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:
