Mara Man. Who is he? A superhero? Merman? Well for Mara he could well be all of these. Mara Man is a force of nature with an irrepressible love of sea air, never without his shaker of Mara seaweed to sprinkle on his food.

His name is Rory MacPhee; his sturdy legs and craggy, silver speckled beard are a buffer against the strong winds and cold waters which daily bombard him on the Scottish coastal lines.

As Mara’s chief seaweed harvester, clad in a woolly hat and a huge pair of waders and armed with a basket and a pair of scissors, he wades knee deep in the coldest, cleanest waters of Scotland to pick Kombu and dark redDulse at the lower reaches of the tide, and scrambles along rocks to collect our precious Pepper Dulse.

The harvesting is ethically and environmentally friendly ’like pruning bushes’ and follows a time-honoured crofting tradition, harvesting seasonally at the lowest monthly tides during the new and full moon.

After hauling in his crop of seaweed for the day Mara Man hangs it up to air dry, which takes three to four hours when the sun and wind are out . He then grinds the seaweed down to capture it’s intense flavours, freshness and nutritional benefits.

100% Seaweed, 100% Mara Man