Goa offers seafood like crabs, squids, chonak among plenty of other varieties with tourists making a beeline to the non-vegetarian eateries. Is it time now for seaweed to make it to the menu? Founder of The Good Ocean, Gabriella D’Cruz has no doubt that our coastal state can take the lead in making seaweed another crowd-puller as it caters to the Vegans as well.
Known to be a rich source of Iodine, iron, calcium among other nutritious content, seaweed of 145 varieties are found in Goa, while 800 types of this marine vegetation grows in Indian waters. The Good Ocean via its first of its kind business in the country, supplies local seaweed for human consumption in India.
“We have everything from Crabs, Squids, Chonak on the plate, why don’t we have seaweed?, so I think this is a huge gap, and working with local chefs would be very exciting…I think, in many ways, it’s quite a historical thing to put seaweed on the menu in Goa,” says Gabriella, a marine conservationist featuring in the ‘Fascinating Conversations with Empowered Women of Goa’ hosted by Rina Barreto Shankar; exclusively on @LiveNewsGoaTV.
Being environmentally conscious, sustainability is at the core of Gabriella’s endeavour. “In many ways, our company has put in very strict guidelines for how we harvest our seaweed. We are looking towards farming seaweed in the future because we feel like we would really like to start putting more into the ocean rather than harvesting seaweed out of it,” revealed Gabriella, who has been conferred with BBC Radio 4’s Food and Farming – ‘The Global Youth Champion Award’.
