A customer recently praised Maine Coast Sea Vegetables on social media for selling high-quality sea vegetables and for being a regenerative aquaculture company. Our sea vegetables are indeed high-quality and we thanked them for sharing, but we had to also tell them that Maine Coast Sea Vegetables is primarily a wild-harvest company, not an aquaculture company. Our sea vegetables are harvested from wild, natural populations in the Gulf of Maine and from pristine Icelandic fjords. They aren’t grown in tanks or from lines suspended at sea. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Farmed seaweed can be one of the world’s most sustainable crops, and we count seaweed farmers in Maine and elsewhere as friends and allies.
Harvesting farmed sugar kelp from Casco Bay
But, if we’re not an aquaculture company, does that also mean we can’t be regenerative? What does it even mean to be regenerative? The 1985 American Heritage Dictionary defined regenerate as a verb: 1. To reform spiritually or morally, and 2. To form, construct, or create anew. It was also defined as an adjective: 1. Spiritually or morally revitalized, and 2. Restored; refreshed. Regenerate was thus both an action and a state of being. Think of a salamander regrowing its tail, or a degenerate person who has found spiritual redemption. Regenerative as a noun names the process of regenerating.
Language is often a trickster that changes with time, and today regenerative has taken on new meanings. True to its roots, regenerative still relates to renewal or restoration, but now it’s also applied to processes such as regenerative braking (EVs), in biology such as in regenerative medicine, or to food and fiber production systems such as regenerative agriculture or regenerative forestry. Regenerative food and fiber production systems address the impacts of farming practices and other human activities on soils, water, ecosystems, and other life forms. They seek not just to be sustainable but to be restorative as well.
Regenerative farming practices emphasize soil or aquatic health, ecosystem resilience, biodiversity, water cycles, and nutrient-dense foods. Mitigating human CO2 emissions is often seen as key, though it’s not an absolute requirement (Ikerd 2021; Loring 2022). On land, regenerative practices can include minimal or no tilling, compost application, cover crops, and preserving islands or wind breaks of native plants to promote biodiversity. At sea, these can include such practices as growing shellfish and seaweed species that filter water and create habitat, growing multiple trophic levels like algae, shellfish, and finfish at one farm, and minimizing crop inputs such as feed, fertilizer, and pesticides.
Rockweed contributes to regenerative agriculture as a fertilizer, bio-stimulant, and soil amendment, and it supports one of Maine’s most productive seaweed fisheries.Sustainable harvest strategies include rotational cropping and leaving 16” of the plant behind for regrowth.
These are all aspects of sustainable practice too, but the distinction is that regenerative practice aspires to restore degraded ecosystems closer to their natural state. In that respect, seaweed farming is often the poster child of regenerative aquaculture. Science shows that seaweed farms can temper ocean acidity in their vicinity, which in turn helps shellfish grow stronger shells. Seaweed farming requires no fresh water, fertilizer, or pesticide inputs, and seaweed farms can remove excess nutrients from the sea. Seaweed farms also pull carbon from the atmosphere and ocean, and although the carbon may not be truly sequestered, it is at least temporarily stored in the animals that eat the seaweed, the products made from it, and the soil it is amended into. Most Maine seaweed farms source their ‘seed stock’ from local, wild beds, and while it’s growing, the seaweed often provides habitat for other aquatic life forms.
There is always room for improvement, of course. Many seaweed farms continue to use synthetic lines that shed fibers into the sea and synthetic buoys that can break free and wind up as plastic detritus on remote island beaches. Farming is usually conducted from boats with diesel or gasoline engines, which emit CO2 and may spill fuel into the sea. Overly large seaweed farms can shade the bottom and remove vital nutrients from the ocean’s food web. On the other hand, small seaweed farms may have only a negligibly measurable impact on local ecosystems, whether for good or bad. These and other concerns are important to consider when evaluating the claims of companies that promote themselves as regenerative.
Asian nori farms use poles and nets, and are often quite large.
So, what about harvesting wild seaweed? Can that be regenerative? Seaweed as an organism is certainly regenerative. When seaweed fronds are ripped away by ocean storms, devoured by sea urchins, or harvested by humans, they can regenerate in short order so long as the holdfast remains intact. Beyond that, wild seaweed provides enormous regenerative benefits to ocean ecosystems and our planet. It’s no exaggeration to say it would be catastrophic for life as we know it if all seaweed were to vanish from the world’s oceans.
In order for a human activity to be considered regenerative, however, it’s generally understood that the activity must help restore ecosystems to a more natural state. Taking it one step further, a regenerative practitioner is one who acts with that intention in mind. Thus, a regenerative kelp farm can reduce ocean acidity and provide habitat, while a regenerative kelp farmer is one who intentionally uses practices that optimize those benefits. If we accept the dual premise of restoration with intent, it seems like a stretch to say that harvesting wild seaweed is a regenerative practice. Harvesting may be sustainable, but it’s difficult to see how it intentionally restores ocean ecosystems.
However, if we step back and look at the bigger picture, we see that wild-harvested seaweed can indeed be part of a regenerative food system. The bigger picture is that our current global food production system is dominated by a handful of monocultured crops heavily reliant upon external inputs such as fresh water, pesticides, fertilizers, and fossil fuels. This industrial food system is damaging to the environment, is a major cause of biodiversity loss, and lacks resilience. This understanding is why so many consumers are willing to pay a premium for Certified Organic, locally sourced, or sustainably produced food. Regenerative food systems holistically incorporate these values and more while working in partnership with, and not against, natural systems. They are flexible and responsive to environmental feedbacks, and they highly value ecosystem and food system diversity (Loring 2022). Regenerative food systems also emphasize ecosystem restoration and CO2 mitigation, but it’s on a system level and not necessarily required of every component within that system. What matters is how the parts contribute to the whole.
Regenerative food systems also go beyond agriculture to encompass foraging, hunter-gatherers, and fisheries. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that between 1 billion to 1.7 billion people globally depend on wild foods for their diets. However, wild species are often overlooked in food policies. In an article published in the Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society, the authors argue that underestimating the value of wild foods risks neglecting the provisioning ecosystems and local ecological knowledge that sustain food chains (Baruch and Pretty 2010). This requires us to account for the role and value of wild foods when working towards regenerative food systems.
Wild foods harvested from regenerative natural systems contribute to global food security and to regenerative food systems by reducing our reliance on industrial agriculture, so long as harvesting is done within the bounds of natural regenerative capacity. For example, sardines harvested at a sustainable level that allows the population to flourish can replace protein that must otherwise be produced through farming. Protein sourced from animal agriculture poses far greater threats to biodiversity than protein sourced from marine capture fisheries (Leadbitter et al 2025), and restoring biodiversity is a chief aim of regenerative practice.
The caveat is that nothing is wasted in natural systems. Sardines removed for human consumption would have otherwise entered natural food chains. Any form of fishing could thus be seen as a degradation of natural systems, but only if humans are viewed as somehow not being part of nature. However, this view is antithetical to the concept of regenerative food systems, which considers humans to be part of natural systems and responsible for working with them, and not against them. The key is that we do so in a fashion that minimizes adverse ecosystem impacts while maximizing regenerative capacity. Seaweed harvesting is a good example of how this can be done.
There are certainly examples of seaweed fisheries that have decimated wild stocks and harmed local ecosystems. The Canadian Irish moss drag-rake fishery caused immense damage to stocks starting around 1980, leading to major collapse of the industry. In this regard, seaweed fisheries are sadly sometimes no different from many other fisheries. However, seaweed beds have also been sustainably harvested over many decades without harm. We know this because our business model has been based on that for five decades and counting. Over those decades, the harvesters we work with have refined their practices to ensure the longevity and sustainability of their livelihoods. In some years this may mean that some species are barely harvested or not harvested at all because harvesters prioritize the long-term health of the resource over their own short-term income. This may happen, for example, when winter ice scours seaweed beds, and it's only made possible because harvesters possess the intimate local ecological knowledge required to work within the regenerative capacity of local ecosystems.
Wild Irish moss is selectively harvested to leave much of the bed intact for regeneration
Sustainable harvest practices are codified in the Maine Seaweed Council Harvester’s Guidelines and the Harvester’s Field Guide to Maine Seaweeds. These practices are not just sustainable; they are also regenerative, and not only because seaweed possesses such tremendous regenerative capacity. They are regenerative because wild-harvested seaweed contributes to a regenerative food system that respects the value of wild foods to replace or supplement agricultural foods. This value is greatly enhanced in dried seaweed due to its high nutrient density and its capacity to remain nutritionally stable over extended periods without energy intensive refrigeration. They are regenerative because good seaweed harvesters are attuned with natural systems such as lunar and tidal cycles, seasons, and the regenerative capacity of the beds they harvest year after year. This helps them to be flexible and responsive to environmental feedbacks, and when seaweed is sustainably harvested, biodiversity and ecosystems remain intact. Wild harvested seaweed is also one of the least input-intensive and carbon-neutral forms of food production there is, especially if it’s dried using traditional solar or geothermal methods.
Wild dulse is handpicked from bouldery shores at low tide. Holdfasts and most of the bed remain behind after the harvester departs.
We at Maine Coast Sea Vegetables are proud of our long history of producing certified organic, sustainably harvested, and yes, regenerative wild seaweed. We also know that working towards a truly regenerative food system is a journey, and there is still a way to go. We and other regenerative food companies cannot make this journey without our customers. At the end of the day, our food system is driven in large part by consumer choices. With that in mind, thank you for supporting our company and for making this journey with us. The citations below can be accessed if you want to take a deeper dive into this topic.
References
Bharucha, Zareen, and Jules Pretty. "The roles and values of wild foods in agricultural systems." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365.1554 (2010): 2913-2926.
Ikerd, John. "The economic pamphleteer: realities of regenerative agriculture." Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 10.2 (2021): 7-10.
Leadbitter, Duncan, et al. "Biodiversity Consequences of Replacing Animal Protein From Capture Fisheries With Animal Protein From Agriculture." Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture (2025): 1-13.
Loring, Philip A. "Regenerative food systems and the conservation of change." Agriculture and Human Values 39.2 (2022): 701-713.