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

Spain’s Real Betis is trying to flip the script on an ocean menace.

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.