Learn more about The Ocean Age Walk & Talk, Barcelona, 1st Nov 2026

Too many proven ocean solutions never make it past the pilot stage. Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy wants to fix that by replicating what already works: getting tested solutions into many ports, cities, and projects at once, with the funding to match. He’s the CEO of the World Ocean Council and co-founder of Okhtapus. We talk about why procurement slows startups down, how a port finds and buys a new solution, why wastewater is the forgotten piece of the blue economy, and why prevention is so hard to get funded.

Stewart’s bio:

Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy is CEO and Managing Director of the World Ocean Council and co-founder of Okhtapus. He was previously Global Director of Policy and Investments at the Resilient Cities Network and interim executive director of the Ocean Sewage Alliance. During the Obama administration he was partnerships director for the Hurricane Sandy task force and earlier worked on recovery with a tribal community on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. He coined the term “precovery” for doing the resilience work before disaster hits.

Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:08 - “Turdles”
00:04:15 - Wastewater as the forgotten piece of the blue economy
00:08:05 - What decentralised wastewater treatment looks like
00:15:40 - Precovery and the disaster, rebuild, repeat treadmill
00:21:15 - Blue Mind and why access to water should not be a privilege
00:30:15 - Why so many proven ocean solutions stall at the pilot stage
00:40:25 - The three hearts of Okhtapus: innovators, enablers, and funders
00:43:25 - How a port finds and buys a solution
00:51:10 - Why Okhtapus is not an accelerator, and how it makes money
01:01:20 - The World Ocean Council’s new strategy
01:05:50 - Tomorrow Blue Economy and the Walk & Talk event in Barcelona

Useful Links & Resources:

Stewart Sarkozy-Banoczy on LinkedIn
World Ocean Council: Website, LinkedIn, and Instagram
Okhtapus: Website and LinkedIn
Tomorrow.Blue Economy World Congress
The Ocean Age Walk & Talk
Turtles, not Turdles, Stewart’s article for the Ocean Sewage Alliance
Blue Mind by Wallace J. Nichols

Get in touch with The Ocean Age’s host Fed DeGobbi on LinkedIn, X or by emailing directly at fed@oceanage.co

Please send in your feedback: what do you want to hear more or less of? Any suggestions? Would love to hear what you think!

Here is my wide-ranging conversation with Mike Williamson, one of the first seaweed farmers in north America and the CEO of Cascadia Seaweed, one of the largest provider of ocean cultivated seaweed in North America (full bio below).

He told me some really compelling stories about starting as a pioneer seaweed farmer and entrepreneur in British Columbia (Canada). Cascadia Seaweed decided early on to start farming their own seaweed and then focus on 3 main verticals: seaweed for making plant-based food products (e.g. seaweed snacks), feed additives for cows to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, extracting chemicals and dietary supplements from seaweed in a sustainable way.

We looked into the importance of scale and the role of small businesses in the seaweed industry, with some great advice for seaweed entrepreneurs.

Mike shared his experience and learnings with the branding aspects of developing seaweed products, testing them and bringing them to market - covering topics such as changing people perception and expanding the consumer acceptance and awareness of seaweed.

We then launched into a deep dive around seaweed processing: from harvesting, freezing and extracting ingredients (bio-refining). He explained how seaweed doesn’t behave like any other land-based vegetables and the challenges that this brings to the processing stages, creating a need for specialised machinery and innovation in this area, which is strongly supported by collaboration with other seaweed entrepreneurs.

Useful Links:

Cascadia Seaweed's website
Cascadia Seaweed's on LinkedIn
Mike Williamson on Linkedin
Seaweed Around The Clock

Books (mentioned during the episodes):

Slime by Ruth Kassinger - How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us Paperb

Mike Williamson's bio:

Mike is a founding partner and the CEO of Cascadia Seaweed. Mike has had a long relationship with the sea. Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he proudly served in the Royal Canadian Navy for over thirty years. He had a number of shore-based, sea-going (under-sea) and overseas postings, culminating with three years as Commander of Canada’s west coast Naval Base. In the last ten years, he has been an entrepreneur and leader of a number of marine oriented companies encompassing energy, security, education and the environment. Mike brings this experience, along with a BSc (Math/Physics) and an MBA, to his current role.

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