SEAWEED HARVEST SPAWNS TALKS.(Business)(State considers commercial permit requests for this coastal crop)

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

FLORENCE - The Oregon Coast's next bumper crop could be seaweed.

Coveted by naturalists for its mineral content and pressed by artists into all sorts of designs, the marine plants could fetch coastal collectors millions of dollars per year, Williams resident James Jungwirth says.

Jungwirth has been yanking seaweed from rocky intertidal areas on the coast since 1989 and selling it in a mail-order business, www.naturespiritherbs.com. In 1995, worried that his work might be falling outside the bounds of what's…