Tea House

A weekend romp around the Halifax area revealed a strange wave like phenomena crashing over delicate beds of digitata. 

Nova Scotia

I made the hell-ride to Nova Scotia from St. Andrews, New Brunswick a couple days ago.

Dangerous, yet victorious, cell-phone snap.

La Honda de Madre is proving to be quite the algal exploration vehicle

with adequate storage capacity.

Pennfield, New Brunswick

My first stop was Acadian Seaplant’s (ASL) processing facility in Pennfield, New Brunswick. I plan to have a more thorough discussion later on so please don’t take this as a definitive summary of Acadian Seaplants or the commercial use and harvest of Ascophyllum. The images are small for readability, feel free to click on them for higher resolution eyeballing.

Acadian has several processing facilities in the Maritimes. The plant in Pennfield (pictured above) utilizes Ascophyllum from Maine and New Brunswick to produce several varieties of kelp meal that are sold (primarily) to animal feed manufacturers. The building and proprietary processing equipment were purpose built for ASL in the late 90s.

Epic cutter rake in action image courtesy of the Bangor Daily News. Note the rounded guards on either side of the serrated blade. I think the plant pictured may be a variety of Fucus not Ascophyllum.

Harvesters employed by Acadian use specialized stainless steel cutter rakes with bars designed to prevent holdfast removal.

This is Raul Ugarte. Dr. Ugarte is a senior resource scientist and the mastermind behind ASL’s management regime. In addition to pioneering aquatic plant management, Raul does field work via sea kayak and treks solo throughout the Andes when home in his native Chile.

Rockweed beds near Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia

While provincial regulators oversee the resource—setting minimum cutting heights and specifying biomass removal limits—much of the in season management is conducted by ASL. ASL identifies rockweed ‘beds’, conducts annual biomass assessments, groups individual beds into sectors, assigns harvesters  to sectors, sets harvest targets for beds and sectors, and determines when targets have been met. Canada’s rockweed resource, 30 years old and expanding, is a remarkable example of successful management by industry. Recently, ASL has begun experimenting with LIDAR to reduce costs and improve the accuracy of biomass assessments.

Harvesters are allowed to take a maximum of 17% of the biomass from an individual bed each year. Fisherman harvest on either side of high tide, filling their skiffs with plants. Raking is a tough job, demanding proper technique and ocean knowledge. Successful harvesters deserve a lot of credit.

Natural biomass removal for rockweed is quite high. In Cobscook Bay, Vadas et al. (2004) found that an average of 54% percent of rockweed is removed by virtue of ice scouring, wave action, and other natural causes each year. In the picture above, we see an example of natural biomass removal and the form of rockweed that most beach goers encounter: weed that is sun charred and washed up on the beach in tangled clumps.

ASL’s harvesting season goes from mid-june to mid-september. This gentleman,* who claims 50% of whatever money I make off the fellowship, has been harvesting rockweed in the summer since 1992. Summer harvesting is an opportunity for fishery participants to diversify their income and Acadian’s Pennfield processing facility represents consistent seasonal income for over 60 individuals in New Brunswick alone.

*sorry man, I can’t read my handwriting in my notebook with your name!

You can tell the annual growth of rockweed by measuring the length of the frond between vesicles. Growth varies greatly between plants.

Acadian harvests seasonally in New Brunswick, but their Pennfield facility produces kelp meal year round. In order to supply customers in both June and January ASL stockpiles lightly processed rockweed in huge pre-fabricated Quonset hut-esque strucutres. Above is Tom, assistant plant manager and good guy.
The plant is filled with a fine particulate laden mist caused by airborne bits of kelp meal. A mildly pleasant odor, perhaps best described as ‘benthic perfume’ permeates the space.

Harvesters bring fresh rockweed to local wharfs where ASL has installed cranes to hoist the rockweed and placed modular containers.that are  picked up by trucks when filled. I was very impressed by the scalable yet decentralized approach evident throughout ASL’s New Brunswick operations.

Rockweed harvesting occurs alongside a variety of marine resource users. In this stretch of the Bay of Fundy, salmon farming is big business.

While visiting Limeklin wharf in St. George New Brunswick we captured a poignant snapshot of Canada’s evolving marine economy. Pelletized feed for the adjacent salmon farms was hoisted onto a barge while rockweed was offloaded into one of ASL’s modular containers. Ironically, a portion of ASL’s rockweed products are used in aquaculture feeds. Raul and I high-fived at this point.

ASL’s operations brought to mind my old economics standby, Small is Beautiful. I could not help but think about Schumacher’s concepts of ‘intermediate technology’ and ‘human scale.’ The products ASL manufacturers are world class and are on the cutting edge of several fields. However, small scale individual operators, working seasonally with a low level of mechanization, are ASL’s primary  means of obtaining their raw material.

After the rockweed is harvested, it is dried on a series of runways in an old Canadian Air Base adjacent to ASL’s processing facility. The raw material must reach a certain moisture content before it can enter later stages of processing. Acres upon of acres of concrete slab offer a convenient, if not a tad surreal, drying surface.

This is me, the ever typical Ascophyllum tourist, with some doomed rockweed. Amazing that even days after it is harvested the plant still mimics its ability to shield the organisms beneath it from desiccation. I was wrist deep into the pile and found soaking wet rockweed. It is no wonder that generations of coastal peoples insulated their homes with Ascophyllum.

Manure spreaders distribute the rockweed evenly across the tarmac. Workers and visitors are cautioned to maintain a reasonable distance from the spreaders as a plume of pebbles and in some instances, periwinkles, are kicked up from the spreading rockweed. Importantly, preliminary studies by industry report that by-catch rates are quite low in the rockweed fishery. Check out this paper on periwinkle by catch and holdfast removal.

At the end of the day Raul and I toured the runway-turned-drying-area at high speed, warding off gulls trying to nab one more periwinkle from this transplanted patch of intertidal.

Sources

Maine Department of Marine Resources. Fishery Management Plan for Rockweed (Ascophyllum nodosum). 2014

Ugarte, Raul. Personal Communication. 2014

Ugarte, Raul A., and Glyn Sharp. “A New Approach to Seaweed Management in Eastern Canada: The Case of Acophyllum Nodosum.” Cahiers De Biologie Marin 42 (2001): 63-70. Print.

Vadas, R. L., W. A. Wright, and B. F. Beal. 2004. Biomass and productivity of intertidal rockweeds in Cobscook Bay. Northeastern Naturalist 11(special issue 2):123-142.