How We Source Marine Lipid Diversity
By Kiran Dayaram
When we began exploring the idea of rebuilding lipid diversity in modern nutrition, the question quickly became very practical:
Where do these lipids actually come from?
For us, the answer starts in the ocean.
More specifically, it starts in the cold coastal waters of the South Island of New Zealand.
New Zealand sits at the meeting point of powerful ocean systems — the Southern Ocean, deep coastal currents, and nutrient-rich waters that support a remarkable diversity of marine life. These ecosystems have sustained coastal communities for centuries and continue to support one of the most carefully managed fisheries sectors in the world.
It is in these waters that we source the marine organisms that form the foundation of our work.
The first of these is pāua, New Zealand’s wild abalone.
Pāua has long been valued in New Zealand, both culturally and nutritionally. Within Māori culture it is considered a taonga — a treasured resource of the ocean. For generations it has been gathered along the coastline as a traditional food, and today it remains one of the most iconic species of New Zealand’s marine environment.
From a scientific perspective, pāua is also something else: a lipid powerhouse.
Like many marine invertebrates, pāua contains a complex lipid profile shaped by the marine ecosystems it inhabits — a diverse mixture of fatty acids and lipid classes produced through its diet of marine algae and its interaction with the ocean environment. This complexity is one of the reasons we became interested in it as a starting point for exploring marine lipid diversity.
But sourcing pāua is very different from sourcing most modern food ingredients.
New Zealand’s pāua fishery is tightly regulated under a national quota management system designed to protect the long-term sustainability of the species. Harvest levels are carefully controlled, and the methods used to collect pāua are intentionally limited.
Divers are not permitted to harvest pāua using bottled air.
Instead, they free dive.
This means each pāua is collected by hand, one at a time, from the rocks below the surface. Divers slip into cold southern waters, often from small boats along remote stretches of coastline, and descend beneath the waves to gather them directly from the seabed.
It is physically demanding work that requires skill, patience, and deep familiarity with the ocean.
Through our team and partners, we have more than five decades of experience working within the New Zealand fisheries sector, and we work directly with divers who harvest in some of the most pristine coastal environments in the country — from Banks Peninsula through the deep southern waters of Fiordland and around Stewart Island.
These are not anonymous supply chains.
They are relationships with people who know the ocean intimately.
When you watch these divers preparing to enter the water — joking on the deck, diving from the boat, sometimes even flipping backwards into the sea — you quickly realize this is more than a job. It is a way of life connected to the rhythms of the ocean.
And it is also a reminder of something important.
Pāua is not an industrial commodity.
It is a rare resource.
To produce a single 250 mg softgel of pāua oil requires roughly one hundred pāua. That reality places a natural limit on scale, but it also reinforces something we believe strongly: when working with marine ecosystems, respect for the resource must always come first.
Pāua is where our work begins.
But it is not where it ends.
As we continue to explore marine lipid diversity, we are also studying other marine organisms that have long been part of ocean ecosystems and traditional food systems. Species such as kina (New Zealand sea urchin), starfish, and sea cucumber each possess their own distinctive lipid compositions shaped by the marine environments they inhabit.
Over time, we believe these organisms may help contribute to a broader marine lipid spectrum.
Our long-term goal is not simply to produce a single ingredient.
It is to develop a marine lipid protocol — a system designed to reintroduce a broader diversity of marine-derived lipids into modern nutrition.
That journey begins with the ocean, with the divers who harvest its resources responsibly, and with the remarkable marine organisms that have evolved within these ecosystems over millions of years.
For us, marine lipid diversity is not an abstract scientific concept.
It is something that starts in cold southern water, with a diver descending below the surface, reaching down to the rocks, and lifting a single pāua from the sea.