When Ash Sutton realised the seaweed growing on his farm off the West Australian coast had a similar texture to lolly snakes, he started thinking about his next business move.
"It's such a cool-looking product. I thought I won't refine it, I won't process it, but wouldn't it be good if that actually tasted like a lolly," he said.
It's been four years and taken "a lot of chequebooks" but he is about to launch two seaweed-based products as alternatives to lollies and jerky.
The process of transforming the red spinosum into edible products is a closely kept secret.
Mr Sutton says the products contain "nothing artificial" and are sweetened with honey collected from his farm at Greenough, just south of Geraldton.
"It's straight from pretty much the ocean in the mouth," he said.
"It's gone through rigorous shelf-life tests ... government red tape has been hard work, but [with] persistence ... it's very exciting to be able to get it to the consumer."
Mr Sutton's seaweed farm sits in the southern group at the Abrolhos Islands, a rugged windswept coral archipelago, 60 kilometres off the coast from Geraldton.
Howling winds and swell have made for a difficult farming journey to find the balance between the seaweed getting enough sunlight and shelter from the strong ocean currents.
"You see the cold fronts arriving and you come out the next week and all your stuff is spread out off the lines. I've had to move my location a couple of times because of the weather," he said.
But the isolation of the Abrolhos makes the water pristine, and ideal for seaweed production.
Return to the islands
Mr Sutton lived in Asia for 10 years where he noticed "seaweed was just about on every menu and a normal part of life". When he returned to Australia he decided to try his hand at seaweed farming.
It was a homecoming, after spending his earlier years working in the commercial fishing industry around the Abrolhos Islands.
"I thought, well, buggered if I'm going to go commercial fishing. I still love to work on the ocean and I'd love to do a sustainable business for the environment and the ocean," he said.
After obtaining a permit to capture 50 kilograms of wild seaweed stock and he began his farming operation.
"It's like a big underwater garden and after four years of diving and looking at seaweed, you sort of work out, hang on a minute, it's not growing so good here and it only works under that amount of light and the amount of coral," he said.
"After it grows out to a certain size, which is about three months, I'll come along and harvest the cuttings, and it'll still keep growing.
"So it's really sustainable. It's like you don't touch the environment ever again."
