Hello dear human beings, 

I am Ma Kombu, seaweed from the Pacific coast of Japan. I have come here today to address you through my human friend, artist and designer Julia Lohmann, who is a Professor at Aalto University and has been working with me for the past decade. Julia will lend me her voice to reach you with an important message from the seaweed: 

Dear Humans,  
 
You have been acting carelessly on our blue planet and your actions cause great harm that reaches down to the deepest depths and high up into the skies. You are changing the atmosphere of our planet by burning our shared history as so-called fossil fuels. As the masses of Carbon Dioxide released in the air sink into our oceans, all our lives will be changed forever. The Ocean will not be our Ocean anymore. It will turn into an acidic broth. It will change more drastically in the next 100 years than in the previous 10 million years, since before your ancestors, the first humans, began to inhabit our planet. 

Neither of us can truly imagine this change today, but we can still try to prevent it. I have come here today – through Julia – to propose another way for humans to live together with their co-species. I am asking you to become like me, brown kelp, to heal what has been damaged. 

Plankton, algae and bacteria generate 50-80% of the oxygen on our planet. None of you would be here today, without the “Great Oxygenization” that occurred 2-3 billion years ago, when my ancestors, the ancient cyanobacteria, invented photosynthesis and made this world habitable to you.  

 
Even today, every second breath you take comes from the ocean, courtesy of the plankton, algae and bacteria that flourish in a healthy sea. And yet, it is also algae, the toxic algae blooms, that highlight the disruptions caused by your species. You are the Baltic /Atlantic people, and you know what I mean. You see it on your beaches, on the hull of your sailboats every summer. The algae blooms thank you for the fertilizer you are sending down the rivers to feed it. They celebrate and multiply recklessly until the Baltic Sea is unsafe and full of dead zones, devoid of life. Their deeds mirror yours. Human and cyanobacterial fates are entangled. 

In every sea, I, Ma Kombu, now sense YOU: your people, your structures, your unintended consequences. You seem hellbent on changing the climate we all depend on. 

Why do you strive to get back to an atmosphere enriched with carbon dioxide now, when we had such a long time of balance and harmony together? 

Don’t despair. We, the algae can help you heal what you have damaged. We can be grown in ways that improve our ecosystem: we provide shelter and habitat to fish and crustaceans, we pull out the excess nutrients and grow into strong, healthy, protein-rich biomass, all without the use of pesticides, antibiotics or genetic modifications. We, the brown algae, can be your counteragent, the yin to your yang, your ecological superpower. 

We can provide healthy proteins so that you need not eat other mammals, polymers so that you can leave the remaining carbon in the ground and make bioplastic from seaweed and lipids, cellulose, minerals, vitamins, antioxidants. You name it, we’ve got it. We can help you to detoxify your minds and bodies and clean our collective waterbody, the ocean. Grow us in places where we can enhance our ecosystem as rebalancing agents, turn away from the extractivist brink and become the regenerative species you can be, with healing hands, hearts and heads, caring beyond your own species for us all. We do so need your help. 

Brown algae like me are especially harmed by warming oceans, harmed by unsustainable harvesting practices. We are not a magic bullet that lets you carry on your business as usual. We can help you, but we cannot do it alone. 

We need to work together as species, and you need to become more like seaweed. Think, empathize and act like us, building ecological relationships on reciprocity, moving on from your extractive mindset to a regenerative one. When you grow us, you need to put our ecological agency first. Enable us to help the ocean and we will help you to fulfill your nutritional and material needs. Hear us right: your needs, not the excessive ‘wants’ you currently strive for that only serve the richest of you.  

 
Let’s create another Great Oxygenization event together, as species co-inhabiting a fragile blue planet. 

This text was delivered as an address at a public event by Julia Lohmann. Lohmann is a multidisciplinary designer, educator and researcher living in Helsinki, Finland. She is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Design at Aalto University.