Seaweed Saves the World? is an ongoing photo-ethnographic research project examining the emergence of seaweed cultivation on the west coast of Scotland. During the course of fieldwork and analysis I have become especially interested in the apparent disconnect between bold claims in media and industry discourse about seaweed farming as a panacea for global problems, and the day-to-day challenges faced by the farmers and scientists directly involved in cultivation. More broadly, I am curious about what happens when typically land-based practices - in this case, crop cultivation - are taken into the ocean. Does seaweed farming offer something genuinely new and sustainable? Or is it business as usual?

The photographs below contextualise this project by drawing on the unexpected connections between early marine science, anthropology, photography and seaweed. I take large format (5x4) black and white negatives of the people and places involved in the different stages of seaweed cultivation, which are developed in a foraged bladderwrack developer before being printed in cyanotype, bringing the material properties of my field sites into the final images. In the process, I make linkages with Anna Atkins, the first woman to make a photographic image - in cyanotype, of seaweed - in early 1840s; the Challenger Expedition (1872-6), regarded as a founding moment in marine science and the first scientific expedition to employ a professional photographer; and Alfred Cort Haddon, the marine scientist turned social anthropologist who led one of the first anthropological field expeditions (1898-9) and in whose research visual media played a major role. I thus use photographic practice as a research method, a means of fieldwork documentation, a form of data analysis and as a way of communicating my research to diverse, non-specialist audiences. This is in addition to the more common anthropological practices of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and text-based field notes and research papers.