Could seaweed be a key in sourcing more precious and rare-earth elements? Some scientists seem to think so. 

What is seaweed mining?
Seaweed, scientists' thinking goes, might be a treasure trove of minerals, and they are trying to find a way to extract those minerals through a process similar to mining. The aquatic plants contain the elements platinum and rhodium, along with rare-earth elements like neodymium, lanthanum, yttrium and dysprosium. "These valuable elements, which can be captured and concentrated by seaweed, are essential to the green energy transition — and to technology more broadly," said Hakai Magazine. 

The Department of Energy's ARPA-E division is funding research projects in order to investigate the "feasibility of extracting critical minerals" from the plants. However, "there are a lot of complexities in the entire process, and that's why [seaweed mining] is in the category of 'very exploratory,'" Schery Umanzor, an assistant professor of marine biology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and a lead researcher on one of the projects funded by ARPA-E, said to Hakai Magazine. "The chances of success are low. But if we succeed, then the implications are huge."

How can it help?
"We know we need different sets of critical mineral supply chains to reach President Biden's ambitious clean energy and decarbonization targets," ARPA-E Director Evelyn Wang said in a press release.  The goal is to "see if seaweeds accumulate rare-earth elements at a concentration that makes sense financially to recover them," Umanzor said in a University of Alaska Fairbanks press release. Several variables make the possibility of mining the minerals unknown, including finding a method of extraction that does not destroy the plant and where to plant seaweed for it to absorb the highest quantity of rare-earth elements. 

If successful, seaweed mining could increase the stock of rare elements and minerals in a less invasive way than other forms of mining. However, traditional element mining is not going away anytime soon. "[Seaweeds] can contribute," Susete Pintéus, a marine biologist at the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria in Portugal, said to Hakai Magazine. "But they will not solve the problem themselves."

It took Cristina Rivera Garza, 2024's newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner for memoir, 30 years to write the story of her sister's murder. 

"El Invencible Verano de Liliana" was first published in Mexico in 2022 before its debut in the U.S. in 2023 as "Liliana's Invincible Summer: A Sister's Search for Justice." The toggling between — and now accolades in — two different countries is routine for Rivera Garza, a professor and author, poet and critic who has written more than 20 books.

Who is Cristina Rivera Garza?
Rivera Garza was born in Mexico and now teaches at the University of Houston. Her writing has won nearly every major literary award in Mexico, including the José Donoso award and the Xavier Villaurrutia award. Rivera Garza's writings grapple with the concept of fluidity. "To read [her] work is to be immersed in a kind of borderlessness," said Sohini Basak in Wasafiri. "Her writing moves seamlessly between fiction, memoir, literary criticism, poetry, archival work.… Working in both Spanish and English, between Mexico and the United States, her deeply interconnected books engage with all kinds of boundaries." 

One of Rivera Garza's most celebrated books is "Nadie Me Verá Llorar (No One Will See Me Cry)," a tale of two institutionalized patients during the era of the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century. The book "offers a new vision of Mexican history and of the future of literature in the region," said Cheyla Rose Samuelson in the journal Confluencia. 

What is her Pulitzer-winning memoir about?
"Liliana's Invincible Summer" is about Rivera Garza's sister Liliana and the aftereffects of her murder in 1990, but it is also a call to action related to Mexico's ongoing femicides. When Liliana's boyfriend murdered her, the government did not find nor prosecute the perpetrator. Back then, such violations were called crimes of passion. Cultural and political change over the three ensuing decades empowered Rivera Garza to finally tell Liliana's tale. 

The book's release in 2022 sparked further activism around femicide in Mexico. It gave voice and presence not just to Liliana but endless other Mexican women who have been murdered over the years.