Gabriella D'Cruz is Building India's Seaweed Revolution

Gabriella D’Cruz, marine conservationist and founder of The Good Ocean, is on a mission to popularize Indian seaweed as a sustainable food source. In a conversation with Sneha Mehta, the freediver, seaweed harvester, and activist shares her inspiring journey, highlights the rich diversity of Indian seaweed, and emphasizes the urgent need to protect our ecosystems.

Even on land, Gabriella D’Cruz lives on ‘tide time.’ As a native Goan, the ocean has always been a part of D’Cruz’s life, but now, as the founder of India’s first seaweed food company (The Good Ocean), it is also her workplace and greatest teacher. “In the seaweed forests I work in, everything is happening on its own time,” said Gabriella. “Only when the tide is right can you harvest the seaweed. Until then, you just have to be patient. Living on this time has made me slow down, appreciate my time spent in these ecosystems, and remind myself to lean away from any extractive business models. It's also changed my relationship to anxiety and my body.”

This slowdown has seeped into every part of the soft-spoken 32-year-old’s life. When she speaks about her unconventional, risky, and often physically gruelling journey she is contemplative and deliberate, punctuated with moments of childlike awe for seaweed and tenderness for her personal growth. She’s conscious that a lot rests on the silken, swaying, earthy green-brown algae she harvests: she’s trying to raise awareness about the applications and nutritional benefits of Indian seaweed, safeguard marine ecosystems, support coastal economies, and participate in India’s wild food culinary movement. But she’s transforming this industry — and herself — slowly, and with care. All on tide time.

“As seaweed continues to gain traction, especially in health, beauty, and culinary culture, The Good Ocean model is already showing us a glimpse of our seaweed futures and of what it means to build a seaweed ecosystem that's equitable for all,” said Elizabeth Yorke, a chef, researcher and co-founder of Edible Issues, with whom D’Cruz co-hosts an informational content series called Seaweed Saturdays. “It deeply resonates with our passion to explore and build spaces of conversation and curiosity within the Indian food system.”

D’Cruz’s childhood sounds like something from a storybook: she grew up in Saligao, a village in Goa, without a TV, with National Geographic magazines, and the frogs, snakes, and birds that came into the wild garden behind her parent’s house for entertainment. “I spent most of my childhood outdoors and that’s where my concerns for these spaces stems from — it seemed very natural to me that I would protect forests and fields and trees and the sea,” she said.

In many ways, conservation is also in her blood. Her parents, Dean and Alice, an architect and an English professor respectively, are prominent figures in the fight to conserve Goa's green spaces from unplanned and illegal land conversions. D’Cruz remembers accompanying her parents to protests and being an active participant in them as well. “When I was around 10 years old, I was taken to a protest against some giant trees being cut down. I gave a speech about why we should protect trees while wearing a tree-shaped balloon hat. It was mortifying,” she laughs. “But that was an average day in my childhood. Now, as an adult, I understand the value of people who show up for the environment.”

This training has served her well because her work requires her to show up every single day — emotionally and physically. After completing her graduate degree in biodiversity conservation and management from Oxford University, a stint at a UK-based seaweed seasonings company inspired her to look into the seaweed industry in coastal India, particularly in Tamil Nadu, where women divers have collected seaweed for generations. But when the pandemic began, D’Cruz was forced to look for opportunities closer to home. Her company, The Good Ocean, which she founded in 2022, harvests indigenous seaweed from the coast of Goa. She then processes it for restaurants, breweries, distilleries, beauty companies, and individual customers.

“I never imagined that being a seaweed harvester is even a job. And so when I started reading about how it's generally a practice conducted by women, I was even more curious,” said D’Cruz. “Traditionally, women like the Ama divers in Japan and the Haenyeo in Korea have adapted to harvesting seaweed even better than men, because they have better lung capacity, and can withstand harsh ocean temperatures and depths. And I just got completely fascinated.”

A typical harvesting session takes about two or three hours and involves swimming into a seaweed forest, free diving to the bottom where the seaweed is attached to a rock, collecting it using a sickle and a net bag, and then heading back to shore to their processing unit.

Harvesting equipment includes diving gear, a sickle to cu the seaweed and a weighing scale.

Gabriella weighs each harvest at the end.

“People always ask, ‘It must be really exhausting. How do you do it?’. But 28 million people in the fishing community do very similar work for longer hours and somehow it's considered okay because they’re from a different economic background.”

Especially for D’Cruz, who wasn’t a strong swimmer for most of her life, overcoming her fear of the ocean was challenging. Surprisingly, the confident freediver and seaweed harvester only developed her swimming skills in her late teens. “I was afraid of the sea because a family friend drowned when I was young. It only went away when I started swimming and diving because I needed to get good at it for work,” she said.

And with each swim came a personal evolution. “I've been enjoying going into a seaweed forest, feeling that initial anxiety when you get pulled around in the current, and then sort of just relaxing into it and letting go. I'm now aware of how sea swimming affects my mental health in a good way.”

But ultimately the proof of the idiomatic seaweed pudding is in the eating. While Korean and Japanese seaweed is now familiar to Indians, many Indian seaweed species have a distinct flavour profile that hasn’t been explored much—yet. India has 800 species of tropical seaweed: sargassum has a deep umami flavour and crunchy texture, ulva has a salty umami flavour with a chlorophyll bitterness, and gracilaria has a cartilage-like crunch and a mild salt and sea flavour. D’Cruz has been collaborating with chefs and restaurants across India to bring these unique flavours to Indian diners.

Fresh sargassum, the main seaweed harvested by The Good Ocean.

The Good Ocean hosted a dinner with chef Varun Totlani from Mumbai’s Masque to showcase the diversity of seaweed species to other chefs and people in the food sector. Chef Priyanka Sardessai from Goa’s Larder & Folk used The Good Ocean seaweed on a Seaweed appalam, which is a take on masala papad using dehydrated Sargassum which is pickled and mixed with a mix of oranges, dried prawns, and chilli peanuts, and a dehydrated seaweed powder for a croissant braid. Working with D’Cruz’s seaweed means you get the ingredients as well as a deep dive into what it takes to grow, source, and process the food we eat.

“Gabriella walked me through the process of planning a harvest, understanding tides, and the yield depending on seasons and varieties of seaweed. She explained the different parts of each seaweed and assisted in menu planning. Moreover, it's the fact that the seaweed is harvested from our hometown!” said Sardessai. “We kept the menu simple and easy so that the seaweed is the hero of the dish. We made seaweed butter, a seaweed salad, and a stipe broth.”

Coming up with these experimental dishes has the thrill and madness reminiscent of Wonka’s adventures in chocolate. “I can't believe this is work. It is so much fun,” D’Cruz says with a smile.

Seaweed dishes cooked as a collaboration between The Good Ocean and Larder & Folk.

While she treasures each moment and new experience, the job throws at her, D’Cruz is aware of how vulnerable our ecosystems are, as are the jobs that depend on them. This became especially clear when D’Cruz worked with Nisha D’Souza of EcoNiche, an environmental consulting firm, on a pilot project aimed at developing a community-driven sustainable seaweed farming model. The project didn’t produce seaweed due to a disease outbreak—one among numerous challenges that made D’Cruz realize she still has a lot left to learn and master.

“Establishing a foundation for the sustainable success of conservation efforts requires a holistic approach that integrates scientific research, policy development, and community engagement. The Good Ocean has already begun to play a pivotal role in this space,” said D’Souza. “While seaweed presents a promising solution to various challenges, it's important to recognize that it is not a one-size-fits-all answer. We need more responsible organizations like The Good Ocean, committed to exploring and implementing diverse, sustainable solutions.”

But for now, D’Cruz is content to take each day as it comes, working to make The Good Ocean resilient and flexible to face climate change, and learning as much as she possibly can about seaweed. “It's really special to do something that consumes you and that you wake up every day feeling excited to do. I created this job for myself. Who knows how long it'll last?” she said “But it's such a privilege to work with nature, and very few people get to do it. Until I am completely broke on the street, I will keep trying to make this work.”

Yet sometimes existential dread about her obsession creeps in: “Who am I outside of seaweed?” she finds herself wondering. But time and time again, she’s learned that she doesn’t need to look much further than her own backyard in Goa for inspiration. “I sometimes feel the itch to landscape gardens. You know how when you go to someone's house and they have these boring generic plants? I could see myself growing wild plants and edibles and banana trees and vines in people's gardens,” she sighs contentedly.

The newest snack from The Good Ocean is a seaweed cracker.

The Good Ocean recently launched new seaweed cracker, in collaboration with Atmosphere Studio, which has hand-harvested seaweed blended with almond flour, chilli flakes and sesame. In December, as part of Serendipity Arts Festival 2024, Gabriella is teaming up with Priyanka to host a seaweed tasting workshop.

Sneha Mehta is a writer, covering design, food, and culture, and a strategist. Follow her on Instagram. Images credit: The Good Ocean, Rebecca D’Costa, Nishi Jaiswal

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