How a seaweed empire became Argentina's Galapagos

Mark Stratton

February 23, 2022

Once a thriving seaweed farm on Patagonia’s Atlantic Coast, Bahia Bustamante was a ghost town by the 1990s. But now, the former owner’s grandson has transformed it into an eco-retreat and conservation project. Mark Stratton heads to Argentina to find out more.

There’s a briny smell of kelp in the air—I’m imagining the sweat and toil of halcyon days when Bahia Bustamante was the world’s largest seaweed harvesting operation. In 1954, one Lorenzo Soriano created a seaweed empire on the fringe of the remote Patagonian steppe on Argentina’s Atlantic coast.

“At its peak, 400 algueros (seaweed harvesters) were living here,” explains Matias, the grandson of Lorenzo Soriano. “It was a thriving community with a schoolroom and church. But by the time I inherited it in the late 1990s, it was a ghost town”.

He says his family called him crazy to even consider restoring the property. But like Matias, they had no idea what Bahia Bustamante would become: A lodge at the heart of a bay that the New York Times had once called… ‘Argentina’s Galapagos’.

A portrait of Matias wearing a plaid shirt and black glasses. He has a grey beard and grey hair. — Matias Soriano, the grandson of Lorenzo Soriano, inherited Bahia Bustamante in the late 1990s. Photo: Mark Stratton

We meet at Bustamante’s old general store. Matias wrestles with his posse of pet dogs while I’m distracted by two rheas (large flightless birds native to South America) crunching along the shingle beachfront.

There’s a set of red weighing scales on the counter where breakfast is now served to guests and around the walls are fading sepia photographs featuring tanned algueros pitchforking long rows of seaweed to dry in the sunshine.

“My grandfather came here out of necessity,” Matias continues. “After World War II, Argentina’s government pursued protectionism and closed our borders to international trade. He could not import the seaweed he needed for agar-agar, which he needed for a haircare product he manufactured, so he came here in his jeep after hearing of this place called ‘Rotten Bay’. It smelled bad because tonnes of seaweed washed up here. To him, he had discovered ‘green gold’”.

A red scale sits on a counter and shelves are stacked on the wall behind. — Top: The old storei is where breakfast is now served to guests; Middle: Two rheas walk along the beach; Bottom: For Matias’s grandfather Lorenzo, finding tonnes of washed-up seaweed was discovering ‘green gold’”. Photos: Mark Stratton

Two rheas, a flightless bird, walk along some rocks. — Top: The old storei is where breakfast is now served to guests; Middle: Two rheas walk along the beach; Bottom: For Matias’s grandfather Lorenzo, finding tonnes of washed-up seaweed was discovering ‘green gold’”. Photos: Mark Stratton

As Bahia Bustamante’s operation grew, his grandfather acquired three neighboring estancias (ranches) given over to sheep-grazing—the legacy of Welsh farmers who carved farms from the semi-arid steppe.

Much of the estancia landscape across this region is overgrazed and while Matias still maintains sheep, he carefully rotates his flocks—holistic management, he calls it—to be sensitive to the parched soils.

“Two big oil-spills offshore in 1982 and 1985 and the shrimp-fishing industry had a devastating impact on the seaweed beds. But in truth it was overharvested, and Bustamante was finished by 1995.”

- Matias Soriano

Around the property is a spiny carpet of lemon-yellow quilembay bushes and abundant birdlife. Cinnamon-coated guanacos (related to the llama) graze in peace, no longer hunted, and armadillos, much smaller than I imagined, scurry around, like prehistoric trilobites who have taken to land.

A rockpool filled with green seaweed and moss. — “They told me the offshore wildlife was special so I began taking my boat out to learn about it,” says Matias. “Eventually, we proposed it as an International Bird and Biodiversity Area because there are so many migratory species. Later it became part of a marine national park”. Photos: Mark Stratton

Guanacos stand on a dry area of land surrounded by shrubs. — “They told me the offshore wildlife was special so I began taking my boat out to learn about it,” says Matias. “Eventually, we proposed it as an International Bird and Biodiversity Area because there are so many migratory species. Later it became part of a marine national park”. Photos: Mark Stratton

The writing had been on the wall for seaweed production since the 1980s. “Two big oil-spills offshore in 1982 and 1985 and the shrimp-fishing industry had a devastating impact on the seaweed beds,” Matias tell me. “But in truth it was overharvested, and Bustamante was finished by 1995.

Returning from Buenos Aires, Matias was unsure what to make of the site, but set about renovating four sea-facing stone-and-wood cabins—in their heyday, they were the homes of the Bahia Bustamante’ management, including his grandfather.

His first travelers arrived in 2004, including visiting biologists from the World Conservation Society. “They told me the offshore wildlife was special so I began taking my boat out to learn about it,” says Matias. “Eventually, we proposed it as an International Bird and Biodiversity Area because there are so many migratory species. Later it became part of a marine national park”.

A white building with signs in front of it. — The main lodge at Bahia Bustamante: “A lodge at the heart of a bay that the New York Times had once called… ‘Argentina’s Galapagos’.” Photo: Mark Stratton

Bigger plans are afoot for this coastline. Traveling further up the coast a few days later, I would meet with Rewilding Argentina, an NGO funded by Tompkins Conservation.

This was established by the late Douglas Tompkins, the billionaire philanthropist and founder of North Face who has bequeathed national parks across Patagonia.

In royally blue sea, a Pretorian guard of young South American sea lions swim out to inspect us, their eyes wide with curiosity. Beyond them is the ruckus of their colony: the roars, barks, and groans of thick-necked bull sea lions, squaring up and fighting over harems of females like pub drunks who’ve left their brains in their beer.

Rewilding Argentina are building up Bahia Bustamante’s vision of conservation, tourism, and access to the estancias, and have a future ambition to create a vast new enlarged national park rebranded as Patagonia Azul.

Travelers dip their hands into a clear rockpool. — Top: A rockpool at Bahia Bustamante: Middle: Magellanic penguins congregate in huge nesting colonies along the coasts of Argentina, southern Chile and the Falkland Islands; Bottom: Although commercial hunting is banned, South American sea lions still remain at risk from loss of habitat and ocean pollution. Photos: Mark Stratton

A colony of imperial cormorants sit on a rock. — Top: A rockpool at Bahia Bustamante: Middle: Magellanic penguins congregate in huge nesting colonies along the coasts of Argentina, southern Chile and the Falkland Islands; Bottom: Although commercial hunting is banned, South American sea lions still remain at risk from loss of habitat and ocean pollution. Photos: Mark Stratton

Accessing the park’s future offshore riches takes planning. “Winds and tides rule our lives here,” says Matias, taking me out into Malaspina Cove. It’s perishingly hot.

We exit a narrow sinuous creek at high tide on his launch and head out among nine small islands of Jurassic-era limestone, desolate in appearance—yet all I can think of upon sighting an almost biblical abundance of animal life is the Galapagos.

In royally blue sea, a Pretorian guard of young South American sea lions swim out to inspect us, their eyes wide with curiosity. Beyond them is the ruckus of their colony: the roars, barks, and groans of thick-necked bull sea lions, squaring up and fighting over harems of females like pub drunks who’ve left their brains in their beer. The new-born pups meanwhile are whining and wriggling closer to their mothers.

A group of people get into a small boat in a narrow creek surrounded by green seaweed. — Rewilding Argentina are building up Bahia Bustamante’s vision of conservation, tourism, and access to the estancias, and have a future ambition to create a vast new enlarged national park rebranded as Patagonia Azul. Photo: Mark Stratton

Along the beach are less demonstrative Magellanic penguins, hundreds of them, by the water’s edge, fluffy chicks as big as their parents similarly pleading to be fed. Like synchronized swimmers, they airily rotate their heads in unison, watchful of predatory skua birds, who seek weaker chicks or the carrion of those already perished.

Above them, upon the island’s brow, are imperial cormorants forming a tight black-and-white knot, long necks wriggling like a Lernaean hydra. Endemic steamer ducks splash by and American oystercatchers squeak like children’s toys.

A tidal creek has dark green water. The shore is a miux of brown and a vibrant green. — Two oil-spills offshore in 1982 and 1985 and the shrimp-fishing industry had a devastating impact on the seaweed beds. “But in truth, it was overharvested, and Bustamante was finished by 1995,” says Matias Soriano. Photos: Mark Stratton

Low tide reveals rocks and water further away. — Two oil-spills offshore in 1982 and 1985 and the shrimp-fishing industry had a devastating impact on the seaweed beds. “But in truth, it was overharvested, and Bustamante was finished by 1995,” says Matias Soriano. Photos: Mark Stratton

“The wildlife feels safe from predators out here,” says Matias, passing around a box of homecooked seaweed bhajis. “And the cold upwelling provides many nutrients and fish, so the food source supports incredible diversity.”

Later that day on Cape Arritizabal, we explore intertidal rockpools teeming with seastars and sponges, and visit middens of fossilizing clamshells, eaten and discarded thousands of years ago, by the ancient indigenous people, the Tehuelches, driven from these lands by Argentina’s European arrivals. The Tehuelches once lived in the Patagonian plains from the Strait of Magellan to the Negro River.

A man looks at some big white bones. Someone else stands in the background looking on. — A guide looks at whale bones at Bahia Bustamante. “This is life and death at the margins of survival on the Patagonian steppe, amplified with visceral force,” writes Mark Stratton. Photo: Mark Stratton

At dusk, as the thermal wind transitions to numbing cold, I stroll down the shoreline from my cottage. The rheas are still pecking away at the shingle and an adult sperm whale, that died at sea, has washed up on the beach.

Giant petrels with scimitar-sharp bills and turkey vultures are tearing at the carcass and will, in time, leave the whale’s colossal vertebrae bleaching beneath the Patagonian sun.

This is life and death at the margins of survival on the Patagonian steppe, amplified with visceral force. The ghosts of the algueros were but a brief chapter in Bahia Bustamante’s ancient timeline, where the only constant has ever been, aquatic gold.

Mark Stratton

An award-winning journalist who's roamed the most obscure corners of the earth, Mark Stratton has written for Wanderlust, The Independent, Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, and can also be heard on BBC Radio 4.