Beautiful Blue Business

By Phyllis Ford]

You have probably heard about green businesses, companies that work to reduce harm to the environment by incorporating sustainable practices into their decisions. The blue economy focuses these sustainability efforts on the world’s oceans and seas to benefit the interlinked economies, livelihoods, and health of ocean ecosystems.

Cold Current Kelp is a blue business whose product manufacturing not only reduces harm to the marine environment but in fact helps the local waterways.

Dr. Inga Potter is a marine biologist and educator whose lifelong love of the ocean began during summers on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. Krista Rosen grew up in coastal and rural Maine and is passionate about issues around climate change. Together, they founded Cold Current Kelp in 2021, a blue beauty business dedicated to producing ocean-based skincare products using sustainable practices and responsible sourcing to help preserve marine ecosystems. Their team includes a chemical engineer with experience in pharmaceuticals and a chemist who develops the skincare formulas used in Cold Current Kelp skincare products.

Cold Current Kelp is both a kelp farm and skincare company. The goal of this women-owned business is to create unique, effective skincare products with a commitment to sustainability, clean ingredients, and spreading the power of seaweed in skincare. “We are proud to be on the ground and in the water for every step of our process—from growing kelp in our local Maine waters, to harvesting, drying, and developing the best possible formula,” says Inga. “We see our product development all the way through, from sea to skin.”

Unlike some skincare products made with seaweed, Cold Current Kelp grows and harvests the kelp used in their products. The seaweed they use is sugar kelp, Saccharina latissima, a macroalgae that thrives in the harsh and variable conditions off the coast of Southern Maine. In late fall and early winter, the team suspends rope seeded with tiny juvenile kelp blades between bright yellow buoys just off the coast in the Gulf of Maine. “Early spring sees an explosion of growth, as sugar kelp can grow a half to two inches per day,” Krista says. The same metabolites and antioxidants the kelp creates to protect its own tissues from the harsh conditions in the water have been shown to provide the same antioxidant benefits to human skin.

By the spring harvest time, the kelp has grown into long, ruffled blades of up to ten feet in length. “We harvest our kelp by hand, cutting it off the line and placing it into totes,” says Inga. Once harvested, they transport it to a nearby greenhouse, where they hang the kelp on lines to stabilize and preserve its bioactive compounds, do testing, and perform quality control checks.

Once the compounds are extracted from the kelp, they are mixed with a blend of organic oils to produce KelpGlow Facial Oil. “Powerful bioactives in the kelp are antioxidant, soothing, anti-inflammatory, and inhibit the breakdown of collagen and elastin in the skin,” Inga explains. “We make three varieties of KelpGlow and plan to expand our product line in the future.” The products are packaged and shipped using recyclable packages.

Kelp is beneficial to the ocean environment, absorbing 20 times as much carbon dioxide from the environment as forests and releasing oxygen back into the atmosphere. Growing sugar kelp requires no fertilizer, soil, pesticides, or fresh water—it produces its own food through photosynthesis. And the underwater kelp forest provides a habitat for juvenile fish and other marine creatures while dispersing wave energy to protect shorelines from erosion.

Cold Current Kelp is working to advance the emerging kelp aquaculture industry in Maine and the United States. “We believe in collaborating with partners in projects and research, educating people on the many environmental benefits of growing seaweed, and engaging with our community to help spread our excitement about the incredible potential of regeneratively grown kelp,” says Inga.

Learn more at coldcurrentkelp.com.

This article appeared in Beachcombing Magazine Volume 45 November/December 2024