Cascadia Seaweed Participates as an Industry Partner with Camosun College —
Team Wins Most Innovative Project

The lobby of the Centre for Trades and Innovation at Camosun College was buzzing with new innovative ideas as students from the Mechanical Engineering Program demonstrated their projects at the student showcase on August 20, 2021. Cascadia Seaweed participated as an industry partner requesting students redesign a device used to deploy seeded cultivation line onto their ocean farms, and the team of four tasked with this challenge were recognized by a panel of independent judges for producing the most innovative project.

“We were tasked with developing an innovative and practical solution to improve the seeding process for Cascadia Seaweed by developing a new kelp seed launcher, within the semester time frame and a predetermined budget,” said Huu Nguyen. The students shared that this challenge, among all of the options, was the sought after project. “The instructors believed in our team to deliver a practical and effective solution,” said lead machinist, Anika Andersen. 

“We shared the design of our current seed launcher, explained what the device needed to do and what the restrictions were, then gave the students latitude to figure out how to accomplish the task,” said Matt Obee, VP of Operations at Cascadia Seaweed, Alumni and former instructor at Camosun College. 

Marshel Glidden explained the two constraints provided, “Nothing could touch the seeded line to guide it off the spools otherwise it might disturb the sporophytes and reduce the cultivation density, and secondly we were not able to change the geometry of the spools because Cascadia is already using these specific PVC tubes in their kelp nursery.”

“The design we landed on consists of a versatile mechanism holding three seed spools that can maintain the necessary tension to produce an even wrap around the farm production lines. This design reduces the handling of seeded line and eliminates the need to cut production lines during deployment,” explains Justin Tomlinson. 

“The innovation award recognizes students who have demonstrated out-of-the-box problem solving,” says instructor Richard Burman. “For this particular challenge, the students had defined guidelines but the route to success was not clear. They had to conceptualize and test many possible solutions in a short period of time,” indicated Burman. 

The results demonstrated that they really took the time to understand our needs,” said Obee. “From our perspective, it was a very worthwhile partnership, something we’ll look to do more of in the future.”

The students were proud to be finishing their program and entering the workforce with this constructive experience complete.