Exquisite Mechanisms

Three decades ago, Simon Ranger began the Seagreens project in London and Norway, “to get a gram of the best seaweed into the daily diet”. This book explains how and why.

Today the project operates in many countries, producing wild seaweed ingredients for human nutrition to a unique quality standard which informs consumers of their comprehensive nutritional profiles and evidence-based contribution to health, drawing on years of applied research.

“In our minds we can live in the future, the realm of ideas and intention.  Now is the realm of action.  Yet our bodies dwell in the past, tethered to a primordial chemistry.  If we go to the moon, we must remember to pack the seaweed” says the author.

Exquisite Mechanisms is eye-opening.  Certain wild seaweeds contain every micronutrient essential to human health, in specific micro-relationships which defy replication – a claim no other food or supplement can make.  These relationships are self-regulating and regenerative, mirroring the biochemical foundations of life itself. 

The seas are nutritional reservoirs, renewed from rivers, volcanoes, hydrothermal vents, and recycled marine organisms.  They distribute micronutrients around the globe, much as a less salty solution does in the human body – both 70% water.

Such relationships, operating on microscopic and planetary scales, continuously replenishing the nutritional composition of seaweed and the chemistry of life, exemplify exquisite mechanisms – natural models which inspired the Seagreens project itself. 

The story mounts in waves through the author’s simultaneous development of intricately related themes which are ultimately unified. Separation is seen as illusory and a holistic approach to business, science and healthy living is presented as a more realistic alternative future.

“It is so interesting. The science is rigorous and dominant, the polemic honest and poignant, the memoir moving. The figure of a creative businessman in late middle-age embarking on a project he knew little about, yet sustained by growing conviction, gives the book a profound emotional spine. The prose has a rare quality of considered reflection” – independent reviews.

The book is written for a health-conscious public of all ages – consumers, health professionals, nutrition and food scientists, those interested in business and human development, public health, and regulatory policy. At 512 pages paperback, it is a important and continuing story, expounding a unique innovation underpinned by science, experience, vision, and subtle humour. It was published in September 2026 by Seagreens Trust Publishing on Amazon worldwide at £24. It is available to our customers from Seagreens.Shop at £19, just over 20% off the cover price.

The author, now 76, remains a Custodian of Seagreens Trust. He lives in West Sussex with his wife Maja, a consultant psychiatrist. In 2023 they launched The Warren Heritage Project to restore ancient woodland and gardens, and to establish a holistic, science-based seaweed Innovation Centre for the future.