Seaweed Grows in Ireland

By Robbie Galvin

Liam Burke, a second-generation fishmonger and seaweed wholesaler in Waterford City, says chefs are doing interesting things with seaweed, but he doesn’t know if it’s just a fad. Photo by Robbie Galvin.

Gailege, Ireland’s native language, has at least two dozen specific words for types, forms and species of seaweed. Múrach (brittle), racálach (cast-up) and fuip (tangled) are just a few. However, despite this abundance of descriptive terms and a millennia-long history of algae as food, edible seaweed is now a foreign ingredient for most Irish people.

According to Maria Power, aka “the sea gardener,” a professional seaweed forager and guide based in southeast Ireland, that’s changing.

“Seaweed has taken off on a big scale in the last 10 years,” she says. However, while Power reports that more people than ever are interested in her guided forages and seaweed-infused products, she also laments that “for most Irish people, seaweed rarely goes past being a momentary novelty.”

Navigating between rock pools and limpet-encrusted boulders outside the village of Bunmahon on Ireland’s southeastern coast, Power says that seaweed (or sea vegetables, as she calls them) is a bona fide superfood. Pointing to a clump of purple plant matter hiding in a rock crevice, she identifies a washed-up piece of carrageen moss.

Also known as “Irish moss,” this red seaweed was traditionally used to thicken soups and broths and is renowned globally for its eponymous “carrageen pudding,” a sweet creamy pudding thickened with seaweed. Less well known is carrageen’s natural wealth of minerals, vitamins, amino acids and DI-Iodothyronine. Laughing, Power recounts how her grandmother used to feed her and her siblings almost unpalatable boiled carrageen as a medicine, “I don't think we ever once had a cold or a cough.”

Historically a valuable source of nutrients for impoverished coastal communities, seaweed was once a highly prized resource. According to medieval Irish scholars, a rock that could produce a crop of seaweed had a value equivalent to two and a half cows—a significant amount. Later, by the 17th century, seaweed was widely harvested and saw various uses ranging from fertilizer to a substitute for chewing tobacco. During the Great Famine that ravaged Ireland in the 19th century, seaweed became a last resort for starving people. However, even among older Irish people today, particularly in coastal areas, many recall eating seaweed at least semiregularly.

As Ireland modernized rapidly in the latter half of the 20th century, seaweed harvesting and eating fell out of favor. A lingering negative association between seaweed and poverty may have at least partially contributed to seaweed’s decline. Seaweed foraging is now, according to Maria, “very much a minority sport.”

With growing interest in locally sourced food, seaweed’s resurgence may be inevitable. Using a pair of yellow safety scissors to snip the fronds from another purple seaweed, called dillisk (or dulse), Power notes that the plant, which she and her friends “used to eat like chips” when they were children, has a protein content of nearly 50 percent.

Back on dry land, with a predried sample provided by Liam Burke, a second-generation fishmonger and seaweed wholesaler in Waterford City, dillisk’s appeal as a snack is obvious. Salty, chewy with a delicious meaty savouriness, the taste of dried dillisk is not unlike beef jerky but with a definite sealike flavor.

Over a counter full of dried seaweed, Burke, who has been working in the seafood industry for over 40 years, remarks that how his customers use seaweed has changed in recent years.

“The chefs I supply are certainly doing a lot more interesting things with seaweed,” he says. However, he remains unconvinced about whether seaweed is set for a significant comeback in Ireland. “It reappears every so often, but I worry it's more of a health fad than a lasting trend.”

With growing interest in locally sourced food, seaweed’s resurgence may be inevitable. Here, it’s advertised for a low price in the northerly town of Carndonagh. Photo by Kenneth Allen / Local Dulse and Carrageen Moss, Carndonagh via Wikimedia Commons.

Talking over the phone, chef Peter Evert says that catalyzed both by attempts to put an Irish spin on more seaweed friendly cuisines, such as Japanese, as well as better availability of ingredients, a definite uptick in seaweed’s prevalence on Irish plates is underway. “More high-quality seaweed being available [as an ingredient] is helping some people, myself included, to rediscover our tradition.”

Talking about how sleabhacán, a notoriously pungent traditional Irish health food made of boiled nori, is making a surprising comeback, Evert notes, “A garnish or an addition to broths and stock; it brings a powerful savory umami taste.” He also speculates that “As Irish people’s tastes adapt to it, seaweed will naturally start coming back again as we realize what we have on our doorstep.” 

The fact that progressive chefs like Evert are finding new uses for Irish seaweed will undoubtedly grow its popularity as a food. The most significant barrier to further growth may end up being sustainability, as the European market for edible seaweed alone is forecast to grow by over 300 percent.

Almost all of the 40,000 tonnes of seaweed harvested each year in Ireland is collected in the wild and by hand. Practiced mainly on the storm-battered Irish West coast, seaweed harvesting is laborious, tide-dependent and a perennially unpopular job. On the other hand, attempts at mechanizing seaweed extraction continue to falter in the face of environmental concerns.

With wild seaweed ultimately forming a vital part of Ireland’s coastal ecosystem and greater seaweed supply likely to be essential, Power advocates for seaweed farming as the only sustainable solution to this puzzle. Although an antiquated licensing system and lack of a large domestic market means that large scale seaweed cultivation is currently unprofitable in Ireland, she thinks that “Once money comes into the equation, people will seek faster methods for extracting it, and farming is the only way to do that without hurting the environment.”  

As to whether more seaweed consumption will make foraging grow in popularity in the meantime, she smiles. “It's possible, but when you’re out there standing in freezing seawater in the middle of March, I’ll be the first to tell you, it isn’t easy.”