Seaweed Foraging in Oregon
It’s finally seaweed foraging season in Oregon! I figured it was time to share a little about best practices and seaweed harvesting regulations on our coastline. Most people may not even realize that there even is a seaweed foraging season along the Oregon Coast, but there is! Harvesting of live seaweeds is actually not something you can do year round.
Here’s a little nit and gritty on seaweed harvesting in Oregon, before I get into my personal practices.
The season of live seaweed (meaning seaweed still attached to a substrate) harvesting runs from March 1st to June 15th. It’s a bit confusing, if you know that most shellfish foraging is open year round. Seaweed foraging is regulated by the Parks and Recreation Department rather than Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife(who regulate all shellfish and fishing). There is no license required to harvest seaweeds along the coast, but there is a limit set at one-gallon volume container per day and up to three gallons per calendar year.
Here’s a little nit and gritty on seaweed harvesting in Oregon, before I get into my personal practices.
When harvesting live seaweeds, in Oregon or anywhere, there are a number of things to keep in mind.
As part of the regulations, people are only allowed to harvest by hand, using a knife or similar instrument. Tearing or using instruments like rakes or forks is prohibited. The disturbance or removal of holdfasts (or the root-like structure that attaches seaweeds to their substrate) is not allowed. To stay within sustainable harvest practices and within legal regulations, harvesters should always cut seaweeds a few inches (or feet in the case of some kelps) above the holdfast. The holdfast allows for regrowth of the algae, so leaving it in tact is crucial for the persistence of seaweed.
There are species that are completely off limits.
Sea Palm (Postelsia sp.) pictured on the left, eel grass (Zostera spp.) and surf grass (Phyllospadix spp.) may not be cut or disturbed in any area. As well as any species on the “Rare, Threatened and Endangered Species of Oregon” list. Eelgrass and surf grass are two species protected as essential fish habitat, while sea palm is a species that has previously been harvested to extremely low populations.
There are also some areas that are completely off limits. There is no disturbance or removal of living or non-living plants in marine reserves, marine protected areas, marine gardens, intertidal research reserves, and wildlife or habitat refuges. In snowy plover management areas, there is no salvaging or removal of marine plants during seasonal closures (between March 15 and September 15th). Definitely do your research before you get to a specific location!
Please refer to Oregon’s General Ocean Shore State Recreation Area Rules for more information!
Best practices of foraging seaweed are similar to all other foraged goods, please do not ever clear an area of a particular seaweed. If there’s only a little bit present, please leave it to allow it to continue growing throughout the year. If you go to an area in March and the growth appears very limited, rather than harvesting a tiny bit from every individual you see, leave it and come back in a few months when you can harvest more while potentially disturbing less.
Identification of seaweeds and kelps can be a little tricky to start, just like mushrooms. The good news is that, unlike mushrooms, almost all seaweeds are edible, and as far as I know (don’t take my word for it) none are going to kill you. Edible does not mean palatable though, and while you could theoretically eat most to all of seaweeds on our coast, some are super metallic, or plastic-y, or slimy, and may not be something you WANT to eat. There’s a handful of sought after edible species on our coast, and once you start seeing them they become pretty easy to identify. I won’t get into identification here but save it for another post (or maybe a guide book)!
With the limits in seasons and volume of seaweed allowed, there’s a number of personal practices I have to get the most out of a sustainable harvest, and preserve my harvest for year-round use. Keep reading for ways to get seaweed out of harvest season as well as a quick and easy guide to processing seaweeds and kelps!
Salvaging Seaweeds:
Salvaging non-living seaweeds can happen all year. Salvaging refers to the removal of seaweeds washed ashore. Of course if you are intending to eat the seaweed you salvage off the beach, you do want it to be pretty fresh, and you need to know how to identify whether it is actually fresh or not. This becomes more self explanatory the more time you spend looking at seaweeds washed up on the beach, but essentially if it looks and smells like it is deteriorating, it likely is, and therefore is not something I would eat. No seafood should smell like seafood, and if it has a strong odor to it, it is not fresh. If it looks as if it could have just come out of the ocean, is not covered in flies, and is not super duper slimy or squishy, it’s probably pretty fresh! I’ll normally rinse any salvaged seaweed off in the ocean to remove sand before taking it home (always be careful of ocean conditions and sneaker waves!). This is the only way I am finding and consuming Bull Kelp (for bull kelp pickles!)
Keep in mind that many seaweeds are annuals!
This means that not only is it normal to see large amounts of them washed up on the beach in fall or winter with big storms (pictured on the left), but it’s also normal that until sunshine returns to our shores in the spring, many seaweeds have not grown very large yet. So when the season opens in March, not all seaweeds are in their highest production. I’d say May and June are the most productive seaweed harvesting months on the Oregon Coast.
Since the seaweed harvesting season is pretty limited in Oregon, I use the few harvestable months to collect my three gallon bag limit and then process (dry or freeze) to have them for the remaining seasons. There are various fun ways to preserve different species of seaweed and use them down the line.
A Quick and Easy Guide to Processing Kelps and Seaweeds
As a forager of any kind, it is important to know how to process and store your harvest for future use, to extend the amount of time in a year we can eat our favorite wild foods!
Unless I want a fresh kelp salad right off the beach, most of the seaweeds that I forage during the Oregon seaweed foraging season (March 1 - June 15) are being dried. You don’t need any fancy machinery to dry them!
If you have a dehydrator, that is great, especially for your smaller seaweeds. Simply set smaller seaweeds on trays on one of your lower settings until they’re dry. For large kelps, I cut them into strips to make them more manageable for the dehydrator and the jars you will likely store them in.
If you don’t have a dehydrator, that is also great! For large kelps, I am almost always hanging them from a clothes hanger in my warm living room. Your whole house will smell like low-tide and it is wonderful. Mine happen to go in a sunny window and dry relatively fast if it’s warm. If you’d like them to be in more manageable strips you can cut them before drying. For strips and smaller seaweeds, I use an old clean dish rack and hang the seaweed on it over a tray. They will dry pretty quickly!
Keep in mind seaweeds are really really good at reabsorbing moisture, so if it becomes damp outside and you have a window open while they are hanging, they will become damp. Simply let them dry back out as long as they haven’t been damp and actively rotting. (smell test is great!)
Store them in a sealed glass jar. If you have a silica pack you can throw it in there with them. If you don’t, it’s not a problem just make sure the jar is sealed and doesn’t get damp.
The dried whole pieces of seaweed can be utilized as is in soups and stocks. I will often grind these dried seaweeds up and make different seaweed seasonings and blends to use in all sorts of cooking.
Pickled Bull Kelp is another favorite of mine, and I even have a good recipe for it on my website, here. Similarly, you can make kimchis or sauerkrauts to make it last longer!
Enjoy the process of processing and preserving your seaweed, it is part of the cycle and can really keep you in the moment.
