| DATE: Mon 27-Sep-1999 The TIMES-RECORD (reprinted by permission) Rockweed harvesting has its own cycle To Art Creamer, the seasons of the sea are very similar to the seasons on land. The plants that grow in the ocean water have their own cycles just as the plants that grow on land have theirs. The plants Creamer harvests are called rockweed, and his version of a tractor to harvest them is a cumbersome machine that uses the innards of a sewer pump and a blade. The pump draws in the plants and the blade cuts them off. They are sucked through a hose, through the center of the hull off the side to be discharged into netting bags attached by line to the boat. "I get about a ton of weed in each net bag," Creamer says. On a typical day he collects about 22 bags. The bags are loaded onto a tractor trailer truck, after which they are driven to the Atlantic Laboratories in Waldoboro. There the rockweed is dried, shredded and turned into either fertilizer or animal feed. Some of it is dried, then soaked and made into liquid fertilizer. Creamer has been in the rockweed harvesting business since 1991. He works the coast from Waldoboro to Wiscasset, coming back to each site in two or three months. It's the equivelant of a farmer rotating his crops. "After I've worked a place," Creamer says, "I give it a couple of months to grow again. Then when I come back, it's there waiting for me." This past summer has been so warm, he said, that when he came back in September to a cove he had worked in June, he found the plants had grown "about eight, nine inches." Usually they've grown about half that in that amount of time. Unlike his land counterparts, he never has to worry about a drought. And, he harvests all year long. "I used to take off from June to September," he says, "because they weren't buying any. But the past couple years the market has been real good, so I've been working all year." Creamer enjoys what he does. It's peaceful except for the noise of the vacuum pump. And as far as he can see, across the flat sea's surface, he knows his future is growing. CORRECTION: Times-Record DATE: Wed 13-Oct-1999 A Sept. 27 business page story on rockweed harvesting should have stated the rockweed harvester returns to each site every three years. |