Sea Urchins, Seaweed Startups, and Getting Into African Aquaculture

Two early-career researchers working at very different ends of the aquaculture spectrum. Aimee Cloete is a PhD student at UCT developing sea urchin aquaculture in South Africa, with a focus on integrating Cape Sea Urchin production into existing abalone systems. Anga Mbeyiya is the founder of One Blue, a seaweed startup connecting rural coastal cooperatives in the Eastern Cape and Kenya to markets for biostimulant fertilizers and seaweed products.The conversation covers how they both ended up in aquaculture, what a research career actually looks like week to week, the persistent gap between research output and commercial uptake in South Africa, what makes academic supervisors matter more than people expect, and how to get into the industry without a conventional route in.Made possible by LIMAQUA.