N.S. artist helps kelp grow in homemade clay pots in underwater art installation
CBC
A Dalhousie University student is mixing their passion for conservation and art in a bid to help regrow native kelp populations.
Kelp is a food source and provides shelter for many marine species, but warmer ocean temperatures have decimated its population in Nova Scotia.
That is why Kit Tymoshuk made clay pots that can house baby kelp, keeping it anchored and helping it grow.
“There's this type of restoration method called green gravel where you grow kelp on little pieces of rock and then you can kind of disperse them in the water where you're hoping to regenerate degraded kelp forests,” said Tymoshuk.
“And so it kind of sparked the idea of like, what if we grew kelp on something that wasn't little rocks? Like could I grow it on pots of clay?”
Tymoshuk said they received a $5,000 grant from Ocean Wise, a B.C. environmental organization, to make their vision a reality, and took off to different bogs during the summer to collect the wild clay that would be in these pots.
Tymoshuk said they favoured wild clay over commercial clay because they wanted to make sure the materials were locally sourced. They collected over five kilograms of clay, which was reduced in size after removing impurities.
They had to test all the clay collected to make sure it would throw correctly and withstand the high temperatures in the kiln.
The current oceanography master's candidate and former Nova Scotia College of Art and Design student settled on clay from Stewiacke, N.S., and Annapolis Royal, but ended up having to mix some commercial clay into it as well.
Then, Tymoshuk had to design a pot that was both appealing and functional.
“I needed the outsides to be very textured to make sure that the kelp had, like, a good foundation to adhere to,” they explained. “And then I also tried to kind of at least keep the walls pretty straight just to make sure that they had the best chance of, like, light accessing all sides so as much kelp could grow as possible.
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