Ethnoecology during crisis: adaptation of seaweed harvester's knowledge and practices

If like Nabhan et al (2011) and Wyndham et al (2011) we believe that ethnobiology is able to provide answers to global crisis over long periods of time, we also think it can be relevant at local scales to understand the impact of exceptional climatic hazards. During the 2013-2014 winter, several storms struck France, causing a crisis situation in the seaweed harvest in Brittany. How did the seaweed harvesters react to this climatic hazard? We observed that many tools, harvesting techniques and harvesting timings adaptations based on very precise knowledge and representations have been implemented. This situation made it possible to better understand the harvesters' capacity of resilience. It also allowed to analyze the dynamics around the local knowledge, and in particular the hybridization between traditional and scientific knowledge that is currently influencing the management of the resource.