Will we have a St David’s Day Celebration of A Marine License?

Background: 

The volunteers of a unique growing Community Benefit Society in three years have over come the challenges of:

1. Raising the profile of regenerative ocean farming and how it can mitigate climate change, create exciting new coastal jobs and produce zero input sustainably farmed Welsh Seaweed and Shellfish.
2. Obtaining the required licenses and Crown consent and running two trial restorative farms for 18 months near St Davids proving the concept can work and monitoring the environmental impact. 
3. Developing a whole supply chain to enable the scaling up of the current trial scale farms to set up a 3-hectare commercial-scale restorative ocean farm in the same location.
4. The supply chain includes seed producers, fish farm operators, marine engineers, commercial divers, marine scientists, crop dryers, processors, and food businesses.
5. Starting the application process for the 3 hectare Marine License and Crown Consent  in July 2021 aiming to have received this by December 2021 at the latest.
6. Engaging with the society’s biggest asset - its members - who have volunteered an amazing mix of complementary skills and raised through their pioneer share offer £90000 which has allowed the society to keep developing and striving to achieve all the required licenses and approvals required to operate a fish farming and processing and marketing Community Business.
7. Continually monitoring the marine environment through the Society members Christian, Dani, and Craig of PEBL who has the expertise and funding (Including from WWF) to develop equipment and techniques that can be utilised with all new farms
8. Networking with Seaweed farming and processing sectors in the UK and other countries eg with Câr-y-Môr members like NOTPLA and Nikki Spil of The Seaweed Farmers in the Netherlands. Nikki has for years been working on the development of different seaweed products, Carbon capture and the environmental monitoring of farms  
9. Gaining approval for a 300k European grant to help build the farm, and a 100k Welsh Government grant to train, employ staff in the first year and develop the marketing of the produce
10. Applying for bridging loans so that grants can be accessed
11. Planning the Development of St David’s Seafood house to showcase and educate about restorative ocean farming and Welsh sustainable seafood
12. Working with WWF and Pembrokeshire coastal forum to continue to engage our stakeholders, gathering fantastic support for the project including the current 120 society members but many more people from Welsh organisations involved in conservation, academia, tourism and the Senedd. 
13. And just recently ……….Discovering that the band 2 Marine License application has become many times more demanding in just 12 months, due to several large applications by private companies all being made in the interim. The Society has rallied and fulfilled all the additional requirements so that the application can be reassessed but have we run out of time?

This all has led to the Society’s latest  St Davids day challenge - can the society receive the marine License by 1st March in time to deploy and seed the farm this year so the society does not lose the 400k of funding the volunteers have worked so hard to achieve? 

The Society hopes, with the remarkable support network that it has been so fortunate to have found, it can assist Julie James and Lee Waters and the NRW marine licensing team to be able to issue a suitable Marine License by 1st March that allows the Society to continue the momentum of helping to start a truly innovative Welsh Seafood sector while also ensuring the progress is continually monitored to safeguard our marine environment and, as is widely believed, will show this is truly restorative ocean farming.

Finally, our thanks are owed to more than we can mention - however, a huge thanks to each and every customer who with every purchase is supporting the jobs that have been created and the future development, the fishermen who supply the society and help with the farms, the Welsh Universities that have all supported, the growing number of generous pioneer investors, Celtic Camping,  Landsker, WWF, the WcVA, many in Welsh Government, Menterabusnes and the Seafood Cluster, Greenwave in USA and many many more - its been an extraordinary privilege to have been involved and I believe this is an extraordinary innovative Society whose continued momentum has significant potential to bring benefits to the community and the marine environment. 

Hwyl am y tro