Visit the first ever Seaweed Festival for Aotearoa. Seaweed Fest 2025 will celebrate our underwater forests with events happening across Wellington, Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
Seaweed
Seaweed is a type of algae and is normally grouped by colour – green, red or brown. Seaweed is a primary producer and an important source of nutrients and energy in the marine food web. Seaweed generally grows in clusters called ‘beds’, and these provide an important source of shelter for many marine species, including mussels.
The event line-up for Seaweed Fest 2025 includes:
- behind the scenes tours of Te Papa’s seaweed collections
- a mystery movie event at the Roxy
- community exhibitions
- sea-swims
- saunas and guided snorkels
- public talks from seaweed experts
- seaweed feasts
- sea-shanties
- seaweed-inspired gins.
Find out more here: www.loverimurimu.org/festival
Related content
Love Rimurimu – an ocean of potential for seaweed is a year-long inquiry supported by Mountains to Sea – with exploration in the classroom and in the field. You can also dip into resources covering biodiversity, human impacts and restoration for short-term studies. Several resources are in te reo Māori, courtesy of Te Aho Tū Roa.
The citizen science project Floating Forests needs the help of citizen scientists to identify kelp forests from satellite images.
Discover the mātauranga that underpins pōhā – bags made from rimurapa, a species of bull kelp, that preserve tītī (muttonbirds) for up to 2 years.
See our Seaweed and algae Pinterest board for more resource ideas.
This event is one of the many celebrating Seaweek – Kaupapa Moana at the start of March – we’ve curated unit plans and other teacher support materials into marine-related teaching topics.
Useful link
Read this RNZ news article: The next Homegrown? New Zealand's first Seaweed Festival coming to Wellington.
