Seaweed Events
Ellen Hutchins Festival - in inner Bantry Bay
This year – 2026 – the Festival has some great seaweed specific events.
See further down the page for events from previous years.
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Festival 2026
New for 2026
Bantry Marine Research Station: Behind the Scenes Visit: Saturday 15th August: morning – – 10:30am to 12 noon.
Bantry Marine Research Station (BMRS) is a local marine research and aquaculture company based right on the shores of Bantry Bay, near Gearhies pier. They work with seaweed, fish and shellfish, exploring how marine resources can be used in sustainable and innovative ways; from farming seaweed to developing new bio‑based products.
A visit to BMRS is a great chance to get a behind‑the‑scenes look at a seaweed hatchery to see how spores and the life stages of various seaweed species are maintained. Also an insight into how the marine environment around Bantry is being used to support new ideas and future industries.
Free: booking required, opens 1st July.
Explore the Seashore: Saturday 15th August: 12:30pm to 2pm: Gearhies
A free event for all ages including families on the shore at Gearhies on the Sheep’s Head Peninsula. A invitation to explore the beach and rock pools, finding a great variety of sea creatures and seaweeds. The family event is led by Dolf D’Hondt (campaigner, diver, chair of the Fair Seas Steering Committee and local Coastwatch Coordinator) and Julia Cooper (marine expert and underwater photographer). In parallel, Francis Gallagher, aquatic biologist, will run an adults session exploring seaweeds.
A Seaweed Workshop with biology, pressing and poetry: Saturday 15th August: 4pm to 6pm
A workshop focused on seaweeds with seaweed information, specimen making and poetry– follow in the footsteps of Ellen Hutchins, Ireland’s first female botanist who studied seaweeds, made specimens, appreciated their beauty and loved poetry. Frances Gallagher (aquatic biologist) will talk about seaweeds and their biology and then lead the group through the process used by Ellen and her contemporaries to produce botanical specimens for identification purposes. The specimens are also beautiful and can be framed and hung.
The pressing technique has changed very little and most of the equipment is very similar, apart from one modern ingredient. Frances provides freshly collected seaweeds and all that is needed to undertake the process and participants go home with a number of seaweed specimens to be dried.
In the second part of the workshop, poet, Annette Skade, leads participants through a process to write poems inspired by the seaweeds.
€35, booking opened 1st July see listing in Festival programme.
Seaweed Pressing with Farraige: Sunday 16th August: Heron Gallery, Ahakista: 3pm to 4:30pm
Orla and Armand of Farraige offer the opportunity to create your own piece of art with real seaweed. You will learn how to recognise seaweed, how to prepare it for the pressing and about all the care it will need to turn it into a beautiful and unique piece. The workshop costs €70. Booking open – see listing in Festival programme.
Tiny Forests Animal Art Club: Seashore: Tuesday 18th August: The WorkShop, Bantry: morning and afternoon sessions: €10
A special Animal Art Club at Work Shop.
In this workshop, the children draw tiny animals and plants and their habitat, learn about ecosystems, and draw native species that live in-and-around Bantry. At the Work Shop, Bantry – sessions for 6 to 9 year olds and 9 to 12 year olds. Booking required, see Festival programme listing.
Ellen Hutchins Archives Cabinet in Bantry Library : Saturday 15th to Saturday 22nd August (closed Monday and Tuesday)
Visit the library to see a new selection of Ellen Hutchins archives in the beautiful oak Archives Cabinet.
Beside the cabinet will be a small table top display of materials relating to Ellen’s life, botany and botanical art.
In the cabinet there is one of Ellen’s drawings of seaweed, made in 1811 and three of her seaweed specimens on loan from the Herbarium of Trinity College Dublin. These are different specimens from those seen in previous years. Ellen took great care when laying out and pressing the specimens and the results of this could be seen over two hundred years later in these beautiful examples of seaweeds she collected and pressed from Bantry Bay.
Previous Years
Sunday 20th August 2023 – Water Heritage Day
Held on Whiddy Island, this event allowed those who attended to explore the seashore and learn more about the seaweeds and lichens that grow there. After the shore session, there was the chance to make your own ‘work-of-art’ seaweed specimen and to see the beauty of lichens under the microscope.
The event was part of Heritage Week and had funding from the Local Authority Water Programme.
Festival 2022
She Gathered Seaweeds on the Seashore
Whiddy Island (by ferry from Bantry main pier)
The session led by Frances Gallagher, aquatic biologist, and Carrie O’Flynn, historical re-enactor and period costume maker, started on the strand by Whiddy Island’s pier at low tide. The group explored the seaweeds and learnt more about them. They heard about who would have been gathering seaweeds in the early 1800s and why they did so. They saw the clothing they would have worn and the baskets they would have used.
Frances shared her knowledge of Bantry Bay’s seaweeds and their uses as food and soil improvers. She then guided the group in gathering small seaweed pieces for a practical session spreading the seaweed specimens on paper. Everyone took home their own specimens to dry out and keep, and also some of the ‘magic ingredient’ that will enable them to make more another time/ at home.
Carrie showed the equipment that Ellen would have used over 200 years ago and there were images of Ellen’s seaweed specimens and drawings to examine.
Hand lenses and microscopes were available enabling people to see beautiful tiny details of the live seaweeds that are invisible to the human eye.
This event had funding from a Cork County Council Heritage Grant and from the Environmental Research Institute at UCC.
Seaweed Specimens as Art
Workshop
Community Hall, Whiddy Island
Frances Gallagher’s workshop was on making seaweed specimens, using them artistically including in collage pictures, and how to frame and look after them. As well as being a practical workshop making specimens, Frances brought a selection of specimens and work that she has made and talked through issues and solutions.
Carrie O’Flynn, historical re-enactor, and Madeline Hutchins, researcher on Ellen, contributed to the session.
This workshop replaced Letters From the Sea as Sybille Neumeyer was ill. We plan to have Sybille over next year or another year to run the cyanotypes workshop as planned.
Voices of Water
Workshop
Unfortunately this workshop was cancelled due to illness.
Festival 2021
She Gathered Seaweeds on the Seashore
Ardnagashel Strand, near Ballylickey
The group started on the strand at low tide to explore the seaweeds and learn more about them, and about who would have been gathering seaweeds in the early 1800s and what for. The session was led by historical reenactor and period costume maker, Carrie O’Flynn, and aquatic biologist, Frances Gallagher. Frances shared her knowledge of seaweeds and their uses and then everyone gathered small pieces as specimens. As the tide comes in, the group moved to a practical session spreading the seaweed specimens on paper with Frances and then took a walk back in time in a special place with Carrie.
Team Ellen were filming Carrie and Frances for a short video for the website on seaweed gathering, outdoor clothing and baskets. The video had received funding from FLAG South. The event had received funding from a Cork County Council Heritage Grant.
2019: The Whiddy Island Seaweed Event with Susan Steele is one of the most popular events in the Festival.
This provided a chance to discover the seaweeds on one stretch of Whiddy Island’s shore with Dr Susan Steele (Seafood Fisheries Protection Authority – SFPA) and try preserving seaweed specimens 1800s style. Participants learnt about the impressive and fascinating array of seashore life of Bantry Bay from the enthusiastic and knowledgeable Dr Susan Steele. After collecting a wide range of seaweeds from the beach, in the marquee by Bank House, participants were shown how to float the seaweeds onto sheets of paper and tease them out into shape. There was also the opportunity to hear some of the story of Ellen Hutchins of Bantry Bay, Ireland’s first female botanist.
In 2019, the Festival also included a Seaweed Foraging and Tasting afternoon.
Exploring the shore and finding out which seaweeds are edible with aquatic biologist Frances Gallagher. This was followed by a cooking demo & tasting session. Frances Gallagher has a wide-ranging knowledge of seaweeds, especially in relation to their nutritional and medicinal values. She also has an interesting insight into Ellen’s era and the lives of other people on the shore at that time, who would have been collecting seaweeds for food and fertiliser rather than for scientific study.
