Courses / Monitoring & Maintenance

Course Content

Cadence of Monitoring
Create a Rhythm Be Storm Aware
Common Gear Issues
Slack in Your Growlines Anchor Drag Change in Line Depth
Loose or Broken Seed string Floating Debris Line Chafing and Fouling Sea Ice
Monitoring Kelp Biomass and Quality
Growth Rate Water Quality Biofouling
Resources & Tools
Farm Operations Forum
Kelp Growth Rate Measurement Protocols
Download file
Harvest Tracking Farm Map
Download file
Guide to Common Biofouling Organisms for Ocean Farmers
Download file
Lesson 2 Common Gear Issues

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Loose or Broken Seed string

Another common issue many farmers encounter is loose or broken seed string. There may be places along your growline where the seed string has started to come detached from the growline, or snapped and begun to unwind. Watch this video of identifying this issue on the GreenWave farm.

It’s common to see loose or broken seed string along your growline.

If you spot a loose or broken seed string on your growlines you’ll need to fix it by tying or lashing the seed string back to the growline. This will encourage the kelp’s holdfasts to attach directly to the growline, as opposed to continuing to grow on the seed string alone.  At GreenWave we use surgical tubing to do this, but twine also works well. For the best chance of preserving your crop, you’ll want to make this repair at every spot you see broken or sagging seed string.

Video
If you notice seed string that’s come loose from your line, you’ll need to tie it back to the growline in several places.
Surgical tubing can be used to reconnect broken seed string.

This is an image of a longline where the seed string broke, probably after being snagged by a floating log or other debris, and entangled with its neighboring line. As you can see, this can quickly become a mess and lead to significant loss of kelp from your lines.

Left untended, broken seed string can quickly cause massive loss of your crops.