Yayasan Rumput Laut Indonesia (YRLI)

(NaturalNews) Mike: Many of you reading this may have heard about some of the benefits of plants from the ocean and, in particular, brown seaweed. You may have seen some of the recent news stories about the specific constituents of brown seaweed helping get rid of excess body fat, or you may have read about them helping to eliminate radiation poisoning from the body, or perhaps even about some of the anti-cancer effects of various seaweeds. Many of you are probably also familiar with the greatly enhanced longevity of the Japanese people, who probably eat more seaweed than any other culture in the world.

Today we’re going to be talking about one specific type of seaweed, brown seaweed, and the extract form available in a product called Modifilan, and we’re going to be talking to Sergei Zimin, owner of Pacific Standard Distributors Inc., which currently produces and sells Modifilan. So thanks for joining me today, Sergei.

Sergei: Thank you for making this happen.

Mike: How long has your company been producing this product, and where does your brown seaweed actually come from? Is it ocean grown or farm grown?

Sergei: The raw material we make our extract from comes from Russian waters; it’s actually a far eastern part of Russia, off the Asiatic part of the Siberian continent, near the Kuril Islands between Japan and Kamchatka. People may also know these islands by their controversial political geography, which makes Japan claim this territory as their own northern territories while Russia — which actually took those islands after the Second World War — claims them as well.

Our kombu — the common name of this variety of brown seaweed — is not farmed, and it’s not the type of sea plant that is planted or gathered. It’s in the middle of the ocean, about 600 miles away from the closest commercial port. The island around which we get this particular raw material is called Urup.

Mike: How do you harvest this? Is this off of a boat, or do you have divers?

Sergei: A boat is involved, but it’s a little tugboat from which we gather bunches of leaves hand-cut by divers and tow them to shore. The kombu leaves are huge. It’s the largest possible type of Laminaria found in a natural habitat.

In order to make our product extract, you have to have a very large, elephant-type of leaf so you have lots of the gooey inside parts to squeeze out. It’s like aloe vera. When you cut it in half, you can even see some of the polysaccharide — that gooey substance inside the leaf.

So the divers cut them in shallow waters, probably not more than 15 meters deep — which is what, like 45 feet deep — usually no deeper. They put several leaves in a bunch, tie them with a rope, and the little boat brings them onshore. We gather raw material for our product twice a year.

The good thing about collecting this way — when we do it by hand — is that when you cut it with a knife, you come to the same spot next year and the plant will have mushroomed. You’ll see four leaves growing from exactly the spot where you got only one before. But if you do it by dragging — like they do it in the northeast states, Ireland or Japan — you have to look for these plants somewhere else. It’s not going to be sitting in the same spot. It’s not going to be in the same bay.

So in our case, when we harvested our first batch back in 1997, we didn’t have enough funds, force, and money to hire any dragger or troller to get it. So we had to use divers. It turned out to be the best investment in our business, because later, we were told that the way we do it helps our business actually stay in business. We’re not afraid of losing the raw material because the more product we cut, the more raw material we can expect to see next year if we come to the same spot.

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/024400.html

Posted on April 10th, 2009 under English Articles, Seaweed. Tags: brown seaweed, extract, kombu, laminaria, Seaweed. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.