'Mother of the Sea' Kathleen Drew-Baker, the unsung hero of seaweed
Every year on the 14th of April, in a quiet coastal town in Japan, a festival is held to celebrate a woman known locally as the ‘Mother of the Sea’, a little-known British scientist who didn't even set foot in the country she went on to be so celebrated in.
Kathleen Drew-Baker’s work, which she carried out along the shores of North Wales in the 1940s, changed the course of Japanese nori production forever. By carefully studying the life cycle of edible seaweed, she unlocked a mystery that had long frustrated growers, how to reliably cultivate nori at scale. What had once been an unpredictable harvest, often believed to be down to luck, became a sustainable and dependable crop.
Drew-Baker’s research focused on a red alga, Porphyra umbilicalis, known locally in Wales as Laver. A staple of traditional Welsh food, this seaweed has been gathered and eaten for centuries, often cooked into the rich, savoury laverbread. But this nori’s life cycle was far from simple. What growers could see in the rock pools of the North Wales coast was only one stage of a more complex, hidden existence.
In revealing that Porphyra had a previously unknown phase growing not in open water but within the shells of molluscs, Drew-Baker provided the missing link. Japanese scientists and farmers were able to replicate this process, seeding oyster shells to cultivate nori with a welcome consistency. The knowledge changed nori cultivation forever.
Today, in the city of Uto, Japan, a shrine stands in her honour. Each year, offerings are made, and thanks are given to the “Mother of the Sea”. Here on Anglesey, surrounded by the same tidal forces and seaweed-rich waters that shaped Drew-Baker’s work, we’ll be celebrating this unsung resource, seaweed in our very own Seaweed Festival.
As a part of the festival, you can learn all about Kathleen Drew-Baker with local expert Dani Robertson while bathing in all the goodness that seaweed has to offer in one of our Wild Môn Seaweed Baths. Find tickets here.
