On a warm February morning, we drive into Sindhudurg from Goa’s Manohar International Airport. Barely a few kilometres from the bustle of the terminal, the landscape opens up into rolling expanses of green.
I arrive at Coco Shambhala on Sindhudurg’s Bhogave beach — our home for the next two days, and spend the afternoon soaking in the lush greenery. Only the next morning do I realise that the forest here is not just on land. It exists underwater too. Along this coastline, seaweed grows in quiet abundance, forming dense underwater “forests” that function as ecosystems in their own right.
Gabriella
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India has more than 800 varieties of seaweed along its coastline (as documented by the academic journal Botanica Marina, published by De Gruyter Brill), with a significant concentration along the Konkan. Traditionally, when it washed ashore, it was gathered as compost for coconut and mango trees. But it never entered Indian kitchens. “Locals are not aware of seaweed. Most people don’t even know it’s edible, so it’s never been part of the traditional fare,” says Suhas Malewadkar, F&B manager, Coco Shambhala, who is also native of Goa.
Into the intertidal
At Bhogave beach the next morning, the tide has retreated just enough to expose the rocks, and what grows along them. Waiting for us is Gabriella D’Cruz, founder, The Good Ocean, which works with local harvesters to supply food-grade Indian seaweed to chefs.
Diving suit on, sickle in hand and a mesh bag looped over her shoulder, she wades into the water. Moving carefully across the rocks, she scans before cutting the seaweed just above the holdfast — the part that anchors it to the rock. “If you take it from the base, it won’t regenerate,” she explains. Local harvesters follow strict guidelines so that there is no damage to the wild stock. They are also trained about seaweed diversity and reproductive cycles to ensure long term protection of the forest.
Sargassum
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What I might have dismissed as algae begins to take shape as she walks us through each variety she has collected. There is abundant sargassum, thick and brown; sea grapes clustered like tiny green pearls; fans of dictyota and padina; and ribboned spatoglossum. She hands me a strand of sea grapes to taste — it bursts with citrusy, saline freshness.
Sargassum, she explains, is the species she focusses on as it grows abundantly along this coast. “Most of it goes into agar, carrageenan and sodium alginate,” she says — hydrocolloids that quietly appear in everyday foods. Whole, traceable seaweed for chefs simply was not part of the system. That is the gap she is trying to bridge. Today, The Good Ocean supplies food-grade sargassum at ₹1,920 per kilogram and is the only supplier offering it in a cleaned, traceable form, unlike most seaweed in the market that is sold unprocessed.
A variety of seaweed
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Once harvested, the seaweed goes through a careful cleaning and drying process that preserves it for up to two years, when stored in a cool and dry place. Instead of being sun-dried, it is dried in dehumidifier rooms that remove moisture while locking in nutrients and preventing UV damage.
For the harvesters working with The Good Ocean, this growing culinary curiosity is also creating a more viable livelihood. They earn about ₹100 per kilogram of freshly harvested seaweed — significantly higher than the ₹14–15 per kilogram often paid for semi-dried seaweed in parts of coastal Tamil Nadu.
Harvesting takes place early in the morning when the ocean is calmer. Workers use masks, snorkels and an inflatable net ring to collect seaweed, and are paid on the same day.
The sea’s pantry
Later, we head out to sea in a small fishing boat. Two local fishermen slip into the water without any gear, resurfacing minutes later with sea urchins balanced carefully in their palms.
“Sea urchins are something people in Sindhudurg do eat. They’re usually held over hot coals to burn off the thorns, then cracked open and eaten straight from the shell,” shares Suhas.
Back at Coco Shambhala, a seaweed risotto infused with sargassum sits alongside crab and ricotta ravioli finished with a light butter sauce enriched with that morning’s sea urchins.
For Giles Knapton, founder, Coco Shambhala, the connection with seaweed runs deep. “I grew up with seaweed,” he says. His family home in Ireland was close to the beach, and seaweed would be laid out on the road to dry. “You’d take it straight off and eat it as it was.”
For Giles, seaweed is also the sign of a healthy ecosystem, so it shouldn’t be overused. “But in small volumes, like we do here, it’s sustainable.”
Guests at Coco Shambhala already have the opportunity to harvest sea urchins and learn to cook them, and seaweed foraging may soon become part of that experience.
From shoreline to plate
In Mumbai, chefs like Varun Totlani, head chef at Masque and Bar Paradox, have also begun working with seaweed varieties such as ulva (sea lettuce) and sargassum swartzii.
“The ocean, despite being such a large part of our geography, felt underexplored in restaurant kitchens,” he says. Marine ingredients come with built-in salinity, umami and texture. “They respond directly to tides, weather and geography, which means you can’t impose too much on them.”
Seaweed risotto infused with sargassum
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Seaweed is also beginning to find its way into bars. “Seaweed has a very distinctive flavour profile — it’s intensely savoury and can verge on slightly fishy — so it tends to be a love-or-hate ingredient in drinks,” says Pankaj Balachandran, founder, Boilermaker Goa, Quinta Cantina and The Lab Goa. “We’ve experimented with it in cocktails before, including a seaweed martini with cacao liqueur.” Instead of making it the dominant flavour, they have used it subtly as tinctures or bitters to add layers of umami.
The story of Indian seaweed is, in many ways, about recognising something that has been around for billions of years.
Published – March 31, 2026 10:34 am IST
