This chapter explores how seaweed cultivation is impacted by the ocean conditions of surface water temperature, salinity, light penetration, water motion, nutrient levels, turbidity, ephiphytes, grazing wildlife, and pollution. The conditions vary significantly across locations, even within a short distance of each other, and seasons which creates highly seasonal patterns of cultivation and household management strategies. Strategies are also forged by socio-economic factors including access to sea space, access to labour, access to capital, seaweed market prices, and risk of theft. These arrays of combinations of environmental and socio-economic factors interact to constrain and enable production opportunities available to individual farmers.