It takes hefty biceps and a strong back to hoist the rake Gavin Hood and Susan Domizi designed specifically for harvesting rockweed (Ascophyllum nodosum), but if a person has the strength and the will to work the rake long days during the harvest season, he or she can make a decent living. Actually, it isn’t essential to use the special rake – some harvesters use knives or a sickle, and there are machines for harvesting – but Hood says people who master the knack of handling the rockweed rake find it is more efficient and increases the daily haul.
Hood and Domizi, owner of Source, Inc., which produces and sells seaweed nutritional supplements for horses, dogs and humans, designed the rake as part of their commitment to sustainable harvesting. “Essentially, what we’re doing is pruning the plants,” says Hood, who has managed the Brunswick Source plant since 1988. He says his harvesters always cut less than is recommended, and that the biomass of rockweed in the bay where they work has actually increased. “We took a person from DMR [the Department of Marine Resources] and a professor from University of Maine out to the bay we harvest and they said, ‘You haven’t been here yet, have you?'” he says. “When we told them yes, we had, they had to get down on their knees and dig through the rockweed to see that some had been cut.”
To prevent overharvesting of rockweed, the Maine Seaweed Council, of which Hood has been president, secretary, treasurer and now serves as vice-president, recommended that the DMR set limits for harvesters. The outcome was a regulation stating that harvesters must not cut the lowest lateral branches of the plant and that they have to leave a minimum of 16 inches of the rockweed above the holdfast. The plant will naturally break at this point, Hood explains, because its lower part is a single narrow stem attached to the rocks. It has two branches on this narrow stem, then multiple branches at about 16 inches height.
When a person rakes rockweed with a normal garden rake, often the favored tool in the past, the closely-spaced tines of the rake are apt to catch the first branching and break the plant below 16 inches or pull the entire plant loose. The rockweed rake has tines set further apart to allow the more narrow section of the plant to slip through. The tines catch on the bushier part, which is cut off by serrated sharp blades. The harvester then twists the rake to make the plants fall into a net attached to the rake (some do not use the net).
Harvesters, who have ranged in age from 30s to 70s and have included a Bowdoin College professor and some students, coaches, an out of work UPS driver and a member of the merchant marine, work through most of the tidal cycle, except when the weed is floating at high tide. A harvester needs a boat with a motor – a flat-bottomed wooden skiff is best, Hood says – a rake, which Hood supplies, or some other cutting implement and a $50 seaweed harvesting license from the DMR.
Harvesters use different techniques. Some stand on a ledge or rocks and rake several piles of seaweed, then bring their boat alongside to collect the seaweed; others keep the boat beside them as they rake. One harvester with two boats has worked as a team with a second man who was not physically able to harvest but could manage the boats and take the full boat back to the dock and unload it. During the course of a good day, a strong harvester will deliver several boatloads, which can add up to several thousand pounds of rockweed.
The DMR requires harvesters to keep a record of their monthly landings of seaweed harvested in Maine waters, including where it was harvested, by what method and which species, and turn in forms by the 10th of the following month.
Inexperienced harvesters learn from old timers at the wharf. If they are willing workers, they catch on quickly. In late June, he was looking for more harvesters for the season, which begins after the rockweed drops its spore. It usually runs from early June until sometime in August, but was slightly later this year because water temperatures remained low for so long.
The Maine Seaweed Council, organized in 1995, whose 30-plus members include harvesters, processors, growers, researchers and members of marine related agencies, is publishing a booklet, “Harvester’s Field Guide to Maine Seaweeds,” and a single sheet, “Harvest Guidelines for Maine Seaweeds,” which they hope to have available in laminated editions that harvesters can take out with them.
Hood collects rockweed from harvesters at Bob Waddell’s wharf at Quahog Lobster in Harpswell. He uses a hoist in a 1977 Mercedes truck (which he maintains himself, as he does all the equipment at the plant) to load huge net bags of rockweed onto the truck. These are taken to the Source processing plant at the Brunswick Industrial Park, where the rockweed is first spread out and examined by hand for periwinkles other creatures and shells, then shredded, dried in a two million BTU dehydrator and milled to a specific size. The final product is a chartreuse green powder that reeks of vitamins and good energy.
Bulk packages of the powder are sent to the primary Source plant in Connecticut, where some is used in a seaweed blend for horse and dog supplements and some is sent to a pharmaceutical lab where it is blended with other seaweeds and put into capsules for human consumption.
Domizi developed the first Source supplements in the 1960s when she was training her horse, Hull, for Olympic Trials and trying to resolve his hoof problems and increase his body weight. Her research revealed that micronutrients from seaweed might help, so she began to formulate a blend to include in his food. Hull improved dramatically and the word spread. Soon, Domizi was making the blend for other horse owners, who not only gave it to their horses, but also took it themselves and fed it to other animals. In 1975, after Domizi had discontinued horse training and tried to abandon producing the supplement, so many people asked her to continue she decided to establish Source.
Although no clinical trials have been conducted, the Source supplements, which provide micronutrients that are lacking in highly processed foods and in food raised in depleted soils, have a wide following with favorable customer testimony. Source now offers separate horse supplements for hoof care, senior horses and weight gain. Dog owners say using the supplements improves their animals’ coats, reduces skin irritations and breeding and allergy problems. People who take Source supplements say benefits include increased energy levels, stronger fingernails, improved hair texture and growth, reduced allergy and asthma conditions and reduced PMS symptoms. Also, scientists have speculated that seaweeds may play an important part in the low rate of breast and other cancers in Asian countries where it is frequently consumed.
For further information about the Source supplements, see www.4source.com. To inquire about harvesting rockweed, contact Gavin Hood at 729-1107 or source@gwi.net.