David Porter introduces the Blue Hill Peninsula Rockweed Forum on Amy Browne’s WERU radio show, Around Town, December 27, 2024. He talked about why it is important to conserve wild rockweed, especially in light of a bill introduced in the Maine Legislature, LD 2003, which would allow harvesters to cut rockweed on intertidal property without the owner’s permission all along the coast of Maine. David is a retired botany professor from Brooklin, ME, and co-founder of the Blue Hill Peninsula Rockweed Forum.
Summary –
I’m David Porter, a Brooklin, Maine, resident, a retired botany professor and a concerned citizen who loves the intertidal seaweed environment and have ever since I was a kid on the coast of Maine.
Last year a group of Blue Hill area residents (both year-round and summer residents) started the Blue Hill Peninsula Rockweed Forum to advocate for the conservation of intertidal rockweed (which is called Ascophyllum nodosum) and provide educational materials and field experiences focused on its ecology and service to the marine environment in the light of potential unregulated commercial harvesting. Our website is easy to remember:
http://rockweedforest.org
We refer to this seaweed community as a forest because at high tide when the rockweed is buoyed up by the many gas-filled bladders on their branches, it creates a forest, a six-foot tall seaweed jungle sheltering more than a hundred different types of juvenile fish, shellfish, and other invertebrates. It is easy to compare this intertidal forest to the shoreline forest of spruce and fir that harbors so many birds and other animals. The terrestrial forest is obvious, but we tend not to see the intertidal forest. Also it’s easy to miss the commercial harvesters who come and cut the rockweed to sell it for fertilizer and other products. In our area, a commercial company from Canada is actively harvesting tons of rockweed on an annual basis.
The Rockweed Forum website features educational information about the ecology of rockweed: its habitat, reproduction, growth, its symbiotic associations, and co-occurring seaweeds. We also post information and illustrations of local art and artists who feature or use rockweed in their work. We also have workshops and field trips listed on the website with new ones scheduled in the summer of 2024.
Odd, you might think that we are concerned with conservation of rockweed. After all, more than 90% of the intertidal seaweed is rockweed. But this single species forest is highly adapted to the harsh conditions of the intertidal and a part of the adaptation is that it is a perennial seaweed which may live for many decades and that it is very slow growing at only 3-4 inches per year. It may take more than ten years for rockweed to grow to form a mature canopy of the forest when it’s young or has been cut off.
It’s rather astonishing that right now, in spite of the Maine Supreme Court’s decision of 2019, that was unanimous, and that indicated that, believe it or not, rockweed is not a fish and is the property of the upland land owner, and permission is needed to harvest rockweed – right now there’s a bill, LD 2003 that’s designed to reverse that decision by declaring that rockweed harvesting is to be defined as “fishing” and to exempt harvesters from criminal trespass or theft and allowing unlimited harvesting by the industry.
It is our contention that this bill ought not to pass. And to that end, we encourage anyone who agrees to communicate your concerns to your state representative or senator. And specifically, to members of the Marine Resources Committee that will have a public hearing on LD 2003 on January 11, 2024, between 1:00 and 5:00 pm.
If you’d like more information about how to get involved with us, check our Rockweed Forum website, http://rockweedforest.org.
We hope that the Blue Hill Peninsula Rockweed Forum can raise your awareness and appreciation of this iconic intertidal seaweed forest that is such a significant part of the Maine coastal scene.