Kaskolos Sea Vegetables, LLC
Maine Seaweed Products for the Garden, the Grower and You
KASKOLOS (gahs-gol-os)
The Wabanaki Native American word for seaweed. Wabanakis were the first inhabitants of Ise au Haut and all the land in Maine from the Penobscot River East to Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada for thousands of years before Europeans arrived in North America. Wabanakis were masters of their environment and knew that nutrients like magnesium, potassium and iodine needed to be replenished after long winters inland. Kaskolosiyil (sea weeds) were used to recover their bodies and used as fertilizer on the land to bolster the poor Maine soils. Kaskolos Sea Vegetables, or KSV, continues in this tradition by offering line-grown kelp products to the public and wholesalers.
The Farm
KSV operates a 10 acre sea vegetable farm 1/2 mi, as the crow flies, from the Isle au Haut town dock. We take advantage of the cold, clean waters pushed south from the North Atlantic by the Eastern Maine Coastal Current to grow our seaweed.
We grow line planted sea weeds over mud bottom in late fall and winter. It takes 2400 ft of line or 700 m of seeded kelp line to plant the farm. If all goes well, that turns into 12,000 lbs of sea vegetables. Then the hard work begins...
A year round community located on the outer edge of the Penobscot Bay archipelico. Isle au Haut translates to "high island" in French, so named by the explorer Samuel de Champlain in 1604. The island became a fishing outpost in 1792 by grant of the Massachusetts Commonwealth to Henry Barter. There was a native Wabanaki encampment on the south end of the island into the 1930s. They came by canoe to fish and hunt birds for several weeks a year. The island's Scottish and English settlers grew to around 200 by the 1910s.
Today around 50 people live on the island year round, a population that swells to over 200 during the summer. The island has year round passenger ferry service through the Isle au Haut Boat Company from Stonington. There is a small store that is open year round and a few tourist oriented seasonal businesses on island. Most of the year-rounders lobster at least seasonally. Many are caretakers of the many vacation homes, construction or odd-job workers. A few commute on and off island daily to jobs on the mainland. One operates a kelp farm in partnership with a seasonal home owner.