Diving and Foraging for Wild Food in Cape Town’s False Bay
Pier Nirandara
“We all begin with seaweed blindness,” Roushanna Gray tells us, peering over the vast kelp forests of Cape Town’s False Bay from the shore. To the average beach-goer, the many varieties of seaweed are often mistaken as just one—but for Gray, these underwater jungles are a powerful source of sustenance, both for the earth and ourselves. “There are over nine-hundred species here, and only one is inedible.”
It's winter in South Africa, and, surprisingly, a beautiful day to be in the water. I’ve just returned from diving the sardine run up the country’s eastern spine, and upon arriving in Cape Town I decided to opt for a less conventional activity: a full-day coastal foraging workshop led by Gray’s company, Veld & Sea.
Gray lives at the tip of the rugged Cape Peninsula—the same setting as the Academy Award-winning documentary, My Octopus Teacher (2020). Here, she leads excursions to harvest wild food like sea snails, mussels, and seaweed from what she calls an “edible landscape.” The immersive outings guide travelers and residents through tidal pools, kelp forests, and sun-drenched fynbos (a type of shrubbery endemic to the region), collecting ingredients that guests will later help transform into nourishing dishes rich in flavor, heritage, and history.
“Foraging is the physical act of searching for and harvesting wild food for sustenance,” Gray explains. “For most of human existence we’ve sustained ourselves through this skill.” Veld & Sea tours, she says, helps people refamiliarize themselves with this ancestral wisdom and connect back to natur,e while building stewardship and respect for the local environment.
Our day begins early in the morning at Smitswinkel Bay, a site accessible only by hiking along a winding dirt path that meanders through thick shrubbery and down a cliffside. That day, we are coincidentally joined by surfer Koa Smith and filmmaker Sam Potter, who is in the process of filming and interviewing Gray for his documentary series, Back to the Wild. Emerging from the foliage, we arrive at the water’s edge, heads of kelp bobbing on the ocean surface. The air is crisp but clear, and beyond, the entirety of False Bay stretches out in a swathe of blue.
Foraging is a seasonal activity, Gray describes, and it’s during the spring tide that the lower water levels consistently reveal a plentiful intertidal zone, ideal for harvesting. But nutrients, even within a single ingredient, shift with the moon cycle. Some, like sea lettuce, are rich in vitamin C in summer, and full of vitamin D in the winter.
With a pair of scissors and a mesh bag, Gray wades through the shallow water, and teaches us how to collect different types of algae along the rocky coastline. There's slippery orbit (a wide, slick sheet, as its name suggests); wrack (dense, with long, thin branches); purple laver (delicately thin and violet); dead-man’s fingers, with its swollen stems and mucus-like substance; and tongue-weed, its name derived from its tough tongue-like texture, which contains carrageenan, a natural food thickener.
To encourage regrowth after our harvest, Gray shows us how to snip just one-third of each plant. “It’s important to stress sustainable, responsible, and legal foraging practices,” she notes as we wander through the tidal pools. “The magical intertidal zone is full of wonder and beauty, but also a very fragile ecosystem.”
Gray also encourages us to collect invasive species of mussels to help improve the local ecosystem. Clambering over rainbow rock pools inhabited by mollusks and anemone, the act feels wonderfully therapeutic—like a form of pruning. At one point, Gray passes around a sea urchin. Using half a mussel shell as a spoon, I follow her guidance to scoop out a sliver of orange flesh, which explodes in a burst of salty creaminess once it hits my tongue.
Soon, it’s time to pull on our wetsuits and snorkeling masks before diving beneath the surface in search of alikreukel—an abundant giant periwinkle sea snail that’s often found clinging to rocks and stalks of kelp. The cold hits like a jolt of electricity. As I dip my head below the waves, sunlight slices through the blue, illuminating a forest of golden-brown kelp undulating in the surge where glittering silver fish dart between the stalks. I follow Gray as she floats weightlessly above the seaforest, inhaling deeply before ducking below. Pulling herself down on a stalk as one would a rope, she plucks sea snails from the kelp and pockets them in her mesh bag—like a mermaid going grocery shopping.
When we emerge, it’s time to bring our bounty to the Veld & Sea HQ, located on dry land a short drive away at Good Hope Gardens, the Western Cape’s largest indigenous plants nursery run by Gray’s partner, Tom, and founded by his mother, Gael. At the center of the plot is a sun-filled glass house built from reclaimed and up-cycled window frames, its interior decorated with hand-crafted furniture and recycled driftwood, strings of sea-glass and shells dangling from the ceiling. Beside a cushioned reading nook, an assortment of cordials and wildflower concoctions sparkle in the light.
While sipping mugs of fynbos kelp chai seasoned with herbs and algae, we get to work cleaning and prepping the foraged goods for lunch. I ask Gray how she learned to cook this way. “Growing up in Cape Town, you can’t not be connected to the ocean in one way or another—whether ancestral or recreational,” she explains, stuffing a massive kelp bulb full of fruits for roasting. Identifying as Coloured, a multiracial ethnic group in South Africa, Gray grew up fishing chokka (calamari) in the harbor, learning seafood recipes with heritage spices, and bearing witness to how food can bring people together. “My mixed ancestry has traveled over many oceans to get to Cape Town, through spices, slavery, and hope,” she says. “[Nature] is where we find a place of belonging no matter who we are and where we come from.”
Cape Town is a melting pot, and her workshops draw on its diverse cultures, including the traditional knowledge of the region’s Indigenous people who once lived off the land and sea. Collectively known as the Khoisan, the Khoekhoe and San were nomadic pastoralists and hunter-gatherers—the latter whose name is actually an exonym meaning “foragers”—including a group known as Strandlopers (Afrikaans for “beach walkers”) who once lived on seafood gathered on the beaches of southern Africa before European colonization eradicated their way of life. They collected and harvested sustainably, watched the moon and tides, and adapted with the seasons. “So much of what they valued, we’d now discard,” Gray tells me morosely. “A lot of that knowledge has been lost along the way.”
The colorful feast that Gray helps us create seems like an homage to some of that wisdom. “There is an ancestral choir of whispers encouraging me to plant a variety of seeds, add a selection of spices, do everything with intention as I turn the soil, pick the seaweed, and stir the pot,” she says.
Together, we dine on platters of protein-rich nori tempura; sea lettuce salad and buchu honey dressing; pockets of alikreukel-stuffed kelp ravioli; and kelp ‘noodles’ swimming in a broth of seaweed, leeks, ginger, and soy. The centerpiece is undoubtedly the pot of mussels drenched in butter, herbs, coconut milk, and seasoned with yet more kelp, its glutamic acid—a natural MSG—providing the elusive fifth-flavor of umami. We finish with the poached fruits for dessert, served with a dollop of coconut cream.
The meal, as rooted as it was in Cape Town's landscape and human history, made me think of my own home in Los Angeles. What details—varieties of seaweed, rocks bursting with mussels, bulbs perfect for roasting—do I miss, when I look out at the sea? California's beaches, despite being oceans away from Cape Town, share many similar species of wild goods. We, too, have our own kelp forests, our own edible landscape—but I’ve looked past it. Seaweed blindness.
“Once we’ve experienced something, we can understand it better,” Gray tells me. There's wisdom embedded in every ecosystem, waiting to be observed, appreciated. “[Foraging] creates a sense of home. Even though you’re by yourself out in nature, you’re not alone.”
Originally Appeared on Condé Nast Traveler
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