About Scandsea
Scandsea was born from a love of the sea — and a conviction that what grows in it deserves a place on our plates.
We are Katerina and Johan Bengtsson, two marine biologists and professional divers based on the Swedish west coast. Together we founded Scandsea with a simple idea: to bring the wild, nutritious seaweeds of Bohuslän directly from the water to your table, with complete transparency about how it is harvested and why it is exceptional.
🧬 Katerina Bengtsson Kupcik
Throughout my career I have worked with the sea — as a diver and marine biologist on coral reef projects in Australia and Indonesia, as a dive centre manager, and as an underwater photographer in the Lembeh Strait, Indonesia. After moving to the Swedish west coast, seaweed became my greatest passion underwater.
Seeing how marine ecosystems around the world are deteriorating, seaweed gives me real hope. We can enjoy what the ocean has to offer without destroying it. Seaweed combines my love of diving, nature and learning new skills with my vision of a sustainable future — one in which seaweed reclaims its rightful place as an important, nutritious food source that many of us have easy access to.
Seaweed is also a remarkable ingredient for skin. All our products are 100% natural. I love sharing my knowledge of seaweed and revealing the wonderful world beneath the surface through photography, lectures and our courses.
🍳 Johan Bengtsson
I am passionate about diving and cooking — and the best I know is combining the two. I pick much of my own food from the sea, the forest and the shoreline. Already as a young teenager I was collecting mussels, clams and sea urchins on dives and cooking them afterwards. Discovering seaweed made it only natural to start incorporating it into my cooking.
Seaweed is incredibly versatile, with a wide range of flavours and textures that reward exploration in the kitchen. I am a trained military diver, professional diver, chef and marine biologist.
🤿 How We Harvest
Every piece of seaweed in a Scandsea product has been touched by human hands — usually ours.
We harvest primarily by scuba diving in drysuits. The waters along the Bohuslän coast are cold — and cold water means the best quality seaweed. We dive through the winter and spring, and continue until the water temperature reaches 15°C. At that point we stop. Above 15°C, the seaweed begins to change character as the sea warms, and we believe it belongs to the sea creatures at that time of year rather than to us. The natural rhythm of the season sets our harvest calendar.
Descending into these clear, cold waters, we select mature fronds by hand and bring them carefully to the surface. Nothing is dredged, scraped or machine-harvested. We can be completely selective about what we take — and leave the rest undisturbed.
For intertidal species — like Blåstång, Sågtång and Ulva — that grow in the zone between high and low tide, we harvest by hand at low tide, cutting only the outer growth and never the holdfast, so the plant continues to grow. In both cases, we never take more than 10–20% of any given stand. The seaweed regrows completely within a season.
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🚤 Our Boat & Coastline
Our boat is our workplace, our laboratory and our second home. From it we navigate the skerries and archipelagos of Bohuslän, reading the tides and weather, scouting new beds and returning to the places we know intimately.
We harvest where the Skagerrak and the Kattegat meet — one of the most dynamic and nutrient-rich stretches of water in northern Europe. Here, powerful Atlantic currents from the west create conditions that are exceptionally productive for seaweed and marine life. The constant water exchange keeps the beds clean and well-oxygenated. We know exactly which spots produce the finest Sockertång in early summer, where the Fingertång grows thickest, where the Ulva catches the best light. That knowledge — built dive by dive over many years — is what makes our products different from anything you could buy from a commercial distributor.
☀️ Drying & Processing
After harvesting, the seaweed is washed gently in seawater — never in fresh water. Fresh water would strip away the natural mineral content that makes wild seaweed so nutritionally exceptional. No preservatives, bleaching agents or processing aids of any kind are used.
The seaweed is then dried within 24–48 hours of harvest, depending on the species and its thickness. Drying at low temperature preserves the maximum nutritional value and flavour. What goes into the bag is exactly what came out of the sea: pure, wild seaweed from Bohuslän.
🦭 Life Under the Surface
We dive all year round, but there is a particular magic to the weeks around late April and May. As the water begins to warm slightly after winter, the animals start to migrate up to the shallows.
Baby lumpfish appear clinging to the kelp fronds, barely the size of a thumb, round and otherworldly. Shoals of herring catch the light as they turn together. Crabs and other crustaceans pick their way over the rock below. Different fish species that spent the winter in deeper water begin to move back in, and the whole seabed feels suddenly busy again after the quiet of the cold season.
Before the summer boats arrive and the bays fill with traffic, there are seals. They haul themselves onto the skerries to soak in the early spring sun, completely unbothered by our boat, sometimes curious, sometimes indifferent.
 Seals on the skerries before the summer boats arrive |
 The swan who returns to nest at our dive site every year 🦢 |
And then there is the swan. At one of our regular dive sites, a swan returns every year to nest. We do not know if it is the same bird — we like to think it is. She chooses the same sheltered spot each spring, builds her nest, and sits. We are careful, every single time, not to disturb her. We move quietly, we give her space, and we watch from a distance as she guards her eggs. Every year we hope she will be back. Every year we hope she manages to bring up her chicks.
Moments like these are why we dive. And why we care so much about the health of these waters.
💛 Why We Do This
We started Scandsea because we believe seaweed belongs in the Scandinavian food culture — and because we saw, diving every week, just how extraordinary the marine environment of Bohuslän is.
Seaweed is not a trend for us. It is what we see every time we put on a mask and go below the surface. It is what feeds the fish, shelters the crabs, oxygenates the water. It has been eaten along this coastline for thousands of years. We are simply bringing it back.
We also believe that people deserve to know exactly where their food comes from — who harvested it, when, and how. That is why we do not use distributors or middlemen. When you buy from Scandsea, you are buying directly from the people who went into the water.
📬 Contact
Restaurant deliveries, wholesale & resale: info@scandsea.se
Courses, lectures & cooking workshops: info@scandsea.se