Some concerned residents in Washington County are calling for a moratorium on the harvesting of rockweed – the commonly seen brownish-green, stringy seaweed peppered with air bladders – in Cobscook Bay until studies are done on the impact the harvest could have on the overall health of the bay.

Maine has no regulations for harvesting rockweed other than a cutting height of 16 inches or to the point of the first branching of the plant, “whichever leaves more of the plant,” Department of Marine Resources scientist Peter Thayer said recently. Harvesters also must report their takes at the end of the season.

He said a state study is under way on the animals and plants that live within the canopy of seaweed. The DMR-funded study, expected to be completed by spring 2009, could affect rockweed harvesting in Cobscook Bay, but exactly how would depend on its outcome, according to DMR Commissioner George Lapointe.

Although the category is listed as seaweed, Lapointe said, the bulk of the harvest is rockweed.

Last year’s total harvest in Maine waters for all seaweed was 7,472,175 pounds at a value of $298,887. In contrast, last year 63,147,767 pounds of lobster was harvested at a value of $280,710,469.

Rockweed is used in everyday products including foods, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, beverages, animal feeds and organic fertilizers.

Cobscook Bay area residents have complained about seeing unusual amounts of cut rockweed floating in the bay. They worry about the impact of the harvest on marine life and their own livelihoods. They also are concerned, they say, because the loose rockweed is getting tangled in boat propellers and is putting fishermen in harm’s way.

Last month, licensed clammer Julie Keene of Lubec and others staged a protest in Lubec.

“There are hundreds of families around the bay that depend solely on the harvest of clams, periwinkles, lobsters, urchins, mussels and scallops. We are very unique in this aspect, as there is so little other work,” she said recently. “Our ocean is our life. … The ecological balance that needs to be maintained in the bay’s ecosystem is crucial.”

Opposition to the cut

In May, the Moosehorn National Wildlife Refuge banned rockweed harvesting on federal lands at its Edmunds Division near U.S. Route 1, including Birch, Hallowell, Dram and Burnt islands, as well as 18 miles of shoreline on Cobscook Bay.

“That is a habitat for the food for migratory birds,” refuge manager Bill Kolodnicki said recently. “So ripping up the rockweed would have an impact on the migration. … They need to fuel up their engines and this is one of the principal areas.” He said the company had cooperated.

Kolodnicki said the refuge staff was not opposed to the harvesting of rockweed, done for years to fertilize gardens or to cook lobsters.

“Just like we let people harvest blueberries here; they hand-pick. It is not the same thing as commercial raking or commercial harvesting where you have a whole team going out whose paycheck depends upon how many pounds they turn in,” Kolodnicki said. “I think regular [noncommercial] use is no big deal.”

Rockweed and shoreland algae are essential fish habitat for juvenile pollock. “And particularly one of the invertebrates very dependent upon rockweed is the periwinkle snail,” marine biologist Robin Seeley said recently. Seeley works with the Shoals Island Marine Laboratory on Appledore Island.

“The round periwinkle that is native to Maine lives almost nowhere else except on the fronds of rockweed. So it provides food for some species, it provides structure for many small invertebrates, and it is also providing nutrients,” she said.

Seeley said she has been studying the round periwinkle in Cobscook Bay since 1983. Although she has seen a decline in its population, it was not due to the cutting of rockweed, she said. “It has to do with the waxing and waning of a predator [the green crab] that sits in there.”

She is concerned the rockweed harvest could have a negative impact. “These periwinkles are just now recovering from the outbreak of green crab that we had about eight years ago. So if I seem a little passionate about rockweed, it is the habitat for that snail, and they are just now recovering from the green crab outbreak.”

Seeley noted that although the new state study would be beneficial, it was happening after the harvest.

Alan Brooks, president of the Quoddy Regional Land Trust, a nonprofit organization that has been conserving land for public access in eastern Washington County for 20 years, has notified harvesters they cannot take rockweed on land under Quoddy Regional’s control, which affects about 1,100 acres and 17 miles of shoreline.

Rockweed is the base of the ecosystem here, Brooks said. “When the tide is in, it’s like a forest taking care of marine life and when the tide goes out, it falls down and lies on the rocks, [and] provides shelter for a lot of creatures that otherwise would die out. It feeds many animals directly. It shelters many animals. It has a tremendous amount of marine life in it, particularly in [their] juvenile stages.”

Eye of the storm

The Canadian company that is at the center of the rockweed-harvest storm says its activities have not hurt the bay.

Acadian Seaplants of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, says commercial rockweed harvesting is one of the most extensively studied and scientifically managed marine resource industries in the world. The company has been harvesting in the bay since 2001.

“These studies have ranged from research on the general ecology and diversity of the intertidal zone to research focusing directly on rockweed, its relationship to other fisheries and marine life, and on the impact of rockweed harvesting on the rockweed biomass, production and its use as habitat,” a fact sheet provided by the company stated.

President Jean-Paul Deveau said Tuesday the company’s research has withstood the scrutiny of the independent scientific community. “We are managing the resource in a very responsible, sustainable and in a long-term manner.”

The amount of rockweed Acadian harvests annually from Cobscook Bay is 17 percent of the total biomass in each area it harvests, far less than the average annual biomass growth of 40 percent, according to Linda Theriault, the company’s director of public and government relations.

“We take no more than 17 percent out of every sector. We can take less than 17 percent, but we cannot take more than 17 percent regardless of the sector,” Theriault said. The 17 percent threshold is based on sustainability research the company has done in New Brunswick waters. The company is using the same guidelines in Maine waters.

“We have felt that they are following our regulations. That is based partly on the fact that they want that seaweed to grow as promptly as possible,” said Maine DMR scientist Thayer.

Justin Huston, the coastal zone coordinator for the Nova Scotia Department of Fisheries, said rockweed has been commercially harvested in Nova Scotia for more than 50 years. The primary harvest area reaches from Yarmouth to Lockeport, Nova Scotia, and includes the Gulf of Maine and Bay of Fundy.

Huston said the province has not noticed a drop in the rockweed biomass. “The industry has been going strong and there hasn’t been any issue in terms of not enough resource or impacting on the ecosystem or other fish stocks plummeting because of the harvest,” he said.

The largest harvest is in southwest Nova Scotia, which is also home to the province’s largest lobster grounds. “It is the most productive lobster area in all of Canada and that is where the majority of the rockweed harvest occurs,” he said. “So just from our perspective, we don’t see that there is an impact on the most important commercial fishery in the area, even though a lot of fishermen will say that rockweed is the habitat of lobster and if you kill the rockweed you kill the lobster.”

That hasn’t placated Mainers whose livelihoods depend on Cobscook Bay.

People in open-hulled boats use a long-handled cutting tool designed by Acadian Seaplants to cut off the floating tops of the rockweed plants, which are attached to rocks in the intertidal zone. Once harvested, the rockweed is taken to the company’s plant in Pennfield, New Brunswick.

“They are taking all of the product across the border so all the value added is on the other side in New Brunswick,” Quoddy Regional Land Trust’s Brooks said last week.

Acadian’s Deveau agreed. He said the company might be interested in building a processing facility in Maine if there were enough product.

“One of the issues that would need to be resolved would be to work with the government to ensure that if one was to build a plant in Maine that there would be sufficient opportunity to ensure the access to the resource,” he said.

The company already hires some Mainers. It has contracted with Tim Sheehan of Perry who serves as harvest supervisor for a portion of the bay. This summer’s harvest, which began in May, employed about 20 people, including residents and college students. Although the bulk of the harvest is finished, some harvesting will be done through October.

Deveau declined to divulge harvest budget information, including salaries, citing it as proprietary.

Brooks said the land trust recently met with company officials who presented maps and information about where the harvest was taking place this year, including Lubec, Eastport, Perry, Pembroke, Dennysville, Edmunds and Trescott.

But Brooks is not happy. “They are treating Cobscook Bay as if it was their private resource,” he said.

Before the start of its annual harvest in Canada, the company submits a formal resource harvest and management plan for approval by the federal and provincial governments’ fisheries departments.

“The plan designates the areas selected for controlled thinning, specifies the annual amounts to be harvested by sector, and the extent to which the plants can be thinned to ensure the sustainability of the renewable resource,” the fact sheet stated.

Acadian said it conducts its harvesting activity in Maine under the same strict management practices it uses in other jurisdictions.

DMR’s Thayer said the company has submitted written management plans to Maine in previous years, but no longer. A few years ago, a conservation group filed a Freedom of Access request. “Acadian Seaplants had assumed that the plan they had submitted to us was in confidence to us, but that is not the case. Anything turned in to us is public information so we turned over that plan … and Acadian stopped submitting written plans after that,” Thayer said.

Deveau said the company fears its competitors would grab proprietary information if the company submitted a written plan, but said it meets with the state each year to verbally share its management plan. It also spends $3,500 (U.S.) a year on dealer licenses and reimbursement of licenses for individual harvesters among other things.

DMR Commissioner Lapointe said the state met with company officials Wednesday to discuss its management plan. Asked if the meeting was because the Bangor Daily News was asking questions, Lapointe said, “I don’t think it is. They set up the meeting awhile ago.”

Brooks said he would like to see a clear and public management plan for Cobscook Bay based on adequate research. “That was what we wanted in 2001, and this is what we still want,” he said.

Lapointe said one of the issues the state is concerned about is how many companies can harvest in one area.

“What if 22 companies come into Cobscook Bay? In the past people have asked for a New Brunswick-Nova Scotia-style system where we divide the coast up into many districts [and] we set the harvest levels. We simply don’t have the information and the staff to do that,” he said.

Rather than establish a different system, Lapointe said there is a better solution. “What I have said all along is if we get a big influx of companies in Cobscook Bay, I have the authority to put in emergency regulations which can go into effect in, I think, 48 hours if it goes way out of kilter,” he said.

Lapointe said he was confident that those concerned about harvest levels would notify him if suddenly there was an influx of harvesters in a particular area.

The future

Marine biologist Seeley is calling for stricter regulations. “This is a company who has been taking advantage of the fact that there are practically no regulations in Maine and those regulations there are, are not enforced. They have very strict regulations in New Brunswick and everything is monitored,” she said.

In addition to Quoddy Regional Land Trust calling for a moratorium on commercial rockweed harvesting in Cobscook Bay until research establishes its ecological importance in the bay ecosystem, the trust several years ago also put in place a “Rockweed-Landowner Registry.” The registry, which is updated each year and sent to the company, lists landowners who do not want the areas in front of their properties harvested.

Thirty people have registered, although those with complaints can contact the company directly, too.

Acadian’s Deveau said if an issue arises over harvesting in front of private property, the company works with the landowner. “We sit down with them. We explain to them the resource management plan that we have. We explain to them what we are doing and after that discussion is done, we’ve always been able to find a process by which we come out with an outcome that is acceptable to both parties,” he said.

The land trust is asking for a public meeting with the company this fall that would include stakeholders along the bay. Deveau said the company prefers one-on-one meetings with people.

“We find that by meeting with them one by one we can understand what their concerns are,” he said.

Fred and Linda Gralenski, whose peninsula is under a Maine Coast Heritage Trust conservation easement that specifies no rockweed harvesting, had an encounter with Acadian harvesters in July. Linda Gralenski noticed four boats in front of their property on Leighton Point Road in Pembroke harvesting rockweed.

“The first boat I came up to … he seemed to be the boss of the group and he was sort of polite and there was a little discussion and I told him it was private property and I’d like him to leave,” Fred Gralenski recounted Friday.

The man in the boat spoke with the people in the other three boats and then left. Gralenski assumed the other three boats would follow, but instead they continued to harvest. He had to speak to someone in each individual boat to get them to cease harvesting and leave. Gralenski said he has asked Maine Coast Heritage Trust to look into the matter.

Gralenski said he filled out the Quoddy land trust’s do-not-harvest registry form in 2001. Asked whether the company had contacted him, Gralenski said that at one point he was under the impression the company planned to make a trip to Pembroke to determine the amount of biomass on the peninsula, but that has not happened.

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