The Mother Of The Sea

Even if you have never eaten it, you will recognise sushi. There are Sushi restaurants all around the world and over 4000 in the US alone. The small cylinders of rice, wrapped in dark green seaweed are iconic. But did you know that the seaweed, nori, which is so ubiquitously used to make sushi, used to have the name ‘lucky’ grass, as it was so rare? Did you know that until an English scientist, Kathleen Drew-Baker, conducted her research, nori could not be successfully farmed? In Japan, this almost unknown English scientist is known as the ‘Mother Of The Sea.’

Kathleen Drew Baker was born into an ordinary family in Leigh, Lancashire on the 6th November 1901. Her family moved south, to Salisbury, where Kathleen attended Bishop Wordsworth School and was a model pupil. She won a County Major Scholarship to study botany, near where she was born, at the University of Manchester. She graduated with a first class honours degree in 1922, one of the first women ever to achieve a first class degree at Manchester University. She then began to study a masters degree, which she was awarded the following year.

She began working as a lecturer in Manchester’s botany department in 1922, where she remained for the rest of her life. Her ground breaking work led to her being awarded a Commonwealth Fellowship in 1925. Part of this Fellowship entailed her spending two years working at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley, Kathleen went on trips to Hawaii and other exotic locations, where she collected botanical specimens.

Kathleen’s devotion to her research is perhaps best demonstrated by her continued work for the university, as an unpaid research fellow, following her marriage to Henry Wright-Baker, in 1928. At the time, the university, as was common in many academic institutes, did not employ married women. If Kathleen wanted to continue her research (she was awarded a higher doctorate in 1939), then she would have to do it without pay.

It was during her time doing this unpaid research that Kathleen would make her greatest discovery, while studying a type of seaweed in Wales. Porphyra umbilicalis is a leafy, red seaweed that grows just off the Welsh coast. Colloquially known as laver, it’s a type of nori, which is harvested by the local population. In Wales, the seaweed is ground up and rolled in oatmeal to make laverbread, traditionally a staple of a fried Welsh breakfast.

In Japan, nori went by the nickname of ‘lucky’ or ‘gambler’s’ grass, due to the unpredictable nature of commercially farming the seaweed. With its strong, distinctive flavour, nori was vital for making sushi. Although it had been commercially harvested since the 17th century, by 1951 nori production in Japan had all but ceased. Growing it was proving increasingly difficult because nori has no seeds or seedlings. Nori is also prone to damage from both typhoons and pollution in coastal waters.

Back in Manchester, Kathleen Drew-Baker had made a crucial discovery. She found that during the early microscopic stage of the nori lifecycle, seashells could provide a host environment that would allow the red algae, or nori, to develop. Her paper on the subject was published in Nature in 1949.

Segawa Sokichi, of the Shimoda Marine Biological Station in Japan, was able to apply Kathleen’s findings to his worked on their nori beds. He built upon her work to put in place the industrial processes that would lead to a plentiful and predictable harvest of nori. Production of ‘lucky’ grass would no longer rely on chance.

Kathleen went on to publish 47 academic papers in total. She co-founded, with her friend and fellow scientist Margaret T. Martin, the British Phycological Society (phycology: the study of algae) and was elected as the first president of the Society. However, when Kathleen died on the 14th September 1957, she still didn’t know the full impact of her research.

The people of Japan, however, were determined to keep her legacy alive. They erected a memorial to Kathleen and gave her the title ‘Mother of the Sea’. Each year, on April 14, her work is celebrated at the ‘Drew Festival’. The celebrations takes place near the city of Uto, where festival attendees gather together at Kathleen’s memorial. In that place, overlooking the Ariake Sea, they bedeck the monument with garlands of flowers.

Kathleen’s children travelled to Japan, years later, to witness first-hand the festival and the reverence in which their mother is held. The siblings were mobbed by enthusiastic TV cameras and photographers and treated like celebrities.

Thanks to Kathleen Drew-Baker and her study of Welsh seaweed, millions of people worldwide have nori to wrap around their sushi. But, as her son John admitted, “I don’t think she’d like sushi. She wasn’t very adventurous when it came to food!”