Welcome to Michael Guiry's Seaweed Site

This site is a source of general information on all aspects of seaweeds. Seaweeds are marine algae: saltwater-dwelling, simple organisms that fall into the rather outdated category of "plants". Most of them are the green (about 1200 species), brown (about 1750 species) or red (about 6000 species) kinds illustrated on this page, and most are attached by holdfasts, which just have an anchorage function, although a particularly efficient one. Most people know two general cateogories of seaweeds: wracks (members of the brown algal order Fucales such as Fucus) and kelps (members of the brown algal order Laminariales such as Laminaria), and some have heard of Carrageen or Irish Moss (a red alga, Chondrus crispus) and Dulse or Dillisk (also a red alga, Palmaria palmata). Seaweeds make up the Sargasso Sea, a large ocean gyre in the western Atlantic where drift plants of the genus Sargassum accumulate. Seaweeds are particularly important ecologically: they dominate the rocky intertidal in most oceans, and in temperate and polar regions cover rock surfaces in the shallow subtidal. Although only penetrating to 8-40 m in most oceans, some are found to depths of 250 m in particularly clear waters (Mediterranean, Caribbean, Brazil). The Bull or Giant Kelp (Macrocystis) is one of the largest plants in the world, which in western North America forms an important assocation with the Sea Otter.

Seaweeds are found throughout the world's oceans and seas and none is known to be poisonous. Many are actually nice to eat and even considered a great delicacy in Asian countries. They are used in many maritime regions for industrial applications and as a fertiliser. The major direct use of these plants as food is in Japan, China and Korea, where seaweed cultivation has become a major coastal industry. The main food species grown by aquaculture in these countries are Nori or Zicai (Porphyra, a red alga), Kombu, Kunbu or Haidai (Laminaria or Saccharina: brown algae) and Wakame (Undaria, also a brown alga). In Japan alone, the total annual production value of nori amounts to >US$2 billion, one of the most valuable crops produced by aquaculture in the world. In most western countries seaweed consumption is relatively restricted and there has not been any great pressure to develop mass cultivation techniques. On this site, seaweed aquaculture, particularly nori, a Japanese red seaweed, is described in detail.

Industrial utilisation of seaweed is mostly centred on the extraction of phycocolloids and, to a much lesser extent, certain fine biochemicals. Fermentation and pyrolysis and the use of seaweed as biofuels are not an option on an industrial scale at present, but are possible options for the future, particularly as conventional fossil fuels run out. Seaweeds are being used in cosmetics, as fertilisers. They have the potential to be used as a source of long- and short-chained biochemicals with medicinal and industrial uses. Marine algae may also be used as energy-collectors and potentially useful substances may be extracted by fermentation and pyrolysis. Seaweed extracts appear in the oddest of places: you almost certainly have eaten some sort of seaweed extract in the last 24 hours as many processed foods such as chocolate milk, yoghurts, health drinks, and even the highest-quality German beers contain seaweed polysaccharides such as agars, carrageenans and alginates! Seaweed baths have been popular in Ireland and Britain since Edwardian times. A recent innovation is the apparent incorporation of seaweed into a fibre. Some recent newspaper articles cast doubt on the presence of any seaweed in fabrics advertised as such.