Diving and Foraging for Wild Food in Cape Town’s False Bay

“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.