Denmark: Grow your own mussels: the new phenomenon of sea allotments
Instead of a field, hundreds of Danish growers now share patches of the ocean – growing mussels, sea kelp and more. Just don’t tell the greedy eider ducks
By Richard Orange in Kerteminde
The Guardian
June 25, 2022
Excerpt:
Made up of about 80 households, Kerteminde Maritime Haver is the largest of 15 sea allotment societies that have sprung up in Denmark since the first was established in 2011 in Ebeltoft, near the city of Aarhus.
As with land-based allotments, members of a sea allotment society share an area granted to them by local authorities and use it to cultivate food. The difference is that instead of a field, growers share a patch of the ocean. In the case of Kerteminde Maritime Haver, it is the Great Belt – the strait between Funen island and Denmark’s capital island, Zealand. Here, ropes strung between buoys are hung with mussels and sea kelp.
The original idea for sea allotments was for each member to have their own rope, or line, hung with mussels. “Everybody had an allotment, everybody had a line, but then some people didn’t keep them properly, so they decided to do it in common,” says Hanna Albert, as she carefully stuffs tiny baby mussels back into new cotton mussel socks. This is the way all Denmark’s sea allotments are managed now.
At Kerteminde, the annual family membership fee is 500 Danish kroner (£60), which pays for using the harbour area where they prepare and hang mussels, and for renting the clubhouse from the local sailing club. While they get free access to the sea, the society pays into a fund to cover the costs of removing the equipment and remediating the area if something goes wrong.
