Harvesting seaweed off your own coastline sounds stranger than it is. If the idea puts you off, that is the normal reaction. If it does not, an afternoon gets you one of the more nutritionally interesting foods there is, for free.
This is a practical guide from someone who has done it repeatedly on the Oregon coast. We do also sell a seaweed drink, which is worth saying, though nothing below is trying to talk you out of the free version.
When you can do it
You can walk the Oregon coast at any time of year, but the rules distinguish between what has washed up and what is still growing.
Living seaweed may be harvested from 1 March to 15 June, under the Oregon Administrative Rules. Outside that window, collecting unattached seaweed off the beach is the option.
There is also a personal-use limit, and it is worth reading the rule yourself rather than trusting a summary, including this one. An earlier version of this article gave the annual figure incorrectly.
Rules change. Check before you go, especially if you are harvesting anywhere near a marine reserve, where the answer is usually no.
Best time of day
Low tide, comfortably. You get access to plants that are otherwise underwater, and those are in better condition than anything that has been drying on a rock. A tide chart is free in most coastal town shops and restaurants.
How to cut it without killing it
The method matters more than the tool.
Extend the frond to its full length, and cut no more than about three quarters of it, leaving the rest anchored. The holdfast and the lower stipe are what let the plant regrow. Take the whole thing and you have harvested it once.
This is the same principle used commercially in Tonga for the seaweed in LIMU Original, where roughly three quarters is trimmed and a quarter left in place. It is not a coincidence: it is what makes seaweed harvesting genuinely renewable rather than merely described that way.
What to bring
- A tide chart. Free, and the single most useful item on this list. - Something sharp. Good scissors handle most of it; a marine knife reaches what scissors cannot. - A mesh bag. Something water drains out of, or you will be carrying seawater up the beach. - Clothes you do not mind soaking. The best seaweed is where the water is.
Use what you already own. None of this needs buying.
What to look for
There are more than fifty species of wild seaweed in Oregon, and you can find seaweed on essentially any stretch of the coast. Look for places where beach meets rock: the rocky ground is where plants anchor, so that is where the good stuff is.
Worth taking, in rough order of how forgiving they are to a beginner:
- Wakame
- Kombu
- Nori
- Green laver
- Dulse
- Bladderwrack
Seaweeds of the Pacific Northwest is a genuinely good identification resource and better than anything we could write here.
Be careful on wet rock, watch the tide behind you, and do not harvest near outfalls, marinas or anywhere with obvious runoff. Seaweed concentrates what is in the water it grew in, which is the reason growing location matters for the commercial product too.
Drying it
Rinse it first. This is the one step people skip and regret, because unrinsed seaweed dries into something extremely salty with the occasional passenger.
After that: hang it on a line or lay it out in the sun, turn it occasionally, and wait. That is the whole process.
Transport is the only fiddly part. Under about six hours, the bag is fine. Longer than that, or overnight, get it on ice, or it starts breaking down into something unpleasant.
Cooking with it
Dried seaweed rehydrates in soup, stock or pasta water. You do not even have to eat the piece itself; simmering it releases a good deal of what is in it into the liquid.
Crushed is the most useful form. Dried seaweed crumbles into a seasoning that works on pasta, rice, eggs, tacos and most savoury things, and it takes well to being mixed with other seasonings.
Dried whole it works as a crisp, which is the version children will actually accept.
If you want more on what seaweed is and is not, we wrote Seaweed 101, including corrections to a few things this site itself used to claim.
Enjoy the coast.
These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
More on this subject: Fucoidan & Seaweed