Dana Urquhart is spending the summer doing his best to develop another natural resource-based industry for coastal Washington County.

The 53-year-old Bucks Harbor businessman is the resource manager for Acadian Seaplants of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, the company that is conducting a seaweed-harvesting operation off Jonesport, Beals and Addison, the Moosabec region.

“They’ve harvested down here for the past three years, but this is the first time they’ve hired a local resource manager,” Urquhart said.

Urquhart began recruiting and training harvesters at the beginning of June and is speaking to area selectmen about the project.

Acadian Seaplants is one of the world’s largest independent manufacturers of seaweed-based specialty products and supplies markets in 60 countries, according to the company’s Web site. The products are derived from marine plants and include fertilizers, animal feed, food products and brewery supplies.

Urquhart said demand for the company’s products is growing, and Acadian Seaplants is hoping this summer’s harvest in the Moosabec region will produce as much as 2,000 tons. Seaweed can be harvested from May 15 through Oct. 1, he said.

The seaweed will be trucked to an Acadian plant in Penfield, New Brunswick, for processing. But the company has said if there’s enough interest in harvesting the resource, it would consider constructing a processing facility in Maine in the next two or three years.

Urquhart said the company is paying $26 per wet ton, and a good harvester can bring in about a ton an hour. Harvesters can work four to six hours a day, depending on weather and the size of the tide, he said.

The harvest is conducted in 16- to 24-foot open-hulled boats, and the harvesters use a long-handled cutting tool designed by Acadian Seaplants. The seaweed, which is attached to rocks in the intertidal zone, is cut as it floats in the water.

The company’s cutting tool makes it easy to take just the top of the plant – leaving the 16 inches of growth that is required under state Department of Marine Resources regulations, he said.

Harvesting seaweed is a lot like fir tipping, Urquhart said.

Tipping refers to cutting balsam fir tips for wreaths and other Christmas decorations. It is a seasonal job in Washington and Hancock counties.

“You want to leave your trees fairly full so you can come back the next year and tip in the same spot,” he said.

The company’s harvest plan – which includes limits on how much of the resource can be removed from each of the five harvest areas off Jonesport, Beals and Addison – was approved by the Department of Marine Resources, Urquhart said. “This is just a training area. Our harvesting plan with [the state] is for the Moosabec region.”

Lee Hudson, president of the Maine Seaweed Council, said Acadian Seaplants voluntarily submitted its harvest plan to DMR. The Canadian company has been active with the seaweed council for the past year, she said.

The seaweed council is composed of industry members and scientists who are working with DMR to develop regulations to protect the resource from overharvesting, Hudson said.

“Acadian has shared their scientific information and information on how Canada has handled the resource,” Hudson said.

There are 121 licensed seaweed harvesters in Maine as well as processing plants in the state, including some in the midcoast region, she said.

Hudson said the 2001 harvest was almost 6 million wet pounds.

Peter Thayer, a DMR marine resources scientist who has been working with the seaweed council for six years, said Maine has two regulations regarding seaweed harvesting:

. Harvesters must leave 16 inches of the plant so the seaweed will grow back within one to two years.

. Licensed harvesters must file monthly reports indicating how much seaweed they’ve harvested and where that harvest took place, Thayer said.

Most of the seaweed harvested in Maine is known as rockweed – simply, seaweed that grows on rocks. But the 6 million-ton harvest for 2001 includes wormweed (which is used for packing marine bait worms), nori, kelps and edible seaweeds such as dulse and Irish moss, he said.

Jean-Paul Deveau, president of Acadian Seaplants, said his company has developed internal rules governing harvesting practices to ensure the sustainability of the resource. Those rules go far beyond regulations in Maine or New Brunswick, he said.

As is standard practice in all of Acadian’s harvests, the company assessed the amount of seaweed in the Moosabec harvest area before developing a harvest plan, he said.

The hoped-for harvest of 2,000 tons is small when compared with the 11,000-ton harvest limit the company operates under in New Brunswick, he said.

Acadian Seaplants wants to develop the industry in Maine and knows it will take a long time to do the training and develop a good long-term relationship, he said.

Urquhart said he sees the potential for seaweed to supplement the income of local fishermen and clammers or become an alternative for people who can’t get clam licenses or are shut out of limited-entry fisheries, such as lobstering and sea urchins.

“I’d like to see another industry get started with natural resources and be sustainable,” he said.