Switching industry can be tough enough, but when that new place of work sits submerged under sea water then it’s extra challenging. But 33-year-old Lotta Klemming hasn’t let that stop her, leaving the designer world for a diving suit…
The rocky Swedish west coast is littered with quaint fishing villages and charming seaside towns along the picturesque shores. But the real gems of the coast are found below the surface: the waters here are abundant with wild oysters of the highest quality, and for diver Lotta Klemming, picking up these pearls has become a life support mechanism in ways more than one.
”It’s a task that is mentally fulfilling for me. If I’m sick and can’t go out diving for a week, I get depressed,” she says. Klemming roams the waters around Grebbestad, where she picks up oysters for Klemmings Ostron, the family business founded some 30 years ago by her father and uncle.
But things haven't always been this way. Before taking a deep dive into the world of oysters, 33-year-old Klemming was well on her way with a career in the fashion industry. Starting as a sales advisor, she worked her way up in one of the world’s biggest brands, helping them set up new stores around the world. After a few years however, she traded in designer looks for a diving suit, turning her back on fast fashion in favour of the west Swedish seas.
Photo: Olivia Thorden Rubie.
“I was not developing, I felt suppressed and not free,” says Klemming of the work culture at her fashion job. “Being stuck indoors is not healthy. And there was this harsh schoolyard mentality with rumours and a constant pressure to be in a new outfit every day. In the end, it made me very depressed.”
So she quit, and announced to her father that she was coming home to join the family business, thus becoming Sweden’s only female oyster diver. Going out on the ocean with her father since childhood, she knew that diving for oysters is not a job for anyone. Wild oysters are best in the colder months of the year, from October to April, which is also when the weather conditions on the west coast are at their roughest.
But Lotta Klemming soon found that being out on the sea, alone on her small boat, picking up gold from the seabed, is where she finds real inner peace.
Photo: Olivia Thorden Rubie.
“I will keep doing this for as long as I’m physically able to,” says Klemming, who underlines that diving for oysters at the heart of winter is no joke. “When I go alone, and the weather is rough, it’s on the edge of being dangerous. But in the end, it gives me so much energy. It makes me feel strong.”
The oysters found here are indigenous Ostrea edulis, also known as flat oyster, but she also picks up the Crassostrea gigas, also known as Pacific oysters, an invasive species originating from Japan. The gigas is the same species as the more famous French varieties that are found and cultivated in the estuaries and shores of Normandy. However, according to Klemming, the taste of the wild Swedish oyster is vastly superior to that of its farmed French counterpart.
Photo: Olivia Thorden Rubie.
“The taste is so close to the edulis, but gigas are much cheaper,” she explains. “Generally, Sweden is a bit of a latecomer when it comes to oyster knowledge. So many restaurants still order the cheapest French ones, which is silly when we have local ones just lying there.
“We should eat local oysters the same way we eat local meat and vegetables,” Klemming continues.
And when Swedish oysters do become fashionable, we know just who to call.