Why can’t you harvest algae oil in the wild?

While it may be possible to source tiny amounts of oil from wild microalgae in a pond, lake or from the sea, the process would be painstakingly slow and inefficient. It would require combating extreme variations in temperature, light, nutrient availability and contaminant levels. All of these challenges mean a vast surface area of land and volume of water is required to generate sufficient material for harvest. Because we make algae oil in fermentation tanks, in a highly controlled, optimized environment, the cells grow incredibly dense and can attain up to 80% oil by weight in just a few days, with relatively lower environmental impact than it would take to achieve this result harvesting wild microalgae.