Geoducks. Sea urchins. Sea cucumbers. These “dive seafoods” are some of B.C.’s most prized culinary products, yet few of us have ever even tasted them.

Partly that’s because they are also some of our most, as Prince William memorably noted, “presentationally challenged” foodstuffs.

“People are afraid of funny-looking things,” says chef Dez Lo, the local-seafood ambassador who was runner-up on Top Chef Canada season 10.

But mostly it’s because, for decades, about 95 per cent of the annual harvest has been shipped overseas, almost all of it to China, leaving very little for local consumers to enjoy.

Not any more.

“We randomly woke up one day in March and China had launched 25 per cent tariffs,” says Katie Lindsay, marketing manager of the Underwater Harvesters Association, which represe

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