Returning home from 21 years ago with a baby, unemployed and 1 bag of clothing to our name desperate for income. It was over a few beers with Simone’s Dad talking about how we could make some money to get our car registered that Paul's family had purchased for us so we could move to town to look for employment. We discussed how great nanny and other whanau had collected seaweed for income in the past and fortunately for us a tropical cyclone blew in that next day and it so happened Simone’s dad had a old truck that he gave us so we could go and collect seaweed from the beaches. Full of enthusiasm and motivation by the end of the storm we had nearly 20 bales full of seaweed ready for purchase. We headed to the local seaweed factory in Opotiki to sell our dried seaweed only to find out it wasn’t that simple times had changed you needed a beach cast permit to collect seaweed and you could only sell your seaweed to a LFR (Licence Fish Receiver).

We returned home conducting a lot of research to find out how we could obtain a licence and who we could legally sell it too. Tropical cyclones were rolling in regularly working long hours we were able to produce large quantities of seaweed that it became apparent why are we trying to make money to leave when we could stay at home and make a living raising our family at home like we wanted too. We grew from there and P&S Seaweed Harvesters was formed that was in 2003. We had created our own employment initiatives through the collection of wild harvest seaweeds and became the next generation sea weeders in our community.

P&S Seaweed Harvesters Logo Representation