The Coastal Forager

There’s a moment, just as the tide turns, when the coastline shifts from somewhere we walk past to somewhere we can truly read. If you’ve ever found yourself slowing down to peer into rockpools or run a hand through the salt-tough greens at the edge of a path, you’ll already know the feeling. The Coastal Forager by Mark Williams is a brilliant companion for exactly that instinct—grounded, practical, and full of the kind of knowledge that helps you see what’s been there all along.

What makes the coast such a good place to begin (or deepen) your foraging is its generosity. The plants are distinctive, the seaweeds abundant, and the rewards immediate once you know what you’re looking at. This book does a fine job of guiding you through it all—sand, shingle, cliffs and salt marsh—without overcomplicating things, just quietly building your confidence and sharpening your eye for the edible landscape around you.

The Coastal Forager by Mark Williams

Foraging is in our DNA and, while it may have become hidden from many of us, buried under a few thousand years of agriculture, it is always ready to emerge if we allow it. For me, it appeared when I became fascinated with wild mushrooms in my teens, and slowly taught myself which to eat and which to avoid. If fungi foraging is at the deep end of finding tasty things from the wild, then coastal foraging is the shallow end – there are no troublingly poisonous seaweeds in UK waters, and succulent coastal plants tend to be as distinctive as they are nourishing. If you are new to the world of wild food, then the shore is a great place to gather tasty food with confidence.

‘When the tide is out, the table is set’ is a saying originating from the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest coast of Alaska and Canada, but it applies equally to most coastal regions. The UK is particularly blessed with a groaning maritime table that surpasses even the richest riverbanks or most fecund forests in both its diversity of edible species and the nutritional potential of what grows there. 

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors knew this well, choosing to spend large portions of their year by the sea. Preserved piles of discarded shells many metres deep (known to archaeologists as shell middens) show us that seasonal gorging and preservation of shellfish such as mussels and oysters was commonplace.

Yet these remains tell only a small part of the story: in Northern climes the coast was the only place where large nutrient-rich wild vegetables were abundant and easily harvested, but their consumption left no trace. Many of the vegetables that we now cultivate still grow free and wild in coastal habitats. Sea beet, for example, is a wild ancestor of sugar beet, beetroot and chard and is common around much of the UK coast.

Sea beet (Beta vulgaris subsp. maritima) grows lush green spinach-like leaves on windswept beaches.

Cultivation hasn’t always improved on the flavour or nutritional value of wild plants, but merely made them easier to grow in straight lines or away from the sea. I once rescued some sea beet plants that had been unceremoniously dumped on the coast road by a storm and planted them in my garden. They took well enough to their new domestic setting and sprouted the following year, but their leaves – so glossy and succulent in their coastal home – were sad, flimsy and tasteless by comparison. Meanwhile, the storm-tossed wild colonies grew back even stronger, and I continued to thin them rather than harvest the domesticated weaklings in my garden.

Other succulent coastal plants are less familiar, but equally nourishing. Take sea sandwort for example – a diminutive little plant that forms dense carpets just above the high spring tide line on rocky, shingly and sandy beaches. Closer inspection reveals thousands of juicy little shoots, miracles of resilience and ingenuity, able to withstand regular immersion by the sea, coastal exposure and the ever-changing nature of their coastal home. With their perfect double symmetry, they are also rather beautiful and play an important role in stabilising sand and shingle, allowing other coastal plants to colonise the foreshore. The shoots can be thinned out with a knife, causing minimal inconvenience to the plant, leaving you with a crisp and juicy harvest that, after thorough rinsing to divest it of sand, can be steamed and eaten like mange-tout, tossed in salads or stir-fries, pickled or even used as a glamorous garnish in a G&T. A word of caution though – enjoy them in spring as their mild flavour turns bitter as they flower in summer.

Sea sandwort (Honckenya peploides) – delicious fresh, cooked  or pickled, provided you harvest it in spring.  

Seaweeds – which include the ancestors of all our terrestrial plants – are an even richer and more reliable source of nutrition, but suffer from a bit of an image problem around the North Atlantic. Disliked as a stinky, slip-hazard on the beach, or for its slithery groping of swimmers, even its name – sea-weed – dismisses it as a nuisance. Part of the problem is that most casual coast users only experience seaweed when it is either washed up dead, or lying asleep waiting for the sea’s return. We probably wouldn’t feel so fond of our meadows and forests if they laid prostrate and impenetrable every time we visited them.  Another all-too-current issue is the pollution of our seas, and The Coastal Forager includes an in-depth guide on how to evaluate water quality and avoid risks while coastal foraging.

The best way to fully appreciate seaweed is to meet it in its own world, underwater. Through a snorkelling mask, those sorry strandings that hold their breath on the beach at low tide, grow vibrant and vivacious, beckoning sunlight, rejoicing in currents, and every bit as animated as a forest in full leaf on a breezy day.

Marine forests are just as complex and diverse as those made by their plant descendants on dry land. From tiny moss-like growths on rocks through a complex understory to a broad treelike canopy, seaweeds are food, home and nursery to a wealth of aquatic animals. They are also good at sucking up carbon dioxide (though perhaps not so good at sequestering it for long periods), and help dissipate the destructive action of waves. 

Foraging is a wonderful and rewarding way of entering into a wider appreciation of this world. The very act of searching for seaweeds nourishes our souls as much as our bodies by leading us to one of the last accessible truly wide places – the intertidal zone, where beauty and treasure cling to every rock.

Recently seaweed has found new interest from high-end chefs, inspired by Japanese cuisine, its versatility and downright deliciousness.

Recipe: Pickled dulse paste

This is an umami-packed condiment that is great in sandwiches, smeared on burgers, or as an accompaniment to meat, fish, shellfish or vegetables. The same treatment also works for sea lettuce. 

Pack a clean jar with roughly chopped dried dulse.

Top up the jar with mix made of 3 parts cider vinegar, 2 parts water, 1 part sugar – you can include some herbs and spices too if you like.

Leave for a week in the fridge. 

The dulse will rehydrate into a delicious paste that will keep for months in the fridge.

Oysters with pickled dulse

Like all good foods, the gastronomy of seaweeds is a direct product of their natural habitat. Slippery compounds help them slide through crashing waves without being smashed to pieces. Two of these compounds are of particular interest to humans: glutamates give seaweeds their prized deeply savoury umami properties, so beloved in Japanese cuisine, while alginates can be used to thicken and set recipes, slow down digestion (which helps us to better absorb our food), or as skin moisturizer. 

Ireland still has a few traditional seaweed bath houses and I was lucky to visit Kilcullen seaweed baths at Enniscrone, co Sligo with my Irish wife and mother-in law a few years back. As well as the moisturising qualities, many of the rich cocktail of minerals (most notably iodine, which is helpful for regulating the thyroid gland) contained in seaweeds (primarily serrated wrack was used) are absorbed through the skin, and plenty of people swear by it. Certainly the ladies emerged glowing and enthusiastic, but I confess, as someone who prioritises my belly over my looks, I was more excited by the copious amounts of super-delicious Dumont’s tubular weed growing in thick rosettes on the nearby shore. This is one of a number of smaller seaweeds that deter grazing aquatic molluscs by producing compounds with incredible truffle-like flavours that leave gourmets chortling with joy. As with many seaweeds, a leap of faith is required, as it looks like no more than straggly brown bootlaces in sheltered rockpools. But the merest nibble never fails to leave folk on my seaweed forays gobsmacked by its complex, truffly, savoury aromatics. I like to dust handfuls of it in flour and fry them into crispy, salty, uber-umami snacks.

Many seaweeds are nutritional powerhouses, capturing and concentrating minerals from ocean currents. This isn’t to say that they are all worth eating: the challenge for seaweed foragers is in locating the choice species and knowing how to use them.  In The Coastal Forager I explore the twenty-five most rewarding and accessible seaweeds, how to legally, sustainably and considerately harvest them, and what to do with them once you get them home, whether it’s preserving them for future use, or cooking with them right away.

The gastronomic rewards of shellfish are more widely appreciated with many commanding a high price in shops and restaurants, despite growing in profusion around our coasts. I suspect the main reason they aren’t foraged more widely is nervousness about the cleanliness of the sea and their overall condition. With a little care and consideration, these obstacles are easily overcome and in The Coastal Forager I seek to reawaken interest in some of the traditionally less esteemed species such as winkles and limpets – both deeply delicious if you know how to harvest and prepare them. 

No wonder our ancestors spent long parts of their foraging year near the sea – it is the origin of life on earth, and continues to sustain us in innumerable ways. It is one of the last truly wild places on earth that we can access with ease. Beyond its many gastronomic delights, this is what makes foraging there most magical. By attuning ourselves to it, we can rediscover our place within the natural order of things. 

The Coastal Forager includes a deep dive into how to safely harvest and use 20 common types of shellfish.

The Coastal Forager is broken down into different coastal habitats, with detailed ecological information on over 80 species.

The book is available from all good bookshops and online outlets.  If you wish to support the author, Mark is supplying signed copies direct, and for Forage London readers only,  if you buy directly from him and write “FORAGE LONDON OFFER” in the order, your book will come with a free access code to view  his all-singing, all-dancing seaweed webinar, which usually retails for £15. (Offer ends 30th April 2026)

Order a signed copy with free seaweed webinar direct from the author: https://gallowaywildfoods.com/product/the-coastal-forager-buy-the-book/

Free seaweed webinar preview: https://gallowaywildfoods.com/product/recorded-webinar-a-foragers-guide-to-seaweeds/