Deep Sea Diary: Our Process

From ocean to table

Simple, natural food for the masses

We believe that in order to be kind to ourselves we need to be kind to nature. That's why we've spent years perfecting our process.

‍Our operations span the entire western seaboard of North America. We first identify suitable healthy whales during their annual migration from the feeding grounds in the arctic to their calving grounds in Mexico. We interact with whales on boats staffed with a team of marine biologists and research scientists from partner universities.

Over the course of their migration down the coast the whales become habituated to our boats and learn to rest in a semi-submersible harness where we ensure their comfort and safety. This step is crucial as it ensures the whales are comfortable and at ease with our equipment during the subsequent milk collection process.

Every interaction with these whales is an opportunity for our team to check in on the whales. Regular blood samples are taken to ensure that our whales are in peak physical health; only the healthiest and heartiest whales are selected for milking.

We're guided by our ethics. We never use hormones to promote milk letdown.

Milking takes place in the shallow warm lagoons of the Sea of Cortez. Our trained divers ensure the process smooth, efficient and stress-free for them. It's essential that we leave behind enough milk the mothers' calves, and we perform regular health checkups to ensure they're developing well.

After a few weeks the milk collection process is complete. We transfer the freshly collected milk to our onshore facilities where we begin the cheesemaking process.

At Deep Sea Dairy we make our cheeses with simple ingredients and a traditional process.

Whale milk is over 50% fat by volume – compared to 3-4% for cows – which means we rely heavily on fat skimming to make our cheeses. Only our soft ripened farmstyle cheese is made without any skimming.

Our milk is so rich that we've had to rethink many aspects of cheesemaking from the ground up. However, wherever we can, we aim to preserve our traditional methods. And that’s because we believe the old ways are the right ways. Just so long as they’re not ruining the planet!

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