On a recent Wednesday I visited Bob and Betsy of Bear Cove Resources on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Bear Cove produces Storm Cast Seaweeds. a composted seaweed product that is processed and marketed as a soil conditioner.
Bob and Betsy. Photo Credit: Bear Cove Resources
Bear Cove is a part time gig. Betsy is a math teacher and Bob works at Dalhousie University in Halifax. They are married.
My eleventh sense—handbuilt, homestead by the ocean sense—was triggered almost immediately as my car started to bump down the driveway.
Bear Cove headquarters is located on land they purchased in the 1970s. Bob arrived from California In the road-nomad version of the yurt, an aluminum camper that shares more in common with a P-47 than the haughty Airstream of bourgeoisie fantasy
Bob lived in the old war-bird while building the first iterations of the house on the property, a truly cool timber frame on concrete piers, with excellent southern exposure.
Photo Credit: Bear Cove Resources
Bear Cove was started in 1993. They harvest seasonally, from October to mid April, collecting wrack, or washed up seaweed, along a 10 kilometer stretch of shoreline. Bear Cove Resources leases the right to harvest seaweed along the pre-designated stretch of coast from the province. They are one of a very few organizations who hold a lease of this kind in Nova Scotia.
The lease is seasonal in order to avoid use-conflicts and negative effects on shore-bird populations. Shore-strewn seaweeds are important components in multiple food chains. While mature plants provide countless ecosystem services many mature seaweeds don’t contribute directly to the marine food chain. As detritus however, washed up seaweeds are important for shore-line environments, providing food for a variety of herbivores and insects as they decompose.
Photo Credit: Bear Cove Resources
The harvest is performed using a tractor with a purpose built front end loader. Landings and composition are dependent on swell direction, wind, and season, making Bear Cove quite distinct from the typical predesignated harvest plans targeting specific species and tonnage.
Photo Credit: The Liverpool Echo
Collecting wrack off the beaches is as old as European settlement (and probably older) in the Americas. Through the passive harvest of storm strewn seaweed for agricultural purposes Bear Cove is continuing a tradition that was formerly a common sight along shorelines throughout eastern North America.
Once the wrack is collected it is placed in windrows and covered with tarps. The composting process begins as the tarps heat up when exposed to sunlight. Seaweeds (like most aquatic organisms) begin to decompose rapidly, making for effective compost. As known and discussed, I am a fan of seaweeds, but it is undeniable: a gaseous cloud from a pile of composting seaweed smells bad in the August sun.
Lazy Beds being prepared the old school way. Photo Credit: Electric Scotland
After a season or two of turning and decomposition, the composted seaweed is tilled, processed to remove unwanted material, bagged and then distributed to Bear Cove’s Nova customers. Traditionally, coastal farmers would pile a mix of seaweed and manure into rows, a substitute for plowing called ‘lazy beds.’ In historic Ireland, coastal farms with access to seaweed resources produced crops at measurably higher yields than inland farms with similar areas. Gnar-king charger and organic gardener Fergal Smith demonstrated this practice (slightly modernized with tarpaulins) in his wonderful web series ‘Growing’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUN7lsUTcJI
Stormcast Seaweed being bagged following tilling
A wealth of literature is available on the benefits of using macroalgae as an agricultural input. While I can find little formal (and recent) scientific research on the effect of composted seaweeds, fertilizer, soil conditioners, and extracts made from Ascophyllum have been proven to increase water retention capacity in root systems, elevate microbial activity in soils, and add to plants ability to resist infection and grazing by insects.
Photo Credit: South China Morning Post
Methane and bio-gas can be produced from the anaerobic digestion of seaweeds. While a ‘bit’ different from Bear Cove, the difficult production economics underlying algal biofuel could be overcome by utilizing instances of massive overabundance of ‘wrack’ such as in Qingdao Bay, China (pictured above).
A portion of Bob and Betsy’s garden
Bob and Betsy’s business allows customers to utilize the benefits of lazy beds or seaweed conditioned soil, but without having to manually process and introduce the seaweeds into the soil. This is a time saver for the domestic gardener and a necessary specialization of tasks for a commercial organic farming operation.
Later that evening, wedged in between two boulders, I prepared an open face sandwich at the head of nearby Eagle Head Bay. I stared at the forested shoreline and imagined my own South Shore homestead, a circular warming hut perched on a granite crag for rapid re-warming after mid-winter surfs, a small drying rack for sugar kelp, a garden, a girlfriend who enjoys making endless batches of fish tacos…
Windrows at the back of Bear Cove’s property
Bear Cove is a different kind of business than others that I have visited. Their customers are strictly regional and their raw material is essentially fixed—capped and subject to whatever washes up on their 10 km lease from October to April. A “zero-growth model,” I recall Bob saying. Bear Cove sees itself as continuing a traditional practice and its customers and expectations are tailored to this heritage. I would venture that It is important to view the rising interest in algal resources in the west through a spectrum, with specialization and scale on one end and the restoration and nurturing of traditional practice on the other. Companies like Bear Cove fall nicely in the middle. Bob and Betsy successfully deliver a specialized product that leads to increased yields and resilience in small scale agriculture, but also let customers know that utilizing the benefits of storm strewn macroalgae can bring you closer to the past livelihoods of our coastal forefathers, an awareness that should underpin and guide future growth throughout the industry.
Sources
Bear Cove Resources, Personal Communication, August, 2014
T. Matsui, Tokyo Gas Company. 2008 “Methane Production from Anaerobic Digestion of Seaweed Biomass”.
Craigie, J. S., 2010. Seaweed extract stimuli in plant science and agriculture. J. Appl. Phycol. 23 (3): 371-393
Brian-Wrack 