Ologies with Alie Ward - Macrophycology (SEAWEED) with Patrick Martone, Charles Yarish, Danielle McHaskell, Angela Jones, and Becky Swerida

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Moonlit seaweeds. Dreamy underwater forests. Mounds of beach debris. Not plants. Let’s talk about where seaweed grows and whether or not it will save us all. Macrophycology means “big-ass algae” so let’s join five dazzling seaweed enthusiasts: guest-in-chief Dr. Patrick Martone of the University of British Columbia, UConn Professor Emeritus and “grandfather of seaweed farming” Dr. Charlie Yarish, seagrass scientist Becky Swerida, and marine science PhD students Danielle McHaskell and Angela Jones. We’ll chat about what’s hidden in its cells, the best ones to eat, how fast it grows, how deep it gets, cold vs. tropical seaweeds, what to do if your vacation pictures feature mounds of sargassum, and whether or not kelp can kill a chicken. In next week’s episode, you’ll hear all about the aquaculture of cultivating and eating things from the seaweed to shellfish to shrimp farmed in a basement doughboy. Not really a two parter but two episodes that are friends and hang out in the same circles. Visit the Martone Lab and follow Dr. Martone on Google ScholarGet the Seaweed Sorter app developed by Dr. MartoneFollow Dr. Charles Yarish on Google ScholarFollow Danielle McHaskell on InstagramVisit Angela Jones’ websiteFollow Becky Swerida on InstagramDonations went to Raincoast Education Society, GreenWave, and Black in Marine ScienceMore episode sources and linksSmologies (short, classroom-safe) episodesOther episodes you may enjoy: Oceanology (OCEANS), Island Ecology (ISLANDS), Cnidariology (CORAL), Tardigradology (TINY SEMI-INDESTRUCTIBLE WATER BEAR MOSS PIGLET CREATURES CALLED TARDIGRADES), Bryology (MOSS), Echinology (SEA URCHINS & SAND DOLLARS), Lutrinology (OTTERS), Ethnoecology (ETHNOBOTANY/NATIVE PLANTS), Dendrology (TREES), Forensic Ecology (NATURE DETECTIVE)Sponsors of OlogiesTranscripts and bleeped episodesBecome a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a monthOlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes!Follow Ologies on Instagram and BlueskyFollow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTokEditing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake ChaffeeManaging Director: Susan HaleScheduling Producer: Noel DilworthTranscripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. DwyerTheme song by Nick Thorburn

Oh hey, it's the guy testing out the patio furniture at Costco, Ali Ward. Let's see how fast I can get through this intro because this episode on seaweeds and kelps and algae and such has five, count them five, ologists and it's a wild ride into the ocean waves. Okay, first up, I'm just gonna get into them. We have Dr. Patrick Martone who heads up the Martone lab in the Botany department at the University of British Columbia. He studies the evolution and anatomy and biomechanics and ecology of seaweed. Also, he's a tech mogul. Not really, but he did invent an app called the Seaweed Sorter that you can get and it helps you identify and what he has said hopefully fall in love with more than 100 seaweed species. So that's

called the Seaweed Sorter. Patrick was recommended to me over three years ago by this guy named Colin, who wrote in, called him a gregarious, intelligent seaweed evangelist who exudes enthusiasm and would be a perfect addition to Ologies. And then Colin said, as nominated by his partner and longtime listener to the podcast. So that was the cutest thing I ever read. And I'm in. He also has a seaweed tattoo, so checks every box. But then your favorite oceanology guest, Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, pointed me toward

a gaggle of marine people right around the same time. And they pointed me toward Dr. Charles Yarish, who has been hailed as the grandfather of commercial seaweed and also the wizard of seaweed, both in like published media. Someone called him a wizard of seaweed. He's a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and the chief scientist at Greenwave.org. And he's been a founding kind of mover and shaker in seaweed cultivation and farming,

but his research spans decades in so many branches of seaweed science. And as long as the Van Dora was just slid open, I thought, I bet there's some great macro-psychologists via black and marine science who want to nerd out with me about big ocean algae. And indeed, we got to hear from Daniel McCaskill, who is finishing up a PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Angela Jones, who is a rising fifth-year PhD candidate at Northeastern University, both of whom have their own seaweed favorites and, like many people passionate in this field,

love the intersection of art and their science. And then an honorary fifth guest is Becky Svarita, who is a stewardship coordinator at Maryland Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. And listeners may recognize her as Becky the Sassy Seagrass Scientist via her great Patreon questions. So we asked her to send a clip about the differences between the grasses and the weeds.

So somehow, this episode ballooned into this beautiful forest of seaweeds and grasses. And we dipped below the surface into a whole new world. So we made it harder on ourselves, but more complex and beautiful for you. But before we get to the episode, a quick thank you to the patrons like Becky who make the show possible by submitting their questions

to Ask Ahead of Time. You can join for as little as a dollar a month via patreon.com slash Ologies. Thank you to everyone poking seaweed on a beach in our Ologies podcast tank tops and beach wear and hats and such at ologiesmerch.com. And of course, thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for us to read, which helped the show so much. tank tops and beachwear and hats and such at allogysmurge.com. And of course, thanks to everyone who leaves reviews for us to read, which helped the show so much.

And I read them all, such as this one from Mogbar, who wrote, I had never thought academia, especially not science, was something that I was cut out for, but your show made it accessible and exciting. I decided to go back to school for a bachelor's degree in agroecology. Future episode, they write, might need to be a three-parter. And they also said, I just turned in my senior thesis and will be graduating with honors next week. Mogbar, there's no crying in baseball, but there's plenty of it on my face right now, so congratulations. Kato, the whole Ologies fam is so so proud of you. Okay, macrophycology. This means big-ass algae. Let's get into it and talk about where seaweed grows,

whether or not it will save us all, what it has hidden in its cells, the best ones to eat, how fast it grows, how deep it gets, cold versus tropical seaweeds, moonlit seaweeds, what to do if your vacation pictures feature mounds of sargassum, whether or not kelp can kill a chicken, and then a sneak peek,

next week's episode is on aquaculture. So next week you'll hear all about cultivating and eating things from seaweed to shellfish to shrimp farmed in a basement doughboy pool. So this isn't really a two-parter, but the two episodes are friends and they hang out in the same circles. So join us now with five dazzling macro-phychologists, Dr. Charlie Yarish, Danielle McCaskill, Becky Svarita, Angela Jones, and this week's guest in chief, Dr. Patrick Martone and I use he, him pronouns.

And I'm happy to talk to you in a setting where you're on solid ground. I texted you. Yes, me too. What were you doing when I texted you? Well, I was just leaving this island on the central coast of British Columbia and the storms were so intense and the wind was so intense that the float plane was delayed and then even after the float plane landed to pick us up, taxiing away from the dock, it actually rammed the wing into the piling of the dock. So we had to be kind of rescued off that plane and then they had to send another plane.

It was like a very stressful afternoon for us to just escape Seaweed Diversity Island, you know. And then I'm texting Ali Ward and I'm like, oh my God, this is a really surreal day. I had like gotten your number from your partner Colin. He was like, yeah, he's in the field. I was like, okay, no big. I didn't realize that I'd take to do was like a float plane is crashing and you're like getting, I'm so sorry. I'm so glad that you have made some time. I'm so sorry to disrupt you. Of course. That was great. Like barging in in the middle of a brain surgery being like, hey, can I ask

you a couple questions? Kind of busy right now. No. But you came to my attention because you were nominated very glovingly and seaweed has been something I've been wanting to cover for so long and there's so many different aspects to it and kinds of seaweed and things you can do with seaweed. I've been really overwhelmed and so I wanted to talk to more than one person. I've watched your videos and like seen a dazzling, like kelp tattoo on your forearm. I was like, who is this? King of kelp. I need to talk to him. And so where did you grow up?

Did you grow up in on the West, North Pacific West or did you grow up around seaweed? You know what? I actually grew up in Florida Okay, and I grew up spending a lot of time on boats and out fishing with my family and one of the things that we used to do is Collect seaweed that was floating sargassum off the coast of Florida And I would collect the sargassum and I would shake it out in a bucket and then I would collect all the little fishing crabs and Utebranks and things that came out of the seaweed. So at the time I was really excited about all the little animals that were living in the sargassum.

But in retrospect, I think that got me really excited about seaweed as habitat and seaweed in general, even as a kid. And then I eventually moved to California to do my PhD in seaweed at Stanford. I was living on the coast of California really getting inspired about all the diversity of seaweed. I can trace my interest in seaweed quite through many years back to my childhood. You know it's funny a lot of people probably think of seaweed and they think big plant ocean but you must have thought about it in like three dimensions more of just like how much it harbors and what's in there.

Yeah, for sure. My thesis and my PhD, I was really interested in all the different shapes and sizes and colors of seaweeds and how they can cling to the rocks under big breaking waves and what their bodies are made of that allow them to withstand these big breaking waves. I just found them super inspiring and I had tons of questions once I started studying them.

Well, what's the difference between the Sargassum that you see in tropical waters in Florida and then these huge giant kelps off the coast of the Pacific Northwest and then obviously Asia, Japan, big seaweed culture there. Where is seaweed growing and how is it different in different places? Well, seaweeds are very, very diverse. And a lot of the big seaweeds like kelp require high nutrients and high nutrients usually goes along with cold conditions, so cold, nutrient-rich waters of sort of temperate areas. So if you go to sort of the North Pacific, or even the South Pacific and South Atlantic, you can get lots of these big seaweeds.

And in the tropics, most seaweeds can be very diverse, but they can be, they're usually smaller. In general, we don't see tropical kelps, for example. Kelps tend to be cold waters of, you know, the Northeast Pacific, for example, where we are. And, you know, my family always wanted me to come back to Florida to live and to study. And I just thought, no, the seaweed's there, it's not big enough for my taste.

I love everything that Florida has to offer and not offer. Yes. Other than that, Florida's 10 out of 10. That's exactly it. Just the seaweed. Now let's travel from Patrick's chilly, rocky Pacific Northwest to the Northeast on the Atlantic coast. Now Dr. Charlie Yarish, born and raised

in the lovely Brooklyn, New York, is now based in Connecticut as a professor emeritus at UConn, and he has seen the world through goggles. And what about in other parts of the world? Are there certain zones that are more seaweed rich, like off the coast of Japan or closer to the poles? Or how does seaweed population, how does that vary across the globe? Well, you know, that's a very good question. Seaweed is found in all the global oceans.

The ice sheet that is in the Arctic or the ice sheet in the Antarctic, there are seaweed that are growing beneath the ice sheet. Oh, wow. If any light penetrates, those seaweed can grow. Some seaweed types can grow in dim light, or I probably should say in moonlight. No. Yes, in moonlight, friends of mine from the Smithsonian years ago discovered some red seaweed, ones that are small, calcium carbonate, the

ones that form a little crust, and they found it growing at almost 500, 600 feet below the surface. It was growing. That's the important. So you have seaweed growing in all the oceans and they're adapted to the environments that they're in. There are seaweed that are warm temperate. They like the warm temperate environment, sort of like where most people like to be. There are the tropical seaweeds that are going to be found in the tropics.

There are seaweeds that are in cold temperate environments. So when you're in a cold temperate environment, that is a favorite for the kelp. Let's ask Patrick why. Well, okay, you said something about cold water and nutrients and my brain doesn't process the correlation there. Why are there more nutrients in cold water or why is it a better environment, a better sort of broth for kelp and seaweed to live in? Yeah. Well, I mean, coral reefs and sort of the tropical areas where there's all this warm water, they're sort of known for being low nutrient systems. There's so much life that can be taking up those nutrients, the metabolism is higher. Whereas in the Northeast Pacific and sort of colder areas, you tend to have a lot of upwelling.

The deep water where you get a lot of nutrients can be brought closer to the surface that can really support all that primary production. So we think about these cold areas as being where you tend to have a lot of upwelling and mixing of this nutrient-rich water, whereas in the tropics, where it's a lot warmer upwelling and mixing of this nutrient-rich water, whereas in the tropics where it's a lot warmer, all those nutrients get used up. They tend not

to have enough nutrients to support so much primary production. I grew up in San Francisco, so growing up in the Pacific, you're kind of like, beaches have kelp. And then it didn't strike me until later. I'm like, warm beaches don't have huge piles of rotting kelp that you can poke with a stick, which is half the fun of the beach. If you're someone who needs SPF 90. Love a tide pool though. Get me to the beach and a turtleneck. And as Charlie said, unlike the largest species of kelp, Macrocystis pyrephora, that can grow to hundreds of feet long and is one of the fastest growing living things on earth, the seaweeds of the tropics might just be a little less conspicuous. Well, you know, when you're swimming off the coast of Bahamas, what you're doing is you're

stepping on seaweeds. You may not realize that. Yes, they are small little green plants. They're not very large, but they produce calcium carbonate in their skeleton, and they are integral in coral reef environments. And looking at photos, or if you're lucky enough to be face-to-face with it, this crunchy algae can come in some gorgeous pink and orange and greenish colors and really resemble coral. Coral perhaps is flattered by that. I don't know. Some members are green algae and some members are red algae. The red algae are the cement of the coral reefs. And so you may not see large plants, but that's because in the coral reef environments, there's a lot of animals

that are herbivores. They feed on plant tissue. They love seaweeds as part of their food chain. So you don't see them and the ones that you do, you can find are these calcareous algae, green or red, and you're stepping on them. Oh, I'm so sorry. If I ever go to the Bahamas, I'm so sorry, algae. I'm sure that that's just part of life. Well, you'll have to look for one when you're down in the Bahamas. It's called Neptune's Shaving Brush. Remember the old fashioned shaving brushes? Well, they stand maybe six to eight inches. They have what it looks like, the old shaving brush that people used to use at one point.

So they're called Neptune's shaving brush. They are common in the Bahamas. And there was also some other common ones that are beautiful fan-like seaweeds, but they all have something in common. They produce this calcium carbonate, cuts down on animals eating it, and they're able to also survive in a low nutrient environment in the tropics, which is today changing because of tourism and people and things like that. And according to a 2021 paper titled, surge in nitrogen has turned sargassum into the

world's largest harmful algal bloom. Nitrogen in coastal waters has increased by 500% since the pre-industrial times. Where's all this nitrogen coming from? Well, some of it is fertilizer runoff, but a bunch is sewage. So more people near beaches, more sewage, more sargassum. Tropical seaweed loves it. It's like a food buffet made of delicious toilet. Finally, they've got a new restaurant in town. Now we know that colder water tends to have more nutrients, which means more naturally

thriving kelp and seaweed. And Charlie mentioned red and green and brown, but let's rewind a little to Patrick and just get back to basics. But, um, so, okay, seaweed, not a weed, first off. Right. You know, weed has a negative connotation. I guess the question here is what is a seaweed? And you know, this comes back to defining algae. So I think of myself as a phycologist, which is someone who studies algae.

And algae is a really funny term because it's sort of a catch-all term for things that photosynthesize. They tend to be aquatic living in water, but that means they can be phytoplankton, which would be little microscopic things like diatoms and dinoflagellates and all kinds of other sort of plankton. But they can also be the macroscopic things like the seaweeds. So seaweed is sort of like a macroscopic alga. Okay. So algae is sort of like the blanket term and then seaweed is a subset of algae because seaweeds are sort of the multicellular aquatic algae and then you know within Seaweed you can have these different colors and sizes. So there's these reds greens and browns

So for example, you know brown algae would be a subset of seaweed and then kelp would be a subset of browns. If I had to sort of define a seaweed, they're photosynthetic, they tend to be aquatic. Obviously seaweeds are living in the ocean and they tend not to have xylem and phloem like plants might have. You think about xylem as a way to move water around a plant body. Well, these are seaweeds, they're living in water, so they don't need to be moving water around. They're acquiring all of their nutrition from the water around

them. And then they generally don't have phloem, which would be a way to move sugars. And for more on the botanical structure and the vascular highways going up and down that keep trees and plants reaching and growing, you can see our excellent and fan favorite episode Dendrology with tree expert J. Casey Clapp. They sometimes look like plants, like a kelp can look like a little tree, but actually they're not closely related to plants at all. Yeah, they're not that closely related to plants whatsoever. So everything that you see is an example of convergent evolution.

Like the closest common ancestor between a kelp and a plant would have been a single cell. So that's just been evolving completely independently. They've arrived at common endpoints that look like little plants. That is nuts. So, seaweed, not a plant, not a weed. And to link them together, you'd have to go way, way, way, way, way back on the family tree.

Plants and seaweeds, they're like Amy Adams and Isla Fisher. Similar looking, but different. Will Ferrell and the drummer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. That's like seaweed and plants. You know, you might do a double take, but they are in fact different organisms. Let's say that you were drawing an algal cell for your homework. We know that like an animal cell looks squishy and a plant cell looks boxy. What does a seaweed cell look like microscopically? Well, a seaweed cell would look a lot like a plant cell because they have a cell wall around them,

which gives them structure. That's a way to differentiate animal cells from these sort of photosynthetic cells. Chlorop... Okay, I think we need to talk about endosymbiosis, Ali. Yes, please. I don't know what the hell that is. You know, I was trying to avoid it, but I think we need to talk about endosymbiosis, Allie. Yes, please. I don't know what the hell that is. You know, I was trying to avoid it, but I think we gotta talk about it. Bring it on, bring it on. Okay, so do you know, so plants have chloroplasts, right? Of course, yes, yes.

The little green baubles in plant cells. So if you look in a leaf, if you look inside of a leaf cell, you're going to see chloroplasts, which is the place where photosynthesis happens. That's where, you know, carbon dioxide is turned into sugars, and that's how you end up plants make their own food. And so that's sort of the source of primary production. Okay.

Chloroplasts in plants evolved from cyanobacteria. So cyanobacteria are a special kind of bacterium where photosynthesis evolved. All of the photosynthetic machinery evolved in these single-celled bacteria that are photosynthetic. So endosymbiosis is the process by which a eukaryotic cell, so a cell with a nucleus and organelles, was eating other cells. It was eating bacteria.

So imagine that game Hungry Hungry Hippos with algal cells kind of gobbling up photosynthetic cyanobacteria like marbles and then just using them like a new acquired organ or an organelle really. Cyanobacteria. Now the cyanobacteria makes me think of a color like a blue color. Blue green. Yeah, cyanobacteria. So blue green algae. Yeah, so cyanobacteria are the same as blue green algae. Okay, let's talk about cyanobacteria for a second. Okay. So cyanobacteria are extremely old. If you look back in time, even through the fossil record, some of the first evidence of life on Earth was that these cyanobacteria existed something like two billion years old, like really, really old. Two billion years old? Yeah. I didn't even know that was

a possibility. Okay, that's amazing. My brain just completely blanked here. And I was like, wait, isn't Earth only like 4 or 5 billion years old? Is that right? So yes, according to the University of Chicago article, the origin of life on Earth explained. Earth is about 4.5 billion years old.

The oldest known fossil is about 3.7 billion. And life on Earth may have emerged before that, 4.3 billion years ago. So life came at us pretty fast. Plants have been here for about 400 million years, they think, but green seaweeds, those go back a billion years because they made friends with their food. So cyanobacteria play a critical role in the evolution of all other life because cyanobacteria as photosynthesizers were pumping oxygen into the atmosphere. Remember that cyanobacteria as a byproduct of photosynthesis generate oxygen. You can look at the oxygen levels on Earth spike, increase after cyanobacteria evolve

and we see photosynthesis, we can thank cyanobacteria for oxygenating the atmosphere and letting animals evolve because we need oxygen. It was all because of them. Yes. We should literally thank them in an acceptance speech. We couldn't have done it without them. Exactly. It was my privilege. Thank you. Okay. So cyanobacteria have been around forever. They've been around longer than everything else. And so you have these eukaryotic cells which are munching on single celled bacteria.

And at some point, they start eating these cyanobacteria. And they basically encapsulated that cyanobacterium inside of their cells and maintained that as a chloroplast. So that is where chloroplasts have come from was from this called endosymbiosis where you're acquiring a new organelle from the environment and you're basically taking a cyanobacterium and sticking it inside of you so now you have a little sugar making factory inside of you that allows you to photosynthesize. It's like livestock kind of. It's like having a coat. Yeah, yeah. And what's so that's sort of the birth of the first alga was when a eukaryotic cell ate a cyanobacterium and became

photosynthetic. So that's kind of the backdrop of this sort of how things become photosynthetic. So that's kind of the backdrop of this sort of how things become photosynthetic. And there is no doubt that the chloroplast used to be a free living cyanobacterium. Oh, I love that. It seems like they're friends. It seems like it's working out well for both of them. Totally.

Okay, good. At least that's how I like to think of it, yes. And so when we think about algae as a larger group, that process of endosymbiosis, of acquiring other photosynthetic things and sticking them inside of you and becoming a new lineage of algae, that has happened many, many different times in many different ways. For example, the red algae and the green algae are quite closely related. They evolved through this primary endosymbiosis where their chloroplast used to be a free living cyanobacterium. But if you think about brown algae and the brown algae include things like that sargassum that you

were talking about or kelps, all of the kelps are brown algae, their chloroplast used to be a free-living red alga. What? Which means that it was a eukaryotic cell that actually ate a single-celled red alga in the past, and now those cells have a red alga living inside of all of their cells to allow them to photosynthesize. It's a turducken. It's like a turducken.

An algal turducken, exactly. What? And so does that mean that brown algae is farther down evolutionarily or was that just happenstance? More recent. In fact, brown algae are super young. Brown algae have only been around for maybe 100 million years, maybe 150 million years. Whereas red algae are much, much older, closer to maybe even a billion

years, I think. Well, what about the green? Is that just a middle child? Is that Jan Brady? Sounds like you have a serious case of middle child syndrome. Yes. So if you imagine sort of that original primary endosymbiosis, there was a branch that split off that became the red algae, and then another branch that kept going that became green algae and land plants. So so all land plants have evolved from a common ancestor with the green algae.

So, you know, I think of green algae as being close relatives of land plants, whereas the red algae and the brown algae, you know, are very, very different from plants altogether. And the brown algae never even made it to land. The brown algae are only aquatic. And there are freshwater red algae, but nothing compared to sort of plant diversity. Yeah. And then are there freshwater brown or green or... I know we have a seagrass scientist who also emailed in about the differences between seagrass

and seaweed. And she sent us a little audio clip, which is very helpful. You may have heard her name listed in previous episodes as she's great at submitting Patreon questions. And knowing this name, our lead editor Mercedes said, we gotta ask Becky the Sassy Seagrass Scientist about this. And so we did. And she was game. And even though she studies seagrass, which are plants,

she very generously shouted out her favorite algae. Hi, Allie. This is Becky the Sassy Seagrass Scientist again. And so here's the thing. I love seagrass, I love seaweed. Technically two different things. Seagrasses are true plants. To be a true plant, you've got to have a root, stems, leaves, flowers, shoots, and seeds.

I make little kids sing that sometimes. It's fun. Roots, stems, seeds, flowers, shoots, and leaves. I can confirm that is fun to remember. So my favorite algae. I love good old Olva lactuca or sea lettuce. This is probably the most common seaweed or macroalgae on the East Coast here in the mid-Atlantic where I am. You've definitely seen it.

It is a beautiful, light, translucent green. They form these sort of frilly sheets that just wave in the water and look so pretty, and you see it washing up on shore a lot. And then when you're a kid, you want to throw it at each other and it's great. And it is actually edible both to a lot of wildlife and humans, although it just tastes like saltwater. But who doesn't like a salty, slimy snack? Eh, it's great. So ovolectuca or sea lettuce, it's beautiful, it's useful, it provides habitat and food

source for lots of critters. And that would be my favorite algae or seaweed. Okay, bye. So that is Becky Dasassi, seagrass scientist, clarifying once again that seaweed, not a plant, not a seagrass. But if she had to choose a favorite seaweed, it would be Ulva lactuca, which looks like gorgeous, fluffy tufts of Heineken bottle green colored seaweed. So there are freshwater plants or hydrofites. There are marine plants, aka seagrasses.

There's marine algae, aka seagrasses. There's marine algae, aka seaweed. But what are non-marine, thus non-sea, freshwater algae called? I think when I go to a lake and I get my feet tangled up in lakeweed, you know, I sort of call those that lakeweed versus seaweed. But another way to kind of divorce yourself from this idea of how salty does the water need to be for us to call something a seaweed, you can just call them macroalgae. So that's more about their size, right, regardless of where they're living. But there are freshwater and saltwater, red algae and green algae. Brown algae tend to be marine. I think they're like 99% marine. Okay, so kelp is, now I know,

kelp is a type of brown algae that actually has a type of red algae in it also that has a type of cyanobacteria in it a little bit, right? Broadly speaking. But what is kelp doing that's different from the other seaweeds? And do we eat other seaweeds or do we just eat types of kelp?

Oh, we probably eat more of other seaweeds. And do we eat other seaweeds or do we just eat types of kelp? Oh, we probably eat more of other seaweeds than we do of kelp. For example, if you think about nori, you think about what you eat in your sushi, that is a red alga. Oh, what? So that's not a kelp at all. The genus is Pyropia or porphyra.

That's a genus that's cultivated throughout Asia and is a huge multi-billion dollar industry. And of course, you know, lots of people eat nori every day. And there are other species, other red algae in particular, that produce carrageenan and produce agarans. So maybe you've heard of carrageenan. This is like a thickener that's in your toothpaste and your ice cream. You know, that all comes from red algae.

So there's a big sort of aquaculture industry for cultivating red algae. And agar is the same thing. So the people who use agar to make petri plates or have other reasons for, you know, this natural thickener and all kinds of products, that also comes from red algae. And I asked Charlie about the prevalence of seaweed in cultures across the world, and he

said, take Japan. It has limited land mass, and so marine foods have been a staple there. And China has 20% of the world's population, but less than 5% of the arable land. He also said that the Korean Peninsula is home to a diverse array of edible seaweeds. And just in the last few decades, these global food staples have been embraced more in North America and US and Canada and also Europe. He also said that 90% of the world's farmed seaweed grows in Asia, with Indonesia producing a lot of red seaweed.

Does it look red when you're growing it or is that, are there so many other layers of kind of color over it that the red is kind of just a name? Okay, so this brings up something interesting, which is what are the differences between greens, reds, and browns in terms of their pigment? I think one important thing to point out is that all of them use chlorophyll. In red algae and in brown algae, they are still using chlorophyll for photosynthesis, but they have additional colorful pigments that help absorb other wavelengths of light that chlorophyll cannot.

So in the red algae, there's a group of pigments called phycobillans, which tend to look pink, purply, red. There are a few different phycobillans. And they tend to be a little bit better at absorbing some of those other wavelengths, like green, that the chlorophylls can't absorb. And it just broadens the kind of spectrum of light that these algae can absorb.

So the green seaweeds are using chlorophyll and absorbing the light that's not green. Hence, they reflect and they look green. And the red and brown algae get their colors with more pigments that absorb more wavelengths of light. So green algae tend to look green because you're mostly seeing chlorophylls. And the red algae tend to look reddish pink because their chloroplasts tend to have these little phycobillans that look red and then the brown algae tend to have carotenoids like beta carotene, fucoxanthin that make them look kind of browny,

like almond brown sort of. Yeah. So you have to like go back to your art class days when you're mixing pigments and you're making brown out of some orange and green and that kind of thing, like the color wheel, essentially. Exactly. So there are a lot of algae. Like if you go to the shore around San Francisco, there's a lot of seaweeds that will just look black.

And they look black because they're absorbing tons of wavelengths, right? So they are just maxed out. It's like if you took all the colors and just like made a big scribbly mess with all these different colors, you end up with black. That's kind of like what they're doing to sort of maximize light absorption. When you eat seaweed, I'm assuming you eat seaweed. I do. Of course.

Do you, are you able to like, are you able to like divorce yourself from the anatomy of it? Because now when I look at Nori, I'm going to be thinking about it differently. Do you have specifics that you like to eat or are you able to just have dinner or are you dissecting it as you go? Oh, I'm still dissecting it. I'm sorry, I can't leave that behind. Especially if you get a seaweed salad that has like fresh seaweeds in it. They've often shredded them and so you can kind of, they've almost done a cross section for you. And so I'll notice, oh, there's a cysticarp. I can tell this was a female seaweed blade that they cut into.

Yeah, I know I definitely do that. Do you have a favorite? To eat? Yes. Well, I really do like some of the locally harvested piropias, like the local noris. If you crisp them up just right, they can have a really nice salty taste. Kelp chips can be really delicious. Again, if you crisp them up, they can be really good. And we are pairing macrophychology with an entire episode next week about aquaculture,

which is just eating stuff from the ocean and lakes. So what can we grow? What is sustainable? Will kelp farming save the planet? What's the deal with farming shrimp in your basement? Also, before we recorded, I looked up Dr. Patrick Martone on Rate My Professors, where he is widely praised and just seems adored by students. One of them wrote, five stars, Patrick is a wonderful man and a wonderful professor. I didn't know anything about algae going into this course. They write and I left truly inspired, highly recommend him as a professor. For example, this is how he approaches learning about algae. I have to tell you that I teach a course every year out on Vancouver Island

in Banfield and I do a thing called Top Chef Seaweed where I do a big cooking competition with my students. I just let them collect whatever they want. You can eat all of the seaweeds in the area. Some of them taste better than others, but nothing's gonna hurt you. And I just let them innovate. And we have had some really cool recipes

that have come out of it. I had a student make what looked like onion rings from the bull kelp, you know, the bull kelp stife, the really long one? Yes, yes. If you cut them crossways, you can make rings and they beer battered them and deep fried them and made these like onion rings

and they were really delicious. And you could dip them on so many different things, I imagine. Yes. You know, if someone asked if there was any truth to the fact that the bulb, the pneumaticist has enough carbon monoxide to kill a chicken or a person. Any truth to that? I think there is enough truth to that actually. Yeah.

We studied the gas. I had a student who studied the gases inside of the pneumaticist. There's some interesting stories there. But one of them is that, yeah, there is carbon monoxide inside of that. And there was a study that really did these calculations on sort of what kind of animals would pass out if they breathed in this gas. But we estimated in a paper that we wrote that there's enough volume of carbon monoxide

in those big pneumaticists that if a person inhaled that, they might actually pass out. So evidently, this is a factoid that has been shared over awkward dinner silences for over a century. And there's this 1917 paper, carbon monoxide occurrence free in kelp. It was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. And it notes that, a guinea pig placed in a vessel through which kelp gas was passing

died in less than 10 minutes. Post-mortem examination of the body showed the characteristic appearances associated with carbon monoxide poisoning. Let's try that again, they thought. So then, the paper continues, a canary bird lived less than 15 seconds in gas from the kelp bulb. And then, I don't know, maybe they were hungry for dinner, but they found that, quote, a young chicken

died in the kelp gas in about one minute. Oh, okay. So, there is the conception of this weird, but I guess very true fact. So, does the gas inflated kelp balloon as a murder weapon theory still hold any water? Luckily, we have the inside track here. We asked exactly the right person. So, sure enough, there is that 2020 paper titled titled Gas Composition of Developing Pneumaticists in Bulkhelp by Laura Ligon with Patrick as a co-author, and it retested those 1917 trials. Sort of. It reads, quote, in the current study, and without harming any animals, our data uphold this old phycological adage. Given that carbon monoxide concentration

of 0.01% could kill or render a person unconscious, the largest pneumaticist analyzed in this study, which held about a wine bottle full of gases, had a CO concentration of 1.6%, resulting in total concentration of 15 times greater than the maximum concentration of carbon monoxide someone with an average lung capacity could tolerate before passing out. So yeah, don't huff a bulk-help bulb. I mean, maybe a lot of the gas would escape outside of laboratory settings. I don't know.

But if it doesn't kill you, it might taste like a sandy fish butt either way. But I mean, don't get any ideas at home, obviously. But you really got to get yourself to the beach. There are other better ways to harm an enemy, better ways to kill like a villain in a superhero movie than getting a pneumatocyst. Very dramatic, yes. When it comes to bulk help, you mentioned the blade and the pneumatosis. Can you give me a little bit of some anatomy of what we might think of when we think of kelp? I think we've maybe seen screensavers of Monterey Bay kind of kelp forests with otters swimming

in and out and now too many purple urchins eating all the kelp. So please enjoy our Echinodology episode all about sea urchins eating all the kelp. So please enjoy our Echinodology episode all about sea urchins and why the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is practically begging you to harvest armfuls of purple urchin for uni rolls off the Pacific coast. And you can also see our Lutronology episode if you just wanna ruin otters forever for yourself.

I recommend that. They're linked in the show notes. And just, I'm sorry in advance. But what kind of happens in a kelp forest? What kind of things are we seeing? What anatomy are we seeing of the seaweed? Well, let's start with the anatomy of the seaweed itself. Okay. So at the bottom, you have this we call the holdfast, which looks like roots. Again, I'll just remind you that these aren't plants. So so everything you see is not exactly related to what you see on land. So we don't call them roots, we just call them a holdfast because the holdfast

doesn't absorb nutrients, it doesn't work like roots on land. The whole purpose of a holdfast is just to hold onto the rock, right? That's how they stay in one place and don't drift away. So they have this hold fast, then they have a stripe, which kind of acts like a stem to sort of give them elevation. And then you have these blades that come out of the top and all kelps start life as a single hold fast, a single stripe, and then one blade. And as they grow, many kelps will start to divide that single blade into more and more blades.

And of course, in things like the bull kelp and in the giant kelp, you have the stipe that actually starts to open up and form gas on the inside, which allows them to inflate to form those little gas bladders. Maybe it's obvious, but I'll just say having those gas bladders allows them to float and to gain height without needing to invest in wood. You know, we think of plants, if you want to grow up to maybe compete for light, they have to invest in wood. But living in water, they have this cool trick where all they have to do is add a little bit of gas into a little gas bladder and they can

grow straight up. Like. I like to imagine, if we had this on land, it would be like plants with helium balloons, holding them up in the air. Yeah. Oh, that's so cute. I've seen so many of them on the seashore. And growing up as a kid, they were just simply things to try to pop with your sneaker, if you could. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And here's another cool thing about those gas bladders. Do you know that the pressure in those gas bladders is actually lower than the atmosphere? How does that work? No one knows. What? So we did an experiment where we measured the pressure inside of those little gas bladders. So I had a student who was a diver, Lauren Liggan,

and she was really interested in how a kelp can inflate on the bottom and then move towards the surface. Because you know, rule number one as a diver, you never hold your breath on the bottom and then swim to the surface. Yeah. Because you would explode, basically, right? Yeah.

And what she found is, at all sizes of the bull kelp, when they were teeny tiny, like six inches long versus 20 feet long, the pressure inside of that bladder was always less than atmospheric pressure at the surface. So the bends or decompression sickness, it's a very serious condition for divers when gases that are dissolved in your blood start forming bubbles if the pressure change on the ascent

is too quick. So these bulk help, which can grow nearly a foot a day and reach depths up to 40 meters, which is the equivalent of like a 12-story building, and a pneumatocyst, which gets its name from pneumata from air or vapor, and chamber, it can get bigger than a bocce ball. And it's sometimes called a mermaid bladder.

No, but it has to have very precise pressure inside to get the job done. No one knows this. We don't even know how they regulate pressure on the inside. But we do know that it is quite regulated because the pressure doesn't really change as they're growing towards the surface. Even as that float is getting, you know, 10, 100 times larger, the float gets huge because they're half way hollow down that stripe. And so what we think is if you imagine you're a baby bull kelp and you want to you make a little float, and then as you get bigger, you continue to adjust the pressure inside of that thing.

If you accidentally chose a pressure that was higher than the atmosphere, then when you got to the atmosphere, you would eventually pop because then you're over pressurized. Because when you're underwater, there's all this negative pressure from the water pushing on you. But as you move forward up to the surface, that pressure becomes less and less and less until you're at the surface. If the pressure was too high, you would pop at the surface. And if you popped, you would flood and then you would sink and you would die. So they have they have to evolve to adjust for it so it's lower. That way they compensate so when they get to the top, they're still floating, but they're not exploding. Yes. Isn't that cool?

That's so much evolution to get that right. I know. So there's a cool amount of selection that has probably happened, where all the ones that accidentally were over pressurized, they all sank and died because they popped. And all the ones that accidentally were over pressurized they all sank and died because they popped and All the ones that were that had a pressure that was lower didn't pop and so they survived and so that has basically Carried on through these lineages of bull kelps. Isn't that cool? So it but so here's the cool thing when you go to the beach and you pop a bull kelp

Just carefully if you were to pop it, it actually sucks in. You think it's popping out, but it actually sucks in. We measured the pressure inside of those with a manometer, one of those U-shaped pressure meters that has liquid in the bottom. And some of the pressure was so low that when we punctured the bulk kelp to measure the pressure, it sucked all of the liquid out of our manometer into the bulk help. No, so it almost like an implosion. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. There's cool stuff happening in there. Yeah. And we don't know how that works. Why do you think it's carbon monoxide and not dioxide? Okay, so this episode is a little wonky because we just talked to so many people.

We got really excited and listener questions are coming up, but Barbara Blackie and Sabrina had undoubtedly the weirdest question and I just, I couldn't wait. Sabrina? My name is Sabrina Shaw from Snohomish, Washington and I'm curious if there is really enough carbon monoxide in the floaty end of bull kelp to kill a chicken or perhaps even a man. I was like, I don't even know what gas is in there. Why? The gases that are in there are, there is carbon monoxide, there is also carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen.

So we think that it's the same kinds of gases that we have in the atmosphere, but the ratios are all different. Carbon monoxide tends to be a byproduct of degradation and cell death. And I think what's happening is as that nematocyst is opening up and you have the tissue that's dying on the inside to make that gas bladder, I think carbon monoxide is being produced as a byproduct of that. You know, question, do you ever get panicked emails from brides saying, my Cancun wedding is coming up and there is an absolute barricade of sargassum rotting on the beach or I'm getting

married in the Gulf of Mexico. I've seen like, I've seen Yelp reviews from people who are like, I went to this resort and it was so smelly. I didn't know it was. The Caribbean are perfect for a destination beach wedding. If a clear beach is a top priority for you, you should think about sargassum, that brown seaweed that can wash up on the shore or float in the water. Some areas it gets so bad it even smells.

Although it can be pretty unpredictable, it happens. What is happening and are seaweed experts called in to, like, buy? We have an action team, Ali. Call in the seaweed action team, yes. No, there are people thinking about that exact problem. So in the Atlantic, there are species of sargassum that live floating off the coast, right? You've heard of the Sargasso Sea. This is sort of like an area off the coast.

And there are some species of sargassum that don't need to be attached. They float like a huge island. And there are fish living under it and crabs and everything that lives in that sargassum. And there are a couple different species that live off the coast like that. And from what I understand, those sargassum areas, because of ocean warming, have not only gotten larger over time,

so the amount of sargassum that's offshore is larger, but also because of changes in currents and winds, you end up getting multiple species combining into like a mega island of Sargassum that all washes ashore. Oh no. Which is horrifying for the beachgoers and the you know the brides who were so excited for their photo shoot that day. And grooms, don't email me. Also just to anyone getting married, it's summer, I know it's going on right now, remember that your marriage is much more than an Instagram post that will impress your former co-workers. On your wedding day things are gonna go wrong and they might even look uglier than expected, but

all that matters is that there will be people there that you love, who love you, and they will one day be dead. And if the backdrop literally stinks, it doesn't matter if you like who you're marrying. In fact, one day it might even be hilarious. So just roll with it. But what I hadn't fully appreciated is that when you have all that seaweed washing up like that and then degrading, yes, it smells really bad, but also it is releasing tons of nitrogen and other kinds of waste byproducts onto the beach. It's actually very similar to like runoff from land where you have all this eutrophication, all this excess nutrients and then bacterial growth

that's being fueled by all that. So it can really mess up the whole ecosystem. Does that then feed more sargassum if you've got like runoff of all this nitrogen? Does that just sort of feed more algal blooms? I possibly other algal blooms, but not sargassum. I think most of those sargassum blooms are happening offshore and then they're just washing ashore. Whereas I think that all of that runoff, all the nitrogen and phosphorus and stuff that gets dumped, I think that's more affecting local communities and bacteria on the beach right there, which is plenty stinky and

you know can have really bad results for the ecosystem. Not to mention smothering all the animal life, you know you just get buried alive by islands of sargassum. Of course, Charlie, loving the warmer waters, also had thoughts on this plague to beach days. Oh, the sargassum is really something. It's floating at the mercy of the currents, but it's been able to form very large beds that are really wrecking havoc with tourism in the Caribbean and also in the Gulf of Mexico around the coast of Florida. And what's fueling this problem actually is, well, climate change is one and the other

is humans. Humans produce a lot of nutrients. People like to go. They like to go to tropical areas, and those nutrients are not processed properly, and they end up in the local coastal zone, and they just feed the blooms of the surrogate. And by nutrient runoff, remember, that can be agricultural fertilizers or human waste. Hey, did you know that it's okie dokie for cruise ships to dump toilet poops untreated as long as the ship is three nautical miles from shore? But don't worry, if they treat it a little, they can dump it closer to land.

But back to a sargassum bloom, which Charlie was investigating. I did something really foolish, which I didn't realize at the time. Instead of just swimming in the bloom and looking at the seaweed like everybody else was doing, I decided to go down to the bottom. Oh. And I said, what happens to that seaweed when it decays? Oh. Where is all of it going?

And I snorkeled down to about 30 feet and I noticed the bottom is covered with white bacteria and I stirred up the bottom and in 48 hours I came down with my first ever double ear infection. I never had an ear infection and as a, I was always concerned about ears and depth. But this one was really terribly pathogenic bacterium that was found in the sediments. It actually ate the bone in my ear. Was your hearing affected? No. Fortunately, I had some very good doctor at Yale School of Medicine, amazingly patient and he was able to get the right antibiotic to stop it from growing. And then he was able

to do a bone graft and reconstructed the ear. But it just shows you, stay where the sea weaves are, don't look at what they may be doing down on the bottom decomposing. But people are interested today in seaweeds that are decomposing because we look at a process where the carbon from the seaweed has short term and long term value. The long term value is that that seaweed carbon as decomposition can find its way into the deep oceans and removing that carbon from the surface waters into the deep waters of the ocean. An important aspect that is only now being realized by the scientific community. And of course, to do field work and collect samples and maybe contract surgical-grade

ear infections, you've got to get your feet wet and see the world. Charlie has been a diver for decades and asked any macro-phychologists about their passport stamps in the name of algae. Actually, I did. I asked Patrick, what about different parts of the world? Because when I texted you, you were coming off of like a float plane, which is not something that most of us do for our jobs. But have you gotten to see a lot of parts of the world in search of seaweed? Or do you plan your vacations around like, does

Australia have good seaweed? I don't know. Oh, yes. Like Korea, where have you gone in search of seaweed? Where have I not gone in search of seaweed? It seems like every place that I go that has a coastline, inevitably, I'm going to be collecting seaweed. I actually just spent a sabbatical in Australia for many months. And the Australian flora is super interesting. They have tons and tons of seaweeds. They actually don't have that many kelp species,

but they have tons of red algae and other brown algae and tons of sargassum species and all sorts of really interesting seaweeds down there. Yeah, I think that's one of the beauties of being a seaweed scientist is wherever I go to the beach, I get to look for seaweeds and learn new names for things, new species and compare across regions. Most of my work is in the Northeast Pacific, so sort of between California and Alaska. So I know this flora very well. But I've spent time in Japan, amazing seaweed diversity in Japan, some of which is shared

with our coast, but a lot of it is not. Although you almost see things that look familiar, but then they're different species. And of course, some of the greatest seaweed diversity is seen in China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and the 2025 State of Seaweed Report I was kind of leafing through also mentioned the diversity of Australasia. Australasia, I think, seaweed. I didn't know that was a term that existed, but it includes Australia, New Zealand, and a few islands in the South Pacific. Yeah, Australia was fantastic. I've collected in Taiwan, I've collected in Italy, I've collected in England. So yeah.

Why does that Asian coast, why are they so good at seaweed? And other cultures are not, haven't made use of seaweed and from a culinary standpoint that we could. You know, it's an interesting question. One thing that I'll say is that, so back to speaking about nori, there is obviously this multi-billion dollar nori industry in Asia, in Japan specifically,

and it has been collected by indigenous people in Asia forever. And we have the same thing happening in the Northeast Pacific. So we work with a number of indigenous communities on this coast that also we have a different species of nori here. It has been collected and eaten and traded by indigenous communities in the Northeast Pacific as well forever, thousands and thousands of years. And so there is something about that sort of that type

of seaweed that is culturally important to a lot of people. Yeah. And can I ask you a couple of questions from listeners? Do you have time? Sure. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay, so we'll ask a bunch of people. Yeah. And can I ask you a couple questions from listeners? Do you have time? Sure. Is that okay? Yeah. Okay, so we'll ask a bunch of patron questions in a moment with Patrick and Charlie, plus

some favorite seaweeds of other favorite macro-physiologists. But first, let's scatter some coin in the sea to some causes. And this week, we have three of them. So Patrick directed his toward the Rain Coast Education Fund, which delivers a broad range of high quality educational and interpretive programs such as field school, speaker series, summer camps, school programs, and events focused on the natural environment and cultures and communities of the Clayacoat and Barkley Sound region. And Charlie would like his to go to Greenwave.org, which replicates and scales regenerative ocean farms

to create jobs and protect the planet by training and supporting ocean farmers. And they work with coastal communities to create a blue economy. And we're also sending a donation to the wonderful Black in Marine Science, which was founded in 2020 and born from a recognized need for greater representation and support

for individuals and communities in marine science. And they have built a wonderful, ongoing, powerful network dedicated to advancing marine science and conservation. And for more on its founder, Dr. Tiara Moore, see our Forensic Ecology episode with her, which we're going to link in the show notes. We will also link, of course, blackandmarinescience.org, greenwave.org, and raincoasteducation.org. So thank you so much to sponsors of the show for making those three donations possible this week. Okay, so again, next week, we're going to cover aquaculture and farming

and what's okay to eat from the sea, including some seaweed. But for now, let's see what questions washed up from the folks at patreon.com Ologies and I started with Charlie. Some people had textural questions. Um, let's see Claire Elise Stacey Pinkowitz the amazing miss J wanted to ask in Claire's words slime. Why? Elise wanted to know why are some types slicker than others? What is it in seaweed that gives it that texture? Oh, that's something else that we're only beginning to appreciate that. The seaweeds

are dealing with basically their environment. And one way of dealing with the environment and cutting down other organisms from eating the seaweed is sloughing off some of your outer cells. They're sort of like our skin, sloughing off the skin. And this then sloughs off the grazing animals. Now that slime is not only coming from the seaweed, but it's coming from organisms that evolved with the seaweed. These are certain types of bacteria. The bacteria today have a completely new story to tell because we understood that there were

bacteria associated with the outside of the seaweed. That's very rich in that slime. But we didn't realize what the seaweed was getting out of the bacteria. And we see today there are certain types of bacteria that are releasing growth stimulating factors that actually enhance the ability of the seaweed to grow in their environments, including even taking up nutrients from the sea. So the slime is going to be coming from the seaweed and associated with bacteria. So slime, part of it is just the seaweed doing an exfoliation. Part of it is bacteria that

loves that stuff. All of it is the juicy goodness of nature. And some seaweeds produce something like the tannins in acorns and oak leaves, which helps ward off hungry sea snails. And scientists are trying to figure out what that is and see if they can select for that in seaweed farming so that they don't get kelp robbed by some hungry gastropods. Now speaking of industry, Clouds and Bugs and Shrooms, Chloe, Willow Hall, Sue Myshak, Kirit Singh, Nikki G, Road Less Traveled, Light Brown Pillow, and first time question askers Nina Toy and Ursula Goodwin as well as.

Ed wanted to know, Ed from Chicago asked, I had a question about seaweed plastic. How does that work? Like making plastic out of seaweed or making things out of seaweed to about seaweed plastic. How does that work? Like making plastic out of seaweed or making things out of seaweed to avoid using plastic. How are we doing with that? I have seen a few. There are several businesses that are taking extracts from kelp and from red algae and making bio plastics out of them. In the kelps, you have things like alginates. Then in the reds, you have things like carrageenan and agarin.

Those are gels. They make these gels and that can be used to make a plastic. Don't ask me how they make the plastic. Yeah. I will say that I have seen, especially for dried products, I've seen some things coming out of Europe where they're making sort of like cookie wrappers that are made out of algae so that they're 100% biodegradable. I've seen stuff that looks kind of like boxes

or sort of Tupperwares that are made of these bioplastics, vases. For dried things, that is. I think for liquids, it's a little more complicated. I remember seeing something about using alginates to make these little... I don't know if you saw this on the internet for a while. They had these little water containers that were like calcium alginates where they had made a little sphere that had the water inside. So like if you're in a marathon, you can grab one of these little water balls and pop it in your mouth and eat the whole thing. Yes, yes and it's so weird it's like you're in the space station eating a glob of water you know what I mean? But you're on land. Never

tried one. I mean either and I had wondered if you could use that to make you know condiments like you could make a little mustard blob or a ketchup blob and squeeze that into your burger. I don't know. That's a great idea. So there's one company called Sway and they're making compostable packaging out of seaweed. Lollyware makes drinking straws and notpla, which notpla, I suppose it means not plastic, has been creating food packaging made from seaweed and they also make that little bubble called an uho

that can contain liquids to just pop in your mouth and I so wish that more sci-fi movies would just lean on that because like when do you see some guy in a flight suit brooding over like an instrument panel holding a hydro flask what are they drinking in the future I don't know speaking in the future let's talk climate change requested patrons spicy native right on the tiger Bronte Right of the Tiger, Bronte, Rebecca Morrison, Tega Monte, Melanie Ang, Andy Pepper, Annie, first-time question asker, Gwen Kelly, Pryukli, Megan Morgan, Brenna Hull, and Thor Palsasaurus Jess, who asked, will seaweed save us all? And how about with the global impacts and carbon capture of farming seaweed? Are you finding that it's good for people who want

to eat it and also for the planet? Is that one thing that drives you with aquaculture? Well, that's a very good question. I thought maybe you might ask that. And you know, in the Green Wave Organization, when I was telling Brent Smith at that time when he was basically one of my disciples, I said to Brent, we have all these ecosystem services going on, what your kelp is doing in the environment. It's taking up the nitrogen during the winter and it's taking up carbon like blue blazes in the springtime. And that's the process of

photosynthesis. Well, we developed a kelp climate fund. These farmers are producing high quality food, 2.3 million pounds. And today I could say we have actually sequestered over 37,000 pounds of carbon and 4,500 pounds of nitrogen, all being removed from the environment through our Kelp Climate Fund. So we're doing our piece. And there was a 2023 paper titled, Potential Role of Seaweeds in Climate Change Mitigation. And it notes that we're looking at a few ways to beg seaweed to save our asses. One of them, restoring the wild stuff or more seaweed farms. Both of those two have uncertain net impacts at large scale.

There's also using seaweed products like methane reducing cattle feed or better packaging to reduce emissions in the first place. That, they say, shows some promise. There's also the option of growing a bunch of seaweed as a sink to capture carbon, which this paper notes raises ecological concerns. And the paper continues with a hand on seaweed's shoulder offering a consoling, quote, seaweed provides many other ecosystem services that justify conservation and restoration, and the uptake of seaweed aquaculture will contribute to the United Nations sustainable development goals.

But yeah, we need way more research to figure out if it will even help or make a dent. And an April 2022 paper titled, Seaweed Ecosystems May Not Mitigate CO2 Emissions, is also kind of a bit of a water bubble burster. And Patrick says that fixing the whole climate crisis is probably too big an ask of seaweed. But yeah, more research is needed. And Charlie, as chief scientist at GreenWave, acknowledges that we need to make sure we don't get too far ahead of the science. He says we have to build an industry on a strong science foundation, not false space.

So scientists are learning more every day. And cross your fingers, they'll fix the planet. Now, if seaweed did catch a break and could restore itself, what are the mechanics there? Well, since we already know they're not plants, which according to Becky, the Sassy Sea Grass Scientist, have roots, stems, seeds, flowers, shoots, and leaves, how does kelp make more kelp? Courtney Peterson, Diana Teeter, Anna Thompson, Jeffrey Bradshaw, and Chris Lipford wanted to know in Courtney's words, what is their reproduction cycle like? Diana wanted to know, in Courtney's words, what is their reproduction cycle? Like, Diana

wanted to know, does seaweed have seeds? Anna Thompson asked if it gets pollinated. But given it's not a plant, I don't know. It doesn't have flowers, right? Well, seaweeds have not reached the level of producing structures called seeds. They don't have that. They also don't have true roots. They don't have true leaves. They don't have true stems. However, what seaweeds do have is sex. And they do have complex reproductive cycles. The kelp in the springtime, also in the fall, they produce this dark brown tissue. It looks like somebody put tape on the seaweed blade. That's reproductive tissue that undergoes a process. It's called meiosis. But what this reproductive tissue does, myosis. But what this reproductive tissue does, it has cells that are called sporangia, and these sporangia produce literally millions of spores. Now, some spores will develop into

male plants. Some will produce female plants. The male plants produce sperm. Yes, they produce sperm. The female plants, they have structures that produce eggs. And to ensure the sperm will find the egg, it's not easy in the sea. Is anybody out there? The female releases a chemical attraction called a pheromone, sort of like insects. And that pheromone is so strong, it can then attract those sperm to find the egg and fertilize it. And then when it's fertilized, you get the baby kelp developing and growing into the big of plant. So that's one type of life cycle where you have

eggs and sperm. So that's the kelp, the brown algae. And Charlie says that when it comes to the green seaweeds, they can be just androgynous style icons. Very hard to tell the difference between the sexes. They produce the gametes and the gametes find each other and because he can't tell them apart you call them plus or minus, but they fuse. They're involved in sex. And in the red algae, they have very complex life cycles there. And once again, they produce sperm and the sperm don't have structures to move in the sea.

They're an amoeboid. Oh. And once again, you got sex. So seaweeds have some very interesting sexual stories. I love this for them. Now, a few folks, patrons, Mariah Walzer, the farming linguist, asked about foraging seaweeds. And Mariko wrote that, quote, my grandparents used to take me to gather seaweed along the California farming linguist asked about foraging

kiddo," Mariko wrote. And while we're going to cover more on this in next week's Aquaculture episode, you can listen to our foraging ecology episode with none other than the wonderful Alexis Nelson, aka Black Forager, and we'll link that in the show notes. And I went and gathered her advice from that episode, and she says that if she's foraging seaweed, she says, quote, I'm checking the water quality every day, and those are the levels posted for commercial fishermen, but anyone who's out there fishing or clamming or in her case dragging seaweed directly out of the ocean to put it into my gullet, she says, can also look at those levels.

And she also says you want to be knowing about the water temperature, the algal blooms, any spills that have happened in the area. So just a little bit of doing the research helps a lot. Now what if you're just conducting a seaweed safari and you're just feasting with your eyes? Do you have any tips for a beach goer or a lake goer? Is it cool to bring a loop? Do you wanna do some sketching?

Do you wanna look ahead of time on iNaturalist? Like what's the best way to appreciate the seaweed in your life? Oh wow, there are so many different ways. I think step one is just acknowledging that there are a lot of different kinds of seaweed. I think if you're standing far away and looking down at the beach

and you just kind of say, look at all that seaweed, and you're kind of putting it into one pot, you don't really appreciate how many different, you know, sizes, colors, textures, smells, tastes. There's just, there's a ton of diversity out there. You know, photographs are great. You can take a loop if you wanna look carefully. Some of them do have really nice,

like microscopic structure. But a lot of times you don't even need that. I think it's just paying attention to what's out there. Personally, I like so if I'm collecting in cold weather, I wear gloves where I've cut the fingers off so that my fingertips are still showing because I really get a lot out of feeling the texture of different seaweeds. Some of them can be quite slippery. Some of them can we can be bumpy or rough. Some of them they'll have

this surface texture that can be bumpy or rough. Some of them, they'll have this surface texture that can be informative to sort of figure out what you're looking at. I know people who scan them on flatbed scanners. You can make baskets out of them. I think you can write poetry about them. There's all sorts of ways to appreciate seaweed, yeah. Just a hot tip for those planning a trip to California.

It's still warm in October and the summer crowds have gone home sunburned and exhausted and the Angelinos they're out ready to party, especially for the annual seaweed festival. And the site California seaweed festival.org says that in collaboration with Alta Sea and the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, they're having the sixth annual California seaweed Festival. It's going to happen between October 10th and 11th, 2025 in San Pedro. And they say that if you have ideas on hosting a panel or workshop or demo, feel free to contact them via their website, CaliforniaSeaweedFestival.org. So chefs or foragers, farmers, macro-phychologists, get in on that. Now one macro-phychologist you should know about is Danielle McCaskill, who has been

studying seaweed for the last six years and is finishing up a PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And Danielle says that she's dedicated her life to seaweed, focusing on non-native seaweed ecology. And I was introduced to her via Black and Marine Science, and she's amazing. She's also been collaborating with the visual arts department at her university, working on art exhibits to highlight the wonders of algal ecology. And she's really passionate about using community science to revitalize Indigenous ecological

knowledge. She says, from the perspective of the Indigenous and Black community in San Diego, Danielle is awesome and sent us a voice note about her favorite seaweed. Hey, Allie. My name is Danielle McCaskill. I'm a fellow macrophychologist finishing my PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And my favorite seaweed right now is Andaria pinnatifida. I'll share four reasons why.

One, Andaria is pretty so cute. And this gorgeous leathery deep dark green, almost purplish color kelp is also known as wakame, and it grows off the cold water coasts of China and Japan and Korea. And when you plop it in hot water, it turns bright green. In nature, it's equally stunning. Danielle says, From the top they have this beautiful long wavy flowy undulating blade. It's great to use when making seaweed presses, which is kind of like pressing flowers, but

slimy and much more waters involved. And toward the bottom of the seaweed body, or the thallus, they have a reproductive structure called the sporophyll. It reminds me of ruffles on a dress, but also kind of looks like a pinecone. Two, Andaria is edible. It's super tasty, it's healthy. I've personally only had it as seaweed salad, but a friend from Korea says that they deep fry the sporophyll as a snack and they call it the ear of the seaweed, which is something I really want to try soon.

Number three, Andaria is interesting. So Andaria is a non-native seaweed that has been introduced to many countries throughout the world. People are wary of non-native seaweed that has been introduced to many countries throughout the world. People are wary of non-native seaweeds because they could cause negative changes in the ecosystem. However, the impacts of Andaria throughout the world are ambiguous. And in some regions, we don't even really know some of the basic questions about Andaria, like when do they start growing and how do they get here, which is exactly what I've been studying. Which is why Danielle is so cool.

So Andarya might be my favorite seaweed because I've been getting to know them through my research over the past six years or so. Number four, Andarya has helped me grow not only as a scientist, but as a person. During the research process, I've done things that I never thought I could do. For instance, I collaborated on an exhibit in an aquarium about Andarya with colleagues from the visual arts department. I learned how to operate a small boat. I learned how to scuba dive.

And really just through studying Andarya, I learned a lot about myself and I've made some lifelong friends and connections. And for that, I'm always going to be thankful. And Danielle, we are very thankful for you and the cool stuff you do. You can follow her at SeaweedSista on Instagram, which we will link in the show notes. What a great macrophagologist. I'm also a big fan of scientist Angela Jones, who studies primarily sea stars, but told me that she does algae pressing as a restorative form of art and therapy.

And she says, using rack algae as a form of art has been helpful for myself, my volunteers, and the community. And that caused me to look up rack algae, because I was like, I don't know what that is. W-R-A-C-K. And apparently, that's the insider term for the seaweed that's washed ashore. So you can use that whenever you need to impress your new seaweed friends. And I asked Angela about the algae that is presently stealing her heart. Hello, Allie Ward and Allie's listeners.

My name is Angela Jones. I am a rising fifth year PhD candidate at Northeastern University. I specialize in sea star morphology, but I've been doing algae research since my undergrad, so over a decade now. And I've been continuously incorporating algae through algae presses as a form of like art therapy and community. And so I've been using it as a really cool tool to connect with the general public, with other marine scientists, with kids. And these are so pretty, like fanned out,

deep purplish or red or ochre imprints with all kinds of species and hues represented on these sheets of white paper. So my favorite really depends on the day. Devil's tongue is a really cool one that is a red algae that has little hooks on the side, kind of like a forked tongue, like the devil's tongue is a really cool one that is a red algae that has little hooks on the side, kind of like a forked tongue, like the Devil's tongue name. That one was a favorite for a bit.

I currently am gravitating towards Vichodrus rubens, sea oak leaf. It has these really nice veins to it and it's red. So it looks like how you would picture an oak leaf, but just as if it grew underwater. Those ones are here in New England and so I press them quite often. And I think currently those are probably my favorite, but any red, anything that I can get my hands on to press has been really fun. We use it to come up with fun assemblages. I like to show community structure or make art. So making the algae look like sea slugs.

Using remaining pieces of algae are pretty cool. I try to only collect the stuff that is washed ashore that can form these big, sometimes smelly mats. And I go out and I sort through that and find all different kinds of amazing species. So I think right now I love it all. But yeah, we can go with Phycocis rubens, the sea oak. Let's ask Charlie if he appreciates seaweed. Do you think he does? How about your favorite thing about seaweed? Is there anything that you love the most? My favorite thing about seaweed? Yeah. Well, I got to tell you my favorite thing besides the taste, I just think seaweeds are

amazing. They're beautiful. The beauty of seaweeds. And I think a friend who comes from the Bay Area, you may have met her. If you haven't met her, you should. Her name is Josie Isolin. Okay. I'll look her up. Josie has a great book. Let's see if you can see it right there. The Curious World of Seaweed.

Yes. A lovely book, by the way, from Hay Day Press and insider stories and facts about seaweed alongside illustrations and pressings and field guide type drawings of the past. It's a real stunner. It's a curious world of seaweed. And we'll link that on our website at alieward.com slash ology slash macrophychology. She really shows the beauty of the seaweeds. And that to me is important. But the beauty of seaweeds, I think, that captured me when I was a student, when I was scuba diving beneath the sea.

And it's still to this day is something that I just look at and just say, boy, this is fantastic. You look at a giant kelp and you say to yourself, boy, look at around the kelp, you know, the fish that are associated with that community and the structure, the red seaweed, some are very feathery light, some are very long, some are many different colors and so forth depending where they're growing. Ah, gorgeous. It's the beauty that's there. There is the economic value that I could say is sitting

there and we're starting to appreciate that in North America. Ah, how beautiful, how gorgeous. But what sucks? Let's ask Patrick. You mentioned cold weather. Is that the hardest part about studying seaweed or is it when you get texts when you're trying to deplane? Like what's the hardest part about studying this? Well I'll tell you one of the hard things which is that there the diversity is very high and being able to differentiate species. So one of the things that we're doing is we've been following seaweed communities for 14 years on this island called Calvert Island.

Calvert Island, side note, it's north of Vancouver, just off the coast. You know, it's right near Goose Bay. It's near Bull Harbor, right in there. And it's mainly used for research with maybe like 30 people on it. And I made the mistake of looking at photos and unfortunately it is gorgeous and I would

like to live there eating kelp. And you know, we have to name every single seaweed that we collect and they can look very similar. So some of them might only be that, you know, smaller than the size of your finger. So you know, there's often debate, just yesterday, you know, I got a text from someone with a picture of a tide pool saying, what's this species? And I'm saying, okay, well, here's a guess,

but did it feel like this? And did it bend kind of like this? And, you know, what was the temperature of the tide pool? And I don't know. So the diversity can be a bit overwhelming, let's put it that way. Exciting and amazing, but can be overwhelming. What about your favorite seaweed? And did you get it tattooed on your arm?

Or is that a different one? Or do you, is it a moving target? So yes, it is a moving target. I have, I have many favorites. I did get my favorite seaweed tattooed on my arm. Where's the camera? So yeah, I have this seaweed on my arm. It's this beautiful fanning set of what looks like two feathers conjoined at a holdfast near the wrist. And one feather seems kind of shyer than the other. It's peeking out from behind it. It is called erythrophilum.

It's a red seaweed that looks like a big feather. You can see how it's kind of feather-like. Yeah. It's just a really cool seaweed. It only lives in really wave exposed areas where there's big waves crashing. And then it's just like this burst of red feathers hanging off the rock. It's a very cool. And so that's definitely one of my favorites

because it's just so amazing. There are other interesting ones like Botryocladea is this little red alga that all of its branches are full of mucilage. So they're they look like little balloons. It's like a cluster of balloons, little red balloons that are all full of this mucilage, which is just kind of surreal and amazing. When you got your tattoo, did the tattoo artist ask you a lot of questions? Did that tattoo artist end up knowing a lot about that species when he left? Yes. Like it or not, she's gonna, I'm gonna fill her, fill her head full of seaweed facts. Actually, my tattoo artist was Japanese and so she had a history with seaweed and was excited to tell me all about eating seaweeds when she was little and she was really amazing at doing

botanical and sort of feather-like tattoos so she she was a really good fit. But yeah, I felt like I really found the perfect tattoo artist for the tattoo. Just a shout out to his tattoo artist, Michi Kojima at Sacred Heart Tattoo in Vancouver, BC. And you can look for her Instagram at Tattoos by Michi, M-I-C-H-I-E. Oh, that's stunning. I feel like I have heard of other seaweed fans who have also gotten seaweed tattoos and they are stunning and gorgeous and also probably misunderstood or just misidentified a lot. Yes. Yeah, it's true. I have a lot of people think that I have feathers on my arm, which is fine because it looks a lot like feathers. The fern people think, oh, it's a fern. No,

it's not a fern. And then I have the kelp people say, oh, it's a fern. No, it's not a fern. And then I have the kelp people say, oh, it's a kelp. No, it's not a kelp. And then we talk about why it's not a kelp. It's a red alga and not a brown one. Like, hello. And then I had a former student of mine, I was visiting in California,

and she's still a seaweed biologist in California. And I saw her for the first time after getting the tattoo, and she came right up to me and she said, oh my God, it's a Rhythma philum. And I was like, the first time after getting the tattoo, and she came right up to me and she said, oh my God, it's a Rhythmophilum. And I was like, you're my people. Do you go to seaweed conferences? Yes. Yep, I go to seaweed conferences.

In fact, I just helped organize a big international seaweed symposium that happened just a month ago. And it was for 750 people with 43 countries represented, it was a big deal. Yeah. They need to have like a roll call for if you have a seaweed tattoo, like come to the photo booth. If you're willing to show, let's see it and just make a book for the next year.

Because I think that's so beautiful. I agree. I agree. That's right. Yeah. I'm already kind of planning out my next seaweed tattoo. I feel it's going to happen. Do you know yet?

Or is that under wraps? I have ideas, but I can't reveal that right now. Okay I respect that. So ask many marine people just a tidal wave of questions because honestly I didn't know jack shit about seaweed before and now next week we'll hear about farming stuff from the sea and whether or not it's a terrible idea. I'm invested in seaweed. I love it. To learn more about Patrick, Charlie, Danielle, Becky, and Angela, we'll link their socials and their websites in the show notes. We have so many more links and info up at our website,

aliworn.com slash ologies slash macrophychology. You can check out Dr. Patrick Martone's app too. It's called The Seaweed Sorter. You can go romp on a seashore somewhere and enjoy your new ancient algal friends. We are at Ologies on Blue Sky and Instagram. I'm at Allie Ward on both. We have swear free short episodes

for kids called Smology's. You can hear wherever you get podcasts or linked at the show notes. Ologies merch is at ologiesmerch.com and you can join us on Patreon at patreon.com slash ologies. Erin Talbert, admin z Ologies podcast, Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes art professional transcripts, Kelly R. Dwyer does the website,

Noelle Dilworth is our holdfast scheduling producer, ologies Neptune and managing director is Susan Hale, and co-captains of editing Steering the Sounds are the wonderful Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio and the trustee Jake Chaffee who put this all together. Nick Thorburn is the siren who made the theme music, and if you listen until the end of this, I tell you a secret.

This one is that this one time I was out as a teenage goth, I was taking biology courses in Santa Barbara, and I was just cavorting around a pier at night like a straight-edge oppressed suburban goth might. And my friend Mikey found a bottle of, like like abandoned tobacco sauce open near a pile of fish guts and started swinging it around and I hollered for him to stop. And as I did so, my sweater and my open mouth became the receivers of a not insignificant amount of this Tabasco. And to this day, I cannot smell or eat Tabasco sauce. Other hot sauce, fine.

Tabasco, get it away from me. Also, at the time I was studying at the Santa Barbara Community College there, love it, and my botany professor was Dr. Bob Cummings. And one day, he was normally a really nice guy, but one day he was like, there's going to be this really important test that week. And just had to make sure none of us skipped class.

And it was really crucial to our grade. And so, you know, we all got in that morning and dutifully walked into his lab only to find him in a chef's hat with this very jolly grin and a sushi demo party for us. And that is where I first tasted Nori as a teenager who had been too afraid to eat seaweed before. And I love Dr. Bob Cummings. So if you are lucky enough to have him as a teacher, tell him he changed your life because I maybe never would have started ologies if he wasn't just the best.

So there you go. All right, be good to each other. Bye. Littology, homology, cryptozoology, lithology, nanotechnology, meteorology, cryptology, nephology, seriology, pseudology.