Soccer Club Strikes Back At Climate Crisis With Algae-Powered Uniform

Spanish top-flight soccer club Real Betis Balompié has launched a new uniform made from an unexpected material ― the invasive algae, Rugulopteryx okamurae, that, due to climate change, is posing an increasing threat to the ecosystem of the Mediterranean Sea and beyond.

The Seville-based La Liga team, currently mid-table, unveiled its uniform (including recycled ocean plastics) last week in the southern Spanish coastal town of Tarifa, whose coastline has been hit by the ecological invader, according to the club.

Divers symbolically retrieved the message-sending jerseys from the seabed ahead of their presentation. Betis players will wear the uniform for Sunday’s clash with Real Sociedad.

“The presence of invasive algae on our coasts is destroying our ecosystem,” the club wrote on Instagram. “To confront them, the first kit made with fibers created from these algae was born.”

The brown algae are native to the North Pacific Ocean and arrived off Spain’s coast circa 2015, most likely “through the ballast waters of merchant ships,” marine biologist Candela Sánchez Atienzar told the AFP news agency.

“When it arrived it started to spread out of control, there’s no invasion in the history of science described on this scale,” Sánchez recalled.

Climate change has seen algae proliferate off Spain’s coast in recent years, and there are no signs of slowing down as the Mediterranean Sea’s surface temperature soars to record highs each summer.

Spain is frequently referred to as “ground zero” of the climate crisis in Europe, with hotter summer heatwaves and devastating storms.

Removing the algae is an expensive process that now costs the southern Spanish coastal town of Estepona alone more than $1 million per year, reported El País newspaper.

Tarifa itself, meanwhile, is seeking to turn the algae into electricity and sustainable fertilizer using an experimental bioreactor.