GreenWave, a 501c-3 nonprofit organization headquartered in south central Connecticut, has been producing sugar kelp seedstring in its New Haven facility since 2016. GreenWave’s original seed production facility was based, in part, on the recommendations of the 2013 Kelp Farming Manual produced by Ocean Approved (Flavin, Flavin, and Flahive) and the seminal work of Dr. Charles Yarish and his lab at the University of Connecticut, Stamford. Over the first five years of operation, we realized that our system, which utilized T-12 fluorescent lighting, glass aquaria, and air and water chilling systems, was labor and energy intensive and costly to operate at commercial scale. These system inefficiencies, coupled with the reliance on seasonally sourced wild kelp reproductive tissue, or sorus, represented a significant bottleneck to the availability of affordable, high quality, and timely kelp seed for ocean farmers. In 2022, GreenWave embarked on an effort to revamp its kelp nursery to increase labor and energy efficiencies and improve seed quality while reducing the costs of operation, and to develop a modular model for kelp seed production that could be replicated throughout southern New England and beyond. Using this new system, GreenWave anticipates being able to produce twice the amount of kelp seed in ? of the space and with less than half the labor that was possible in the original facility. This presentation will review the major transformations to GreenWave’s kelp nursery, including water treatment systems, lighting, cooling, and standard operating procedures, and will share preliminary findings from the 2022-2023 production season.