Gerry Talty is the Baron of Seaweed.
His Barony runs on the foreshore of County Clare, in Caherush, in the west of the county, with Loop Head to the south and the Cliffs of Moher to the north.
Here is where he has followed three generations of his family, who have minded the coastline with care and attention. He is custodian of these rocks, but also the successor to his father, Michael, and proposer for the next generation, for his son Evan and daughters Alisha, Orla and Emma work with him and his wife, Eileen.
Gathering seaweed is hard work, and has always been hard work, throughout the centuries when seaweed had enormous value, as medicine, as fertiliser, as food. It is thanks to people like Mr Talty that seaweeds have become popular again, for he has a way of making seaweeds seem not just logical, but essential.
It might be that voice of his that is so persuasive, because he possesses the sort of rich baritone that, if you were lucky, you might hear singing an old Percy French song in a bar. But equally it is the image of Mr Talty, either on the foreshore amidst the rocks or waist-deep in the waves, gathering and hauling, sorting and drying, that gives his Wild Irish Sea Veg products so much value. Few other foods require you to engage so directly with mother nature, in all her caprices, as the gathering of seaweeds. You must read every signal – wind, wave, the pull of the moon, the time of the year, the temperature of the water – and you need to understand things culturally, as well as scientifically. Mr Talty is steeped in the culture of gathering wild seaweeds.