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New Zealand Resource Benefits Industry, Environment and Health
As the world begins to grasp the benefits of seaweed, Aotearoa New Zealand is innovating high value uses of its precious underwater forests while simultaneously focusing on undoing the pollution of the last couple of centuries.
New Zealand is the world's sixth largest island, populated by just over 5 million people. It was the last large and livable place in the world to be discovered by humans. Ancestors of the Maori arrived from Polynesia between 1200 and 1300 A.D. to a land with flora and fauna that had evolved for millions of years without human influence. Colonization followed Captain Cook's Voyage of Discovery in 1769, with destruction of the native forests for timber among the first impacts, delivering sediment to the streams and waterways that lead to the coasts.
Since then, the pressures of land use change and intensification, increasing sedimentation entering the ocean from waterways, pollution, invasive species, and climate change have continued their toll on the health of land and sea, according to the New Zealand Ministry for the Environment.
Deforestation on the country's steep slopes is a main cause of increased sediment that harms native sea life and the ecosystems dependent on it. A keystone species in New Zealand is seaweed, such as kelp. Sediment in the water affects the amount of light kelp can get to photosynthesize. Through imbalances in practices such as overfishing of certain species, native sea urchins (kina) may strip a reef of kelp, creating an open area known as a barren that prevents the growth of large seaweeds such as kelp for years.
Adding to the environmental challenge, some management practices of the dairy industry, which has long played a significant role in the New Zealand economy, have contributed to increased nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus in waterways that potentially harm ecosystems. New Zealand produces 20 times more dairy products than the domestic market can consume. In helping to feed to world, a problem has evolved for the land and waters of New Zealand.
The government's latest State of the Environment Report (2022) shows that between 1977 and 2013, human influence led to an estimated 74 percent increase in total nitrogen loads into the ocean; a 159...