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Managing disturbance: the response of a dominant intertidal seaweed Ascophyllum nodosum (L.) Le Jolis to different frequencies and intensities of harvesting

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Abstract

The rockweed Ascophyllum nodosum is a dominant component of intertidal communities across the North Atlantic Ocean, providing both habitat and primary productivity to nearshore ecosystems. Commercial exploitation of this species is widespread and typically involves cutting the distal portion of fronds thereby permitting regrowth by lateral branching and generation of new fronds from the perennial holdfast. Two key management parameters for determining the sustainability of this resource are the cutting height and the recovery period between successive harvests. Here, we assess the influence of these two parameters on several indicators of exploitation, including harvested biomass, remaining biomass, annual harvest yield, and biomass recovery. Over a 28-year period, treatments of two levels of cutting height (15 and 30 cm) and five levels of recovery period (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 years) were applied to individual 25-m2 plots. This study provides unique observations of the long-term impacts of different management scenarios on Ascophyllum biomass. In general, indicators were lower for shorter recovery periods of 1 and 2 years. Surprisingly, longer recovery periods of 4 and 5 years rarely increased indicators, suggesting that a 3-year recovery period maximizes harvested biomass. Moreover, a longer cutting height did not consistently result in increased indicators, and indeed, the 15-cm cutting height often provided higher values (e.g., annual harvest rates), than the 30-cm cutting height, especially at longer recovery periods. Other impacts of harvesting beyond effects on biomass (e.g., reproductive capacity, canopy structure, scale of harvested areas) were not measured but are discussed and merit further investigation to better determine harvesting regulations.

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Acknowledgements

This work received funding from the Ministère de l’Agriculture des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ), from the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and Laval University. We acknowledge the assistance of all biologists, technicians, students, and volunteers who helped with the fieldwork, especially Gilles Savard, Renée Morneau, Lucienne Chénard, Marie-France Beaulieu, and Nathalie Paille. Special thanks also to Marie-Dominique Fréchette and Brigitte Fréchette for their assistance in the field. We thank Karine Gagnon for compiling the data and Louis Gosselin for helpful discussions and his contribution to fieldwork early in the project. We also thank Hélène Crépeau and Benoît Bruneau for their advice on statistical analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Maurice Lamontagne, Ministère des Pêches et des Océans, 850, route de la Mer, Mont-Joli, QC, G5H 3Z4, Canada

    Louise Gendron

  2. Département de Biologie, Université Laval, Québec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

    Anissa Merzouk & Ladd E. Johnson

  3. Services publics et Approvisionnement Canada, 1550 rue d’Estimauville, Québec, QC, G1J 5E9, Canada

    Pierre Bergeron

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  1. Louise Gendron
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  2. Anissa Merzouk
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  3. Pierre Bergeron
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  4. Ladd E. Johnson
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Correspondence to Louise Gendron.

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Gendron, L., Merzouk, A., Bergeron, P. et al. Managing disturbance: the response of a dominant intertidal seaweed Ascophyllum nodosum (L.) Le Jolis to different frequencies and intensities of harvesting. J Appl Phycol 30, 1877–1892 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-017-1346-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10811-017-1346-5

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