8 Portrait
Maureen Galliou, seaweed as a family affair
Maureen Galliou, ar bezhin, un afer familh
Born in 2000, Maureen grew up in the world of seaweed. Her great-grandparents and grandparents were seaweed harvesters at Lilia. Her father Jacky and her two brothers, Mathis and Jonathan, skipper the three boats of the port of Koréjou, at Plouguerneau.
When she was very small, her greatest pleasure was going with her mother to watch the unloading, when her father came back into port after a tide. As a teenager, she joined the Plouguerneau sailing club partly to watch the family boat out on the water. Competitive sport would take her all the way to the 2018 windsurfing world championship, and would deepen her love of the sea.
She would have liked to be a seaweed harvester, but the work is very physical and seemed to be reserved for men. In the summer of 2020, however, backed by her mother, she dared to ask her father to let her dry seaweed the old way on the family’s drying fields.
That was the start of an adventure. Four years later, Maureen heads MG Algues, a company that dries, mills and sells seaweed from Plouguerneau all over the world.