MARGO PFEIFF

Special to The Globe and Mail

April 25, 2009

When I reach into Sooke Harbour and scoop up handfuls of seaweed, it looks, well, kind of yucky. It’s a dull brown, for starters. Then there’s that slimy sheen.

But that’s not how Diane Bernard sees it. “You are looking at one great big, wild, exotic garden,” she tells me as she spreads her arms to encompass a giant swath of seaweed on the southern coastline of Vancouver Island.

The woman known as the Seaweed Lady should certainly know. Along with seven helpers, she hand-picks 300 varieties of the stuff – from neon-green sea lettuce to the brown feather-boa of a plant called egregia – for her company, SeaFlora.

And she doesn’t just sell her underwater crop for sushi rolls. Not only are a broad array of British Columbia’s top chefs blanching, pickling and roasting veggies fresh from the surf, spas are discovering that they make dandy body wraps and can do wonders when slathered on weary skin.