Maine Seaweed Week 2025
Maine Seaweed Week returns to local restaurants and adds panel discussions at popular seaweed expo
Maine Seaweed Week: April 25–May 4, 2025
7th annual food & drink festival celebrating Maine's kelp harvest
Seaweed Week, an annual food and drink festival celebrating Maine’s kelp harvest, returns to restaurants, bars, and businesses across the state for its seventh year this April. From Friday, April 25, through Sunday, May 4, attendees can enjoy local seaweed-based food and drink specials—from kelp burgers to craft cocktails—and unique events such as cooking workshops and beach ID walks, all celebrating this sustainable superfood. With more than 70 businesses participating annually, Maine Seaweed Week is the largest seaweed food and drink festival in North America.
Returning for its second year is Seaweed Saturday, a free, all-ages expo featuring seaweed food, art, science, marketplace vendors, and (new this year) panel discussions with seaweed farmers, scientists, and others in the industry. The event will take place at the Gulf of Maine Research Institute (GMRI) on Portland’s working waterfront. Maine Sea Grant will offer hands-on seaweed ID workshops and demos, while local artists will exhibit algae-inspired works. Plus, seaweed farmers and makers will showcase products for sampling and purchase, including kelp smoothie cubes, power bars, dried dulse, tea, chocolate, and bath and body items. Seaweed Saturday is scheduled for April 26 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is hosted in partnership with GMRI and the Maine Seaweed Council.
What to Expect During Seaweed Week 2025
Creative food and drink specials will be available at restaurants and bars across Maine—think seaweed and ceviche poke bowls, kelp buttermilk-dressed salads, and sugar kelp vodka cocktails. The multi-day celebration also features special events and educational opportunities, including field ID workshops and aquaculture community panels.
While this year’s lineup is still being finalized, past festivals have featured participation from more than 70 restaurants, breweries, bars, and college campuses annually. Seaweed-infused beers, spirits, meads, ciders, kombucha, and teas have been highlights, along with limited-release collaborations such as seaweed-inspired bread, crackers, cheese, chocolate, and ice cream. In 2023, Seaweed Week even partnered with the National Seaweed Symposium, further cementing its place as a leading event in the seaweed industry.
A True Harvest Festival
Founded in 2019, Seaweed Week is timed to coincide with Maine’s spring kelp harvest. “Maine leads the nation in seaweed farming,” said Jaclyn Robidoux, a seaweed extension specialist with the University of Maine’s Maine Sea Grant program. “Each spring, around a million pounds of kelp are harvested from ocean farms by Maine fishermen and working waterfront families who grow it over the winter.”
Most of this kelp is incorporated into seaweed salads, sauces, kelp burgers, and health foods before being distributed to restaurants and retailers. Seaweed Week highlights the many Maine businesses already championing sea vegetables while inspiring others to start innovating with them. In fact, the festival was founded by Josh Rogers, owner of Portland’s Heritage Seaweed, the nation’s premier retail seaweed shop and the maker of Cup of Sea, a line of seaweed teas. Rogers launched Seaweed Week as a way to showcase Maine’s growing kelp aquaculture scene.
“Seaweed checks all the boxes: it’s sustainable, nutritious, versatile, and tasty,” Rogers said. “It’s one of those intriguing foods that people are curious about, and we’re seeing increasing numbers of chefs and product developers experimenting with seaweed.”
Learn More
For an evolving list of participating restaurants, businesses, and organizations—as well as a schedule of events and educational opportunities—visit seaweedweek.org.
Seaweed FAQ: Why is it so important that we raise awareness and demand for edible seaweed?
Seaweed is delicious and versatile.
Maine seaweed species (North Atlantic Kelp, Kombu, Nori, Dulse, Sea Lettuce, Irish Moss, etc.) represent a wide range of tastes and culinary uses. Seaweed can be incorporated as a dish’s star-ingredient or subtle flavor enhancer. Top chefs are using seaweed more and more, as an important part of the sea-to-table movement.
Seaweed typically has about 10X more minerals than land plants.
Plus essential vitamins, marine micronutrients, protein, fiber, and omegas (it’s where fish get their omegas). Seaweed contains concentrated trace minerals like zinc and iodine, as well as calcium, iron, and potassium.
It’s Maine’s climate-friendly crop.
Seaweed is easy on the planet - it requires no freshwater, feed, or pesticides to grow. Farming seaweed presents natural solutions to large-scale agricultural challenges and is one of the worlds most scalable and regenerative crops. Not to mention, as seaweed grows it uptakes carbon, mitigates ocean acidification, improves water quality, restores ecosystems, and provides habitat for marine organisms. Talk about a climate win!
Working waterfront communities are supported by seaweed.
At a time when heritage fisheries face emerging challenges, Maine lobstermen and others are diversifying their operations to include kelp farming in the winter, which supplements their income. Seaweed farming integrates into and enhances our working waterfronts, building demand for services and infrastructure in communities across the coast.
Maine is leading the way.
Because of our clean waters, extensive coastline, and waterfront heritage, Maine is positioned as the leader of the North American seaweed movement. Maine has innovative seaweed product companies; a decades-old sustainable wild-harvest sector; over 50 active kelp farms; aquaculture programs at several universities; scientific research at UMaine, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science, and the Gulf of Maine Research Institute; the oldest seaweed council in the world; an all-things-seaweed retail store; and the largest seaweed food and drink festival in the U.S.
How can kelp help?
The global population will increase 33% by 2050, and we're currently sourcing just 2% of our food from the ocean. A 2016 World Bank study estimates seaweed production will increase 16,000% from current levels by 2050. Seaweed farming and harvest is remarkably sustainable and Maine can continue to lead the way by championing sustainable seaweed production.
Learn more about Maine Seaweed Week, and Maine seaweed production, visit: https://seaweedweek.org/