‘Seaweed is restorative — it boosts our well-being and saves marine biodiversity'

Gabriella D’Cruz is a marine conservationist based in Goa. Writing in Times Evoke Inspire, Gabriella discusses the natural powers of seaweed, utilising this sustainably — and changing diets, one seaweed sandwich at a time:

I was introduced to the oceans through food. No Goan Sunday lunch is complete without prawn curry, mackerel and an occasional platter of mussels. My grandmother tells me of times when she would buy a hundred mackerels for just a few rupees; the quantities were enough to feed the family and neighbours and use the rest as fertiliser for her coconut trees. Her generation was probably the last to see the oceans so bountiful though. A few decades later, my ocean looks very different. Its once-pristine waters are full of chemical and plastic pollutants and its rich marine life has dwindled alarmingly — over 30% of the world’s fish stocks are overfished now, which means over a third of these oceanic creatures face extinction.

SUSTAINING OCEAN LIFE: Seaweed can mitigate global warming and climate change impacts in the seas

But there is a possible solution which could help to save our seas — seaweed. This simple-looking entity, sometimes overlooked for the ocean’s more dazzling life forms, in fact holds the power to change how we perceive the sea. Our extractive fishing industry needs to evolve into a regenerative one now, and seaweed could play an important role in this.


‘Seaweed’ is a generic term used to describe all marine algae — there are over 600 species of seaweed growing in rocky tidepools along the Indian coast. Due to its ability to absorb nutrients from seawater, seaweed is among the most nutritional foods on Earth. In India, seaweed is used mainly as a gelling agent. The extracted gels, such as agar-agar and alginates, are commonly used in the food and pharmaceutical industries. The next time you use toothpaste, check for ‘carrageenan’ in the ingredients, a gel extracted from red seaweed.

A FIELD IN THE SEA: Divers harvest nutritionally rich seaweed, used both as a gelling agent and a dietary ingredient. (Pics courtesy: Asmita Parelkar, Technology for Wildlife)
However, apart from making this an input in diverse goods, India’s seaweed industry can do much more. Seaweed is one of the lowest carbon foods on the planet, requiring no arable land, irrigation or fertilisers to grow. It is also a carbon sink as it pulls carbon down to the bottom of the ocean. Seaweed forests teem with marine life, a home for fish and turtles. If seaweed farms could be designed like natural seaweed forests, this would help sustain our seas while producing low-carbon, highly nutritious food. This works particularly well for India because of the high iodine deficiency prevalent in our population — seaweed contains some of the greatest concentrations of iodine found in nature. If incorporated in our diets, it could be an excellent means of boosting the nutritional value of Indian cuisine.

HEALTHY DELICACIES: From salads to crackers and soups, seaweed forms several nutritious dishes. (Picture: iStock)
I’ve been working on seaweed for five years now and through this journey, I’ve engaged with seaweed farmers from Southeast Asia, worked at a seaweed company in Scotland, attended seaweed conferences with other 'seaweed nerds’ and dived deep into a kelp forest in frigid waters off Galway, Ireland. That was both terrifying and exhilarating — the inky green water was freezing and so dark that we had to use flashlights to navigate through the giant kelp fronds. Swimming through the silent labyrinth, I felt nature’s awe-inspiring presence all around me. For that moment, as a being travelling in that underwater jungle, I was one with the anemones, the starfish and the dogfish sharks which lived there.

My most treasured experience though was meeting the seaweed divers of the Gulf of Mannar — the women from this community in coastal Tamil Nadu have been wild-harvesting seaweed for generations. Their harvest is used as a gelling agent and as agar-agar in labs. The community often doesn’t receive a major share of profits from the industry though and is sometimes forced to over-harvest in order to ensure livelihoods.

This can change if India invests in regenerative seaweed farms, run by coastal communities on sustainable principles. Growing seaweed on rafts and longlines is common across Southeast Asia’s coasts. But India currently has no seaweed policy and the practices for farming and harvesting seaweed vary regionally. However, as international examples show, it’s possible to have a thriving seaweed industry that both sustains coastal communities and boosts marine biodiversity.

My hope is to showcase the many ways in which we can incorporate low-carbon seaweed into our diets. My grandmother isn’t too keen yet on switching her prawn curries with some seaweed salad but I’m hoping that will soon change. I look forward to introducing more people to this amazing marine species, perhaps one seaweed-chutney sandwich at a time.


Times Evoke Inspire is a unique space for young readers to express their thoughts on the environment. Write in to: timesevoke@timesgroup.com