Joshua Castle
HP Generation Impact Incubator Finalist
Blue Symbiosis
Joshua Castle is the founder of Blue Symbiosis, a company that strives to make a difference which involves one of the major environmental issues, oil and gas infrastrures. By utilising old structures, Blue Symbiosis seeks to repurpose retired oil and gas infrastructure for regenerating seaweed cultivation in order to make a positive impact towards our Planet Ocean.
LinkedIn: Joshua Castle
Company: Blue Symbiosis
Website: www.bluesymbiosis.com
The Innovator:
Joshua Castle is a passionate environmental activist which led him to completing his Bachelor of Marine and Antarctic Science with Honours. Joshua’s thesis involved the research into repurposing oil and gas infrastructure to regenerative seaweed sites, resulting in Joshua travelling all over the world for his studies and the development of Blue Symbiosis.
The Innovation:
Blue Symbiosis focuses on finding solutions for decommissioning and scaling seaweed production. Decommissioning is an emerging $60 billion AUD problem for governments and industries in which they are expected to share the costs. Seaweed has the potential to deliver vast environmental benefits for ocean health, but if it can’t be scaled, significant impacts on ocean health can’t be realised.
Blue Symbiosis aims to repurpose retired oil and gas infrastructure to regenerative seaweed cultivation sites in order to increase seaweed production to the scale large enough for seaweed to make a significant impact on ocean health. Benefits of this include helping the oil and gas industry transition towards a sustainable direction, saving decommissioning costs, re-using infrastructure, symbolising change, and the benefits associated with seaweed cultivation. It is possible to tell a new, regenerative story for the future of oil and gas infrastructure.
Why is innovation important:
“The ocean is the beating heart of our planet from which all the life we see around us evolved. It is our common heritage. Without the ocean, we have no life. To maintain a healthy planet, we need a healthy ocean. The problem is that the ocean is out of sight to most of the world's population. Part of this is because of the limited access all of us have to the ocean. It is so vast and inaccessible that no one person or team can simply go out and make the significant impact we need without innovation. Because of this, we need to use technology and partnerships to innovate non-linear solutions to scale impact as fast as possible. High impact ocean innovation can restore the beautiful.” - Joshua Castle
