It’s hard to imagine that the famed California coastline could still hold a “best-kept secret.” But beyond the scenic beaches and sand volleyball courts, there is a whole lot of what could very well become the Golden State’s next big thing: seaweed.

California is an agricultural powerhouse, serving up a third of the country’s vegetables and two-thirds of its fruits and nuts each year. But excitement is growing around the state’s potential for aquaculture as entrepreneurs look to put California seaweed on the international foodie map.

Tessa Emmer, Catherine O’Hare, and Avery Resor constitute the all-female braintrust behind Salt Point Seaweed, a fledgling Bay Area company that launched last June. They’ve been harvesting wild seaweed off the coast of Mendocino County, located a few hours north of San Francisco, for two years and selling it to chefs at local restaurants, seafood CSAs, and at retail. Now, they’re striving to become the first West Coast seaweed farming operation to establish an active, open-water farm.

The idea to launch a sustainable seaweed syndicate came to Emmer, O’Hare, and Resor after living in East Africa and witnessing the burgeoning role of seaweed in those communities—as local fishing stock dwindled, resourceful women had found a reliable replacement in seaweed. Seaweed grows rapidly and easily without help from external inputs. Emmer and Resor, who share a background in natural resource management, drew inspiration from a hardscrabble female aquafarming operation in Zanzibar.

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“There were so many women farmers using it as an alternative revenue model in declining fisheries environments,” says Emmer. “We started wondering why it wasn’t happening in California.”