by Hannah Webber
On January 28 we assembled a group of people from industry, management, conservation, research, and citizen science to work on developing a protocol for understanding how much rockweed exists in the state of Maine. This is something we currently don’t know.
The people we’ve assembled all have a stake in the future of sustainable rockweed harvesting. This was the first gathering in a multi-year process to answer the question, Can we apply citizen science, as a monitoring tool, to assess rockweed biomass in Maine?
Although “how much” is not the only factor to consider when we think about the ecosystem (connectivity, and quality of habitat are as much or more so important), the question of “how much” does inform how we manage coastal lands throughout the state. This work will continue through the spring and beyond, with support from Broad Reach Fund.
