Meet John Auckland, CEO and co-founder of Seafields
John Auckland is the co-founder and CEO of Seafields – a blue carbon project which aims to remove billions of tonnes of carbon each year when fully operational by growing, harvesting and baling floating seaweed called Sargassum, in the Atlantic Ocean.
John and his team made up of leading marine scientists and engineers are on a mission to replenish our oceans and, importantly, make a significant impact in addressing climate change. Seafields is developing and testing new technologies focused on growing and capturing Sargassum – a seaweed that has escaped its normal environment in the Sargasso Sea and has exploded in growth in the last two decades. The bloom can be seen from Space, and doesn’t have a great reputation amongst tourists, locals, holidaymakers, and the media, but Seafields believes that this seaweed can be the solution to climate change.
Tell us about the founder behind the brand?
Before becoming CEO of Seafields, I was a crowdfunding specialist and founder of TribeFirst – a global equity crowdfunding communications agency. We have helped raise in excess of £50 million for over 120 companies on major equity crowdfunding platforms, including a combined total of 114 Crowdcube and Seedrs campaigns, with a greater than 90% success rate.
I was also a Virgin StartUp's crowdfunding trainer and consultant, helping them to run branded workshops, webinars and programmes on crowdfunding.
I am very passionate about working with startups and see crowdfunding as more than just raising funds; it's an opportunity to build a loyal tribe of lifelong customers and supporters.
Lastly, I am a futurist and twice-published sci-fi author.
There’s always a lightbulb moment before the beginning of a new venture. What was that moment for you?
The original idea for Seafields came from serial entrepreneur, Sebastian Stephens. After initially investigating sustainable fuel (bioethanol) for a new airline for island nations, he found The Sargassum Podcast in which Prof Victor Smetacek – a renowned oceanographer and expert on marine ecology and the carbon cycle – discusses with our now Co-Founder, Dr Mar Fernández-Méndez, the benefits and opportunity for climate change that Sargassum holds. Very quickly, Sebastian assembled me, Victor, Mar and a team of experts passionate to bring this vision to life. After hearing the podcast, I had no hesitation in being a part of the team to bring this vision to reality. What started as a search for a solution to sustainable aviation ended up being a much bigger opportunity to make a serious impact on reversing the worst effects of climate change. And I wouldn’t change a thing about it!
What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?
The Arctic ice is melting at a pace that is visible in our lifetimes, there are no pristine ecosystems left on the planet, and we live in a world that is already 1°C warmer than it was for the last generation. Our planet warming is the stark reality we face collectively and CO2 emission reduction, albeit vital, won't be enough. Even stopping ongoing carbon emissions altogether will not prevent the planet's trajectory - the critical ingredient is sequestering the 1500GT of historic CO2 to return to safe pre-industrial revolution levels.
Mass tree planting is commonly perceived as nature's best solution to solving the climate emergency. However we don’t have the land to plant and manage more than 2 trillion trees needed to make a dent. We now know that the ocean has significantly more potential to provide a natural solution to sequestering carbon and Seafields is the only company that will remove carbon at the scale required.
By farming Sargassum and then processing, baling, and sinking it to the bottom of the ocean, we will be storing carbon for the future and preventing the immediate release of that carbon into the atmosphere. We're the only business that will operate in the middle of the ocean and the only ones looking at viable, hyperscale carbon dioxide removal via Sargassum.
We’re on a mission to remove 1Gt (one billion metric tonnes) of CO2 from the atmosphere each year by 2032. The mega farm at this stage will be the size of Portugal and also provide much-needed employment for many people. First building 'catch and grow' farms to stop Sargassum from beaching, then growing it in hyper-scale farms in the middle of the South Atlantic - to harvest it, process it, and bail it. We then sink bales of compressed seaweed to over 4,000m depth in the ocean, where it - and its embodied carbon - will remain for thousands of years.
Seafields is the most exciting idea I’ve seen in terms of its potential for tackling the climate emergency. It is the ocean equivalent of planting trees across the entire Sahara Desert. Aquafarming will also promote the restoration of marine ecosystems, helping many ocean species to survive and thrive, and produce seaweed which can be utilised to create useful and sustainable consumer goods.
What are your thoughts on failure?
Personally, I think failure is underrated. Failure just means that you have identified what doesn’t work, and that’s important in its own right. If it has been an opportunity to learn, it’s been a success in my eyes – especially when it comes to entrepreneurship. I’m also a big believer that well directed action is always far more important than inaction. That’s particularly true when it comes to the climate. Whilst we need to be careful that we’re not creating unintended consequences, everything you try needs to be measured against the baseline of doing nothing. In terms of the climate, since we’ve already reached a number of climate change tipping points, if we do nothing then things will continue to get much worse. I believe that’s true with a number of elements of society. True failure is when inaction allows for entropy to prevail, not when you try something that doesn’t work as expected.
Working with a co-founder can be tricky, so understanding and compromise is important. How have you both found the process of building a business together? What makes it work?
As well as putting money behind ideas, the best thing you can do as entrepreneur is put money behind people.
For it to work, it’s crucial that co-founders agree on the company’s vision – long-term and short-term – and where it fits into the current marketplace. It’s also really important to identify who’s good at what, and what each of your lanes are. For example, Mar is excellent at the science and I’m much better at the financials. Sebastian is brilliant at rallying people to a cause, but he’ll be the first to admit he doesn’t like to run businesses. Everyone has their strong-suits, and when you stick to your lanes, then everything else will fall into place.
Finally – whilst we’re good at different things and have very different backgrounds and areas of expertise – we complement each other. And I think this is very important.
With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?
We are the only business to successfully build a floating aquafarm that can work in the open ocean, we are the only ones looking to simultaneously cultivate Sargassum and extract nutrients from the seaweed before sinking it. Seafields’ solution is also unique in using ‘Stommel pipes’, a kind of deep ocean irrigation pipe that will provide a steady flow of nutrient-rich water to feed our Sargassum farms.
Stommel pipes are driven by buoyancy forces, generated by taking advantage of naturally occurring gradients in temperature and salinity which exist in the ocean. They don’t need an external source of power to function, a major advantage over simply pumping water up from the deep ocean.
What plans do you have for Seafields over the next two years?
As well as bringing in much needed funds, in the next two years we will successfully built and deployed our first ‘catch and grow’ farms. These will stop the seaweed in the Great Atlantic Sargassum belt from beaching before we then move it to a neighbouring anchored farm to give us time to process it.
We will also provide Sargassum year-round to a variety of industries, to produce products that work as substitutes for fossil fuels – such as biofertilisers, bioplastics and biofuels. This will contribute to carbon dioxide emission reductions globally. Part of our harvest will also be transformed into bionaphtha and other fossil fuel alternative products in close collaboration with our partner, Carbonwave (https://carbonwave.com/) – the world’s leading Sargassum products manufacturer.
We will also be looking into how Seafields, can work in the carbon credits sector with JustCarbon. Carbon credits are a vital tool in supplying our industry with the money needed to scale the climate action farms. We plan to sell these to give everyone (businesses and individuals) the opportunity to be a part of the climate action.
Does your company help the community that you’re located in?
Absolutely! By creating this aquaculture business, we will be helping develop not just jobs for scientists, but also for fishermen, engineers, and the wider economy too. This is basically a whole new agriculture system, but on the sea. An agricultural revolution like this hasn’t happened for centuries, it’s a huge, paradigm shifting opportunity. We’re also helping locals remain in employment and reallocate their skills and to move into something much more rewarding.
What’s the biggest risk to your business and why?
As carbon is removed from the ocean, we will need to verify that this leads to carbon removal in the atmosphere. When there is a difference in CO2 concentration between the surface ocean and the atmosphere, this difference will be balanced out, however not instantly – it is a process that takes weeks or months. To estimate how much of the CO2 taken out of the ocean is then pulled from the atmosphere back into the ocean, we need detailed measurement of CO2 concentration in the water and air in our farms. This, paired with modelling of how long the water parcels leaving our farm stay in contact with the atmosphere, will tell us how much of the carbon sequestered by our aquafarms can be considered sequestered from the atmosphere.
Our science team has extensive experience in monitoring climate change impacts in the carbon and nutrient cycles in the open ocean. They are aware of the challenges that ocean CDR Measurement Reporting and Verification (MRV) pose (e.g. accuracy of partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) measurements, considering the dilution of the signal, etc.) and are planning to use international monitoring networks (e.g. Argo floats, sail drones and satellites) as well as developing novel tools to improve the monitoring resolution for large scale operations. Using a combination of water and air sensors, we will monitor the air-ocean CO2 influx in our farms and control sites.
What was the journey like when you decided to raise funding for your startup? And what tips would you give to early-stage founders getting ready to take the same path?
The first US $1,17m was financed by founding team members, friends, family and angel investors. We also received support from the band Coldplay, who selected us as one of their 15 good causes for the recent Music of the Spheres world tour. In terms of advice:
Always start your fundraising round earlier than you need to. It will take longer than you think.
Finding investors is a two-way interview process. Think of it as finding a business partner, don’t just focus on the money. They’ll be with you for the long-run (or at least they should be)
Explore the R&D and grant landscape extensively. In times where cash is lean or hard to come by, this can save your business.
Bring in outside help to produce your pitch materials. You will be so close to the idea that you won’t be able to see the woods for the trees. I used outside help despite personally being involved in over 100 fundraising campaigns.
Entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey. How are you combating that feeling whilst pushing forward?
Entrepreneurship is a wild ride; no two days or hours are the same, and no matter how successful you are, it can be a lonely journey. Whether you’re on your own, at home, in an office, or hot-desking with fellow entrepreneurs, you might miss having someone there to celebrate your wins or coach you through your losses. But when all the responsibilities are falling on you, I like to…
Take time to be grateful and reflect on why I’m on this path
Take a break – a break from social media, a break from calls, a break from being an entrepreneur and taking some time to be dad, husband, golfer and foodie
Socialise with fellow entrepreneurs and like-minded individuals, either through networking events and groups or on online platforms, although don’t always presume they have the answers – we saw our answer in science
Have a virtual catch-up and cuppa with my team!
From what I understand, regardless of our environmental choices, the earth will bounce back - with or without us. What advice would you give to consumers to place more pressure on their favourite fashion brands to choose sustainability?
Climate change is not a future threat, but a present reality. We are all facing the reality of the climate crisis – from heatwaves to flash floods, rising sea levels to loss of biodiversity. Unfortunately, the fashion industry does have a devastating impact on the planet, whether it’s through toxic emissions, habitats being destroyed, or water being polluted. As the effects of climate change continue, there are simple ways you can help. And rethinking your shopping habits is one way. For me, I only buy from sustainable brands, such as Rapanui or Sutsu, or buy refurbished clothes from the likes of GoThrift. Vote with your wallets, as a consumer you have more power to change the behaviour of big brands than you think. Only a small dip in sales will make them question what’s happening and start to make changes.
At Seafields, we know we can make small changes to help that will lead to huge outcomes in the long term.
