Research shows increased yields from early-spring trimming
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I attended a great presentation by @gretchen_grebe at NACE a few weeks ago about her research at the University of Maine on the impact of early season trimming of sugar kelp crops on eventual yields. Gretchen and her team worked with farmers in the Gulf of Maine to trim blades at 60 cm from March until May and monitored to see how the kelp performed later in the season.
They found that the kelp was not stressed by the trimming, and instead benefited from the early season haircut. The resulting blades were longer, wider, and heavier than the control. The tips were also less resistant to sloughing and storm loss, and grew back to match the biomass of the untrimmed kelp by a mid-May harvest.
Gretchen explained this could serve as a potential opportunity for a significant increase in farm revenue by allowing farmers to harvest twice in a season, and sell an early-season crop of young and tender kelp without sacrificing any biomass for an end-of-season harvest.
You can read Gretchen's paper here, and she shared her slides, which show some graphs and images of her studies for anyone who's interested! .hub.greenwave.org/assets/19d6efa4-848b-4d3a-8e56-8a98a44da868.pdf
