I literally sat at my kitchen counter with the INCI list and a highlighter. Haeckels claims this serum has zero synthetic ingredients — no preservatives, no emulsifiers, no lab-made anything.
That’s a wild flex for a water-based product. Water + no preservatives usually = mold in 3 weeks. So either they’re lying, or they’ve figured out something the entire cosmetics industry hasn’t.
£60 for 30ml. Glass bottle. Dropper. Smells like a low tide in Margate — which is apparently the point. They harvest seaweed from the beach near their lab and process it within hours.
Seaweed-based preservative system
They use fermented kelp extract instead of parabens. Sounds gimmicky. It actually works.
Zero water added
The base is seaweed filtrate, not H2O. That’s how they avoid needing a preservative.
Unfiltered formula
They don’t remove the sediment. You’ll see tiny particles floating. Freaked me out day one.
Photo: Alexandru Zdrobău / Unsplash
Four ingredients total. That’s it. No filler, no thickener, no fragrance oil hiding in the middle. The hero is bladderwrack seaweed — harvested by hand, cold-processed to keep the enzymes alive.
- Bladderwrack seaweed: marine collagen booster, not a moisturizer
- Fermented kelp: natural preservative + probiotic for skin
- Sea silt: trace minerals that calm redness
- Hibiscus extract: very mild natural AHA, smooths texture over time
Texture is weird — watery but slightly slimy, like the ocean in a bottle. Absorbs in about 12 seconds but leaves a tacky film for another minute. Not dewy. Not matte. Just… wet.
Week two my chin broke out. I almost rage-quit. Then week three my pores looked smaller. Not dramatically — but enough that my boyfriend asked if I was wearing less foundation. The breakout was purging from the hibiscus acid. Wish they’d warned me.
Redness is noticeably calmer. Pores on my nose look smaller. But if you expect plumping or hydration — nope. This is not a moisturizer. It’s a treatment that happens to be wet.
It’s actually clean — not greenwashing. The zero-synthetic claim holds up. But clean doesn’t mean gentle, and this serum will test your patience before it rewards it.