Monterey hosts free California Seaweed Festival Saturday

The seventh annual California Seaweed Festival comes to Custom House Plaza in Monterey on Saturday, Oct. 24. Admission is free, with live music, seaweed tastings and more than 60 vendors and exhibitors.

Pre-festival events began Wednesday, Oct. 21, with ocean-themed film screenings, field trips and workshops at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and other peninsula locations, KSBW reported. Saturday's main event runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., according to the festival's website. The Old Monterey Business Association lists the hours as 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Activities will be spread across the Monterey History and Art Museum at Stanton Center and the adjacent plaza near Fisherman's Wharf.

The festival is not all hard science. Organizers told KSBW that presentations will explore mermaids in ocean lore, underwater robots and seaweed art. Saturday's panels include an Indigenous forum moderated by Esak Ordonez of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, an underwater photography discussion led by Jenna Emery and a kelp-forest storytelling session in arts and media moderated by Josie Iselin.

Hands-on workshops include making natural ink from algae, led by Jennifer Gil of AlgyLab, and an environmental storytelling session with Evan Schwart of Story is Strategy.

Simona Augyte, a California Sea Grant aquaculture extension specialist based at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, co-founded the festival with Janet Kübler, a senior research scientist at California State University, Northridge. Augyte told California Sea Grant that the culinary side is central to the event's appeal.

"Because the connection people have with food is so important, we highlight tasting samples and cooking workshops for the public to engage with chefs, try different products and find ways they can easily incorporate seaweeds into their daily cooking," she said in the Sea Grant feature.

Several local aquaculture businesses plan to attend. Monterey Bay Seaweed Company will show off varieties it grows for area chefs. Monterey Abalone Company and Cultured Abalone will offer tastings, as will Hog Island Oyster Co., which is traveling from Tomales Bay to host its raw oyster bar, according to California Sea Grant. Sea urchin samples will also be available.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium, NOAA's Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Camp SEA Lab, Save Our Shores and the Surfrider Foundation's Monterey chapter are among the exhibitors.

The festival grew out of golden kelp research funded by California Sea Grant. Augyte and Kübler launched a virtual version in 2020 during the pandemic, then held the first in-person event the following year in Santa Barbara. Each year the festival moves to a different coastal community. More than 3,500 people attended in 2025 in San Pedro, according to California Sea Grant.

Organizers describe this year's Monterey edition as both a celebration of the bay's biodiversity and a response to declining kelp forests along the peninsula, according to the festival's website.

Saturday's schedule begins at 9:30 a.m. with a scientific poster session and continues through afternoon panels on aquaculture, kelp restoration and ocean photography.

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