Possibly one of the most influential documents on seaweed harvesting has been produced by the Northern Ireland Environmental health services.  The document is an assembly of information from every angle – with a view to enabling the industry, that is a sustainable industry. Apparently this is a very important document for the industry.

It is possible the Norwegian model is based on the idea that there is so much that it is not possible to damage or change the ecology significantly using current harvesting methods – unfortunately historically in other countries this is clearly not true.  We note that the intensity of the industry here in mid Norway has considerably slackened in the last few months with greater efforts further north in unharvested areas – the information we have that the plants grow back only so many times appears to be true.

This is a snip from the EHS document, it says quite clearly that MECHANICAL HARVESTING could threaten the marine ecosystem –

Here is the document in full:

seaweed harvesting niehs position statement

Many seabird colonies on Norway’s coast are experiencing a massive downfall in population, some as much as 2/3rds – many of these colonies are in areas where seaweed trawling occurs.

The various ornithological organizations we have spoken to say this is due to the ecology being changed by a massive invasion of mackerel – it seems logical to assume that if the habitat for most of the food for the birds is removed, so will the “food ” go elsewhere.  In fact the habitat does not even have to be removed for there to be a change in the ecology of the seaweed beds – the plants have a chemical defense against predation – the destruction of some of the plants by dredges would be enough to trigger this.

There is currently a great deal of interest in this matter in Bergens Fylkestingret with questions being asked about who gave permission for trawling in the bird reserves?

Here we can confirm that there is trawling in 97 bird reserves – 35 are open for trawling all the time and the others are supposedly closed during the hatching season.

259148-kongelig_resolusjon_om_taretraling this is the document concerned

and here are some snips:

This is the front page with the bird colonies listed:

This mentions the 97 bird reserves: