Communicating about sustainable seaweed farming and seafood

My most vivid memories as a child were running around my neighborhood with a particularly rowdy group of kids at any time of the day without a care in the world. I loved biking in the sun, wind in my hair, racing down the street pedaling as hard and as fast as I could. I loved laying in the grass, feeling the blades between my fingers and staring into the sky, trying to identify what shapes the clouds were forming that day. Sure, I loved playing with my friends, but what really drew me out of the house was growing my connection to nature. Catching lizards scurrying through the street, collecting rocks at the beach, sprinting through sprinklers, swinging on the playground – there was one common theme: loving nature.

That love for nature instilled in me from such a young age only grew stronger. By the time I was in high school taking AP Environmental Science and debating hot button political and ideological issues every weekend, I couldn’t imagine myself going into college studying anything other than the natural world and our impact on it. Everyone around me saw my passion for climate change solvency, environmental justice, halting environmental degradation, holding corporations accountable for pollution, and the plethora of other subtopics in the field of sustainability. I knew I was passionate too, but what I couldn’t figure out – even through my first few semesters at USC – was where I fit into the puzzle of change-making for our planet. 

The concept and possibilities of what science communicator jobs entail was relatively foreign to me – obviously I read media concerning the environmental world every day, but I never understood the realm of possibilities I could explore as a science communicator. I applied to the Wrigley Institute’s Environmental Communications Internship and was thrilled to be offered a spot in the cohort being mentored by Dr. Amalia Almada to help out with a fascinating sterile seaweed farming project and the South Central Los Angeles Seafood Equity Hub program.

The first few weeks were full of learning curves, including dissecting and trying to understand the highly technical processes that go into creating sterile kelp. The project itself is fascinating – Dr. Sergey Nuzhdin’s lab in San Pedro cultivates kelp that is unable to produce seeds (spores) in order to one day support more expansive farming of ocean seaweed for bioplastics, biofuel, pharmaceuticals, and food. Wrapping my head around the science was a doozy, but after meeting with 15 diverse kelp and aquaculture industry professionals, I understood it well enough to explain it back to others, and that’s when I knew I could start creating media. My goal was to create graphics that would help explain the science behind sterile kelp and/or address misconceptions of the concept in easily digestible ways, using metrics that a general audience could relate the complicated scientific concepts to, like seedless fruits or domesticated crops. 

Understanding sporeless kelp wasn’t the only learning curve I had to navigate, however. The South Central Los Angeles Seafood Equity Hub (SCLA) involves a collection of partners (USC Sea Grant, Wrigley Institute, Community Services Unlimited, Village Market Place, Holdfast Aquaculture, Santa Barbara Mariculture, and San Diego State University) working together to address inequities in affordability and access to sustainable seafood in South Central LA. Seafood is a cultural cornerstone of many cultures represented in the community, yet it’s a commodity very rarely found in local food stores and markets. My goals in working with the SCLA Seafood Hub included building a social media roll out plan and developing communication materials for the Hub’s upcoming Seafood Festival, a community event celebrating and educating on local seafood happening November 11, 2023. I also developed a central home for the Seafood Hub – a StoryMap Collection website – where all of the information regarding the Seafood Festival lives.

This summer has made me a much more seasoned communicator. It’s hard to know what really goes into producing the media in the environmental sphere until you’re behind the desk being tasked with communicating difficult information to a broad audience. However, some things I learned this summer helped me navigate that challenge a little better. First, to be a good communicator, you have to understand the material. I was told countless times this summer that if I couldn’t explain sterile kelp to a five-year-old, I didn’t understand it well enough. Everyone who told me that was completely correct, and it was frustrating at first, but it pushed me to research deeper and ask more questions to get a grasp on the project from as many angles as I could. Second, it’s completely okay (and often necessary) to change gears in communication strategy. Countless times this summer, I found myself hitting roadblocks because the vision I had for my communications materials was simply not panning out how I wanted it to. I sat for hours, frustrated that my original ideas didn’t turn out the way I hoped they would. But those roadblocks turned into lightbulb moments when I learned that pivoting – shifting directions – is often wonderfully beneficial for the end goal of a project. Being able to adapt to any curve balls thrown at you is necessary in virtually every line of work, but especially when strategic creativity and communicative media are involved.

The Wrigley Environmental Communications Internship solidified my love for marketing, communications strategy, and finding innovative ways to disseminate important, meaningful information to the masses. Being a science communicator means I can collaborate with peers working in any corner of environmentalism, grow to understand what they want people to know, and use my creativity (combined with the love for the natural world that I’ve always had in me) to send it off into the world and make the difference I always knew I could.