difficult business to run in terms of um keeping people employed and keeping them trained up. So so yeah, so we so ended up with monitoring. It like it it bodes well with my background, and it seems to be something that all the seaweed farmers and also the shellfish farmers who we were then introduced to have a stroke have a strong need for.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Right.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

And we we've uh bit beyond looking at the environmental parameters or variables that determine how well things grow, we also look at the impacts that seaweed farming or shellfish farming uh have on the marine life. So we use uh cameras and also uh acoustic recorders, so like mic underwater microphones to record the the sounds made by dolphins and porpoises to understand whether the seaweed farms or shellfish farms are having a positive or a negative impact on the environment.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

And you can because I notice that you can hire these from your website as well, so that people could use it.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

Yeah, so we we we actually started building uh and manufacturing and selling um some some of these devices. So we currently sell two devices. One is a a camera, works very much like a like a GoPro camera, it goes underwater up to 100 meter depth. And uh the unique thing we were trying to solve is when these seaweeds grow, we kind of want to be able to keep an eye on them, just like a farmer can keep an eye on his crop in the field. But because it's out at sea, maybe a couple of hundred metres or a kilometer at sea, where you've got storms and tides, and you need a boat to get out and it's two meters underwater. Uh, we we were wondering how we can keep an eye on these and understand how they're growing, or like why are they breaking off the rope, why are they being eaten by things, or why the um ropes getting tangled up. And uh, and so we designed a camera that can record almost uh like a time lapse, so it records and then turns off and then records more, but it can do that in a way so you can track uh you can roll record every time it's high tide, or you can record every time it's uh the middle of the day, or you can record every time it's uh sunset, so you can track these unique changes that happen over time um in a very bespoke sequence of videos and and photos, and that's that's our subcam product. So we call it a we call it a custom custom schedule underwater camera.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

So how can the seaweed growers access those pictures? Do you have to retrieve the camera to be able to see them or can they see them whilst they're gonna be able to do that?

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yeah, so we we kind of clamp we clamp it onto the rope where the seaweed's growing, okay, and then you get a little maybe a one-minute video or a or just a few second video, depending on how you program it. So it's uh it's like uh you can set it up how you want. So some people will look at the seaweed growing, other people will look at how the the shellfish or the the um the muscles are growing and whether the mussels are falling off the ropes at a certain time, or whether ropes are getting tangled up during uh a certain current or storm. Um but actually we found people wanted to use these cameras for lots of other things. So we've actually got fishermen using these to understand if their trawl gear is uh is having an impact on the seabed. I'm not sure if you know much about trawling, but there's all sorts of new technologies being developed to make uh trawling gear less impactful on the seabed. So you have these trawls that actually just don't scrape along the seabed but adjust uh within the the water column. We've had cameras being used for that. We've also used the cameras for looking at um big concrete blocks that are being put on top of subsea caling for offshore wind farms. And uh people were looking at whether these concrete blocks move in big waves and storms, or whether the concrete blocks are gro have things growing on them, whether they're ecologically benefiting the environment. So it's gone from seaweed and shellfish related monitoring to quite a broad marine related monitoring. But the focus always comes back to understanding uh the relationship between the environment and the ecology and and how things are changing over long, long time horizons.

SPEAKER_00 27:10

And then I I have a completely different question, but how did you come up with the name Pebble?

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Is it short for something or um yeah, it's it's it's short for plant ecology beyond land. So it's kind of um basically we wanted to be called pebble, but you can't just be called pebble in this like and register your name because there's like a hundred other people who are called that. So we decided to come on with a with a long um acronym which uh which relates to seaweed, but actually we call ourselves pebble, everyone calls us pebble, so it it all works out quite just fine.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

And I know that you do um some community work as well, you so you reach out to communities and try and involve communities?

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah, so yeah, exactly. So our um motivation for for starting the company was to um not only make a business that can you know support the seaweed industry and bring this seaweed industry to the fore uh or or do environmental monitoring and and benefit marine uh ecologies, but also share those that knowledge uh with the wider community and and I guess empower coastal communities in particular to uh benefit from the science that we develop or the tools that we develop or the seaweed cultivation techniques that we're working with. And so over the years we've had uh community groups come to the seaweed hatchery and we kind of do a workshop showing them around the hatchery, teach them around the process of cultivating seaweed. We've done cooking with seaweed where individuals go down onto the foreshore and collect seaweeds and we teach them how to cook. We've also done sort of days with other similar like-minded community groups such as Project Seagrass, where we try and promote um marine-related activities around Wales to try and encourage more people to get involved in in working with uh with the sea and for the sea to benefit the sea. We we've also done a project last year in Holyhead uh called the Coastal Community Leaders Program, where we invited members of the community who have ambitions to start a business or a community group or a project related to the sea and related to supporting the sea. And we did a series of workshops to share our learnings of starting a business in Wales with regards to how do you um start a business, how do you bring the community together, how how do you actually come onto a project idea that makes sense for you and aligns with your values, and that is centered in the community. And how do you execute that? How do you go from just an idea to getting your first part of funding and starting uh the first steps of making it a viable career or or you know a pastime? Um and so that was a four-month course that we did. We are currently looking to do something similar at other locations, so uh fingers crossed something will be um advertised online around that sort of topic soon.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Yeah, what sort of response have you had then when you've uh taken you know run some of these community engagement events?

SPEAKER_01 30:56

There is I'd say a small group of individuals who are deeply connected to the sea in uh Innisman that we met up in Hollyhead in that workshop. And I feel like that's repeated all across the Welsh coast. There are a few individuals who have had either through their upbringing, through a life event, um, or through a particular experience, have created a much deeper connection to the sea. And those people um we found have almost dedicated their entire lives to the sea in some way, whether it's through foraging things that grow in the sea, whether it's making art uh like yourselves, I suppose, um, or whether it's doing you know, organizing litter picks in the community. And those people are kind of um the holdfasts, if you like, or like the anchors that keep communities connected to the sea. And we feel those individuals are extremely special because they are the stewards of keeping our marine ecologies uh protected, and they provide a voice for marine life because unfortunately the plants and animals that live below the sea don't have a voice. And uh and what we would love to see, and kind of what one of the goals is of these workshops, is to get to create more of these people, more of these people who become stewards, um, and who who dedicate more of their time and more of their resources to uh looking after the sea. And in an ideal world, everyone in the community, uh old or young, no matter what the background, has a deeper connection to the sea because it's such an existential part of our um being here on earth, having having the sea, uh, you know, it it creates the the carbon cycles, it produces food for us. And um and so we we we want to we want to spread that connection and we also want people to realise how special and unique it is here in in Wales and across the UK, but particularly in Wales, how m how much diversity in species we have, how much richness and abundance we have in different marine animals and and plants and organisms.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Of course, because like we don't get to see that, do we? When you know, on land, you don't get to see what's in the ocean, do you? You you we kind of miss it.

SPEAKER_01 33:32

No, and yeah, it's very it's very rough, like that, you know, we get big swells, we have big tides, we have pretty bad weather most of the year, so lots of us can enjoy the views over uh over the sea, but actually to see what's underneath is uh very few people, and you know, even I I've never actually been diving in the UK. I've uh I've I've done some surfing, I've done some swimming, but actually the cameras that we deploy has actually allowed me to understand what goes on down there, and it's incredible how unspoilt and pristine and beautiful it is underwater. And uh I think once once those individuals who have really dedicated their lives to you know working it with the marine ecologies, they have they have seen that and they've glimpsed that and they've felt that connection, and and so we ri we we'd love to see more people making that connection.

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Yeah, yeah. Well well in a way we're kind of hoping our podcast kind of can contribute to that in its own little way as well, you know. That's what it's all about, getting people to share their stories like yourself and you know, hopefully inspiring other people to if they haven't got that already, to kind of start those connections, you know? Absolutely. Yeah, go on then. I think shall we go for our like we had an opening question that we're gonna ask everybody. We've got a a closing question that we're gonna ask everybody, and Keris Azitchen to ask you this one.

SPEAKER_00 34:58

So what do you think the ocean is trying to teach us? And do you think we're listening?

SPEAKER_01 35:04

Um so I think the the ocean is such a dynamic place, it's like constantly changing, and you know, nutrients are being tossed uh shifted up and down the coast, um sediment is being changed, dolphins, porpoises, whales are moving around, nothing is stationary, but everything is extremely interconnected, and removing or changing just one thing can have a big impact on the whole marine community. And I I think this this knowledge of this dynamism and and the the way everything in the sea is is so um interconnected and dynamic, is something that we as humans on land in our homes, you know, going to our day going to our jobs day in, day out, um have very little connection to. But actually, you know, we are organisms on this planet just like all the other marine organisms, and we are also we should also be dynamic and interconnected. So I guess the thing I think the sea is trying to tell us is that we should be getting out more, putting ourselves into different environments, having new experiences, and becoming more connected with all all beings, whether it's beings on land, whether it's human beings, whether it's beings in the sea. So I think that's what the sea is trying to tell us.

SPEAKER_02 36:41

Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

That's fantastic.

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Yeah, thank well. Thanks so much, Christian, for coming along to our joining our podcast today. It's been if people thank you.

SPEAKER_01 36:54

It's good fun.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

Oh good. If people want to contact you, reach out to you, see what you're up to, is there a you know what's the idea or best way for them to be able to do that?

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Yeah, so you can find my email address or uh hello at pebble email address on our website. So the website is pebble p-e blow.uk. So my email is Christian with a ch uh at pebble-ctc.co.uk. There's um there's also a contact form on the website, and we have an Instagram, and we have um a LinkedIn that we engage where we engage more on a commercial basis with other businesses. Um so that those are probably the main channels.

SPEAKER_02 37:42

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 37:42

Um, but also we have my my mobile number is on the website. So if you're interested in seaweed or marine monitoring, just just give a call, and I'm always more than happy to speak to other like-minded people. Um, that's part of part of the joys of uh of doing this venture, is meeting and speaking to other like-minded people like yourselves.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Yeah, brilliant, brilliant, awesome. Definitely. Thank you. Yeah, thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Hi Aaron, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 38:12

Well, I really enjoyed that interview with Christian. It was really lovely, and it was really nice to catch up on how things have changed since we first met him as well, and how how things have evolved for them.

SPEAKER_02 38:25

Yeah, it's been a while, hasn't it? But yeah, it was really good, really nice to to hear from him.

SPEAKER_00 38:30

Yeah, and he's just such a genuinely lovely person, and he's so helpful and friendly, and just genuinely lovely person.

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Yeah, thanks for giving up your time, Christian, to to chat with us. Definitely. Very greatly appreciated.

SPEAKER_00 38:45

And it was nice to catch up as well.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

And he's keen for people who are interested in what they do to get in touch. So we'll put his contact details in the show notes. We've got our Instagram what's the what's it called again?

SPEAKER_00 39:00

It's called Call of the Ocean Podcast, and it's underscore between each word. Uh so um yeah, definitely check it out there because I'll try and keep that up to date.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Good. You're gonna do that. Um Yeah, so we'll put his contacts in there, we'll let you know when the next episode is out on there as well. Don't know who it's gonna be with. We've got a few interesting people lined up. And as soon as we know, we'll let you know. Um I suppose if you subscribe as well, if you're not already a person that seems to subscriptions, um you'll probably find out when our next episode is out. If you subscribe as well, that'd be great if you can.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Yeah, thanks a lot, and uh, hopefully, we'll hear from you again. Enjoy the sea. See you later.