Shetterly - Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Waters Edge

Seaweed Chronicles

A World at the Waters Edge

Susan Hand Shetterly

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2018

In memory of my father, Trav, who read me poems
that were read to him as a child, and taught me to love
the sounds and sense of words

To keep every cog and wheel is
the first precaution of intelligent tinkering.

A ldo L eopold

Some seaweeds in this book are referred to by both their scientific and their common names. In a few cases a species will have more than one common name. To unravel this tangle of nomenclature, what follows is a seaweed list. This is not a compilation of the worlds seaweeds, which would fill tomes, but only a list of those referred to directly or by implication in the book.

The word algae is often used in the popular press. It can mean either microalgae, which are phytoplankton, or macroalgae, which are seaweeds. Microalgae are one-celled photosynthetic organisms, and those that live in the oceans drift on the waters surface. Macroalgae, or seaweeds, are usually, but not always, anchored to rocks or some other firm surface. They are multicelled.

The word phycologist means simply an algae scientist.

Ulva lactuca: Sea lettuce. Like all green seaweeds, it requires the most sunlight and grows closest to shore. It is eaten by mollusks and crabs and sometimes by fish and people. Ulvas distribution is worldwide.

Caulerpa taxifolia: The genus Caulerpa has a number of species within it. This particular one, taxifolia, originally from the Indian Ocean, has become a master invader of the Mediterranean.

Ascophyllum nodosum: This species of seaweed grows close to shore and provides habitat for many wild lives. It is harvested and made into hundreds of products in enormous quantities for industry. People call it rockweed, knotted wrack, and oftenespecially in the British Isleskelp (although its not scientifically a kelp), or simply wrack.

The Fucus seaweeds: This genus contains a number of species that grow along the western North Atlantic, among them Fucus vesiculosus, or northern bladder wrack, Fucus spiralis, or spiral bladder wrack, and Fucus distichus, or flat bladder wrack. They are tough seaweeds and can withstand rough surf. In this book, the genus is referred to as Fucus or bladder wrack or rockweed. Both Ascophyllum and the Fucus seaweeds can be found growing along the rocky shore.

The Kelps: Kelps are members of the order Laminariales. They are strong and fast growing. Many species are edible and are harvested for food.

The kelps mentioned in this book that grow on the Pacific coast of North America are the bull kelp, Nereocystis luetkeana, and the giant kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera.

In the Atlantic, Alaria esculenta, or winged kelp, is harvested for food, as is Saccharina latissima, or sugar kelp, and sometimes Laminaria digitata, or horsetail kelp.

Undaria pinnatifida is a Japanese edible brown seaweed similar to the Atlantic seaweed Alaria. Its common name is wakame. Laminaria japonica is a seaweed in the kelp family used in many Japanese recipes. Its common name is kombu.

The Sargassum seaweeds: Hijiki is the Japanese name for Sargassum fusiforme, a popular edible seaweed in Japan.

Sargassum natans and Sargassum fluitans are the two free-floating seaweeds that make up the Sargasso Sea.

Chondrus crispus, like other red seaweeds, can grow in water up to two hundred feet deep or more, but it is also found in tide pools. The common names for it are Irish moss, on this coast, and carrageenan in Ireland.

Mastocarpus stellatus grows in the roughest surf, tightly attached to ledges and boulders. It withstands ice and harbors many small invertebrates on which birds feed.

Palmaria palmata grows in the intertidal zone. It thrives at the lowest ebb of the tide. It is called dulse along the western Atlantic, and dillisk in Ireland.

Porphyra umbilicalis: This species of seaweed grows along the western Atlantic coast down to Virginia. We call it laver. The genus Porphyra grows worldwide. In Japan a number of species of Porphyra are raised in large aquaculture projects and are sold as nori.

Downeast Maine, where I live, is for me the most beautiful place on earth, even in February, even on a dark day in a sharp wind. It is ledge and cobble, spruce and white pine, mudflats that glisten like a harbor seals wet pelt, low-tide rocks covered in layer upon layer of seaweeds, and a horizon straight east across the water into sunrise and Canada. No frills. It has been for me, and I think for so many others who live here, William Blakes grain of sanda teaching placeand we have learned something of the world from it. Within the wild fabric of this shore, in its many coves and bays, seaweeds and other livesfrom barnacles to fish to birdsare bound together, as they are along the shores of other places in the world. It is a tightly woven warp and woof of life, an ancient and essential system of give-and-take.

In April, we can stand at the shore and see long lines of black birds, rising and falling in undulating flight at the waters horizon, homing to their nesting islands. They are double-crested cormorants. They build their nests out of sticks and grass and the seaweeds theyve ripped from underwater.

Flocks of robins return. Eastern phoebes come back to the porch eaves. Both, in a cold snap, seek out the windrows of seaweed that lie in the sun above the high-tide line. There, in the warm, rotting tangles, kelp flies and their larvae flourish.

From deep underwater wintering places, adult lobsters lumber toward the inshore waters, where their young find both shelter and food in the rocky seaweed beds. Fish tend toward the shallows, too, to the wealth of food and protection in the dense underwater forests. The common periwinkle moves on its slippery foot onto the rocks in the intertidal zone, where it feeds on microscopic algae, green seaweeds, and the mucus trails of other snails.

Broken strands of seaweed, if they dont wash up in a tide, float in mats out into deeper water, leaky Kon-Tikis carrying a host of small and edible inshore creatures with them before they sink to the bottom. These mats attract fish and birds such as phalaropes, Bonapartes gulls, and Leachs storm petrels for the sudden gift of food they carry, and often, in migration, birds use them as rest stops. Eventually, all the bits and pieces torn loose in a summer storm, the seaweed detritus, spin into the deep and disintegrate, enriching the planktonic life of the Gulf, and thus enriching all those creatures living in this water, from jellyfish to whales.