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

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.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

  How's your ponytail looking? Maybe like a little thinner than it used to? We've talked about this in our menopause episode. At some point, it's bound to happen to all of us. So if you're ready for thicker, fuller hair, start your free online visit today at forhers.com/ologies for personalized care. So that's F O R H E R S dot com slash ologies. Individual results may vary. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. Price varies based on product and subscription plan. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. Being safer on the road starts with the person behind the wheel. That's Mazda's philosophy when designing every vehicle.

• 0:42Alie Ward?

  Their proactive safety features help keep you more aware, connected, and engaged during every drive, which means your car does more than help protect you. It makes you a safer driver, which helps protect everyone. That's why Mazda has been named Consumer Reports' safest new car brand. To learn more, visit mazdausa.com. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. This podcast is brought to you by Aura. Your body has a lot going on. Sleep, stress, recovery. You would be surprised how connected it all is. Aura Ring tracks more than 50 metrics from your finger, and the Aura app brings that information together to help you see patterns across your sleep, and stress, activity, and more.

• 1:26Alie Ward?

  So you can start connecting the dots and figure out what works for you. Learn more at auraring.com. Wear your best life with Aura. Oh, hey, it's the guy testing out the patio furniture at Costco, Ally 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.

• 2:08Alie Ward?

  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. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, pointed me toward

• 2:50Alie Ward?

  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 door was just slid open, I thought, "I bet there's some great macrobiologists via Black in marine science who want to nerd out with me about big ocean algae."

• 3:30Alie Ward?

  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 Swerita, 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,

• 4:10Alie Ward?

  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 $1 a month via patreon.com/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 help the show so much, and I read them all, such as this one from Mog Bar, 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.

• 4:55Alie Ward?

  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." Mog Bar, there's no crying in baseball, but there's plenty of it on my face right now. So congratulations, kid, or 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,

• 5:38Alie Ward?

  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 macrophycologists, Dr. Charlie Yarish, Danielle McCaskill, Becky Sarita, Angela Jones, and this week's guest in chief, Dr. Patrick Martone.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  I'm Patrick Martone and I use he/him pronouns.

• 6:32Alie Ward?

  Mm-hmm. And I'm happy to talk to you in a setting where you're on solid ground. I texted you.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  Yes. Me too.

• 6:42Alie Ward?

  What were you doing when I texted you?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:22Alie Ward?

  I had like gotten your number from your partner Colin. He was like, yeah, he's in the field. I was like, okay, you know, no big. I didn't realize that I texted you. It 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.

• 7:40Speaker 01

  Of course. That was great.

• 7:42Alie Ward?

  Like barging in in the middle of a brain surgery, being like, hey, can I ask you a couple of questions?

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Kind of busy right now.

• 7:47Alie Ward?

  No. But you came to my attention because you were nominated very glowingly. 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?

• 8:21Speaker 01

  You know what, I actually grew up in Florida.

• 8:23Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  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 fish and crabs and nudibranchs 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.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  I can trace my interest in seaweed quite through many years, back to my childhood.

• 9:14Alie Ward?

  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.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. My thesis in 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 you know, 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.

• 9:47Alie Ward?

  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, you know, the Pacific Northwest? And then obviously Asia, Japan, big seaweed culture there. Where is seaweed growing and how is it different in different places?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  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.

• 10:59Alie Ward?

  I love everything that Florida has to offer and not offer.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:05Alie Ward?

  Other than that, Florida's 10 out of 10.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  That's exactly it.

• 11:09Alie Ward?

  Just the seaweed.

• 11:10Alie Ward?

  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.

• 11:28Alie Ward?

  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?

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Well, you know, that's a very good question. Seaweeds are 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.

• 11:59Alie Ward?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  If any light penetrates, those seaweed can grow. Some seaweed types can grow in dim light or I probably should say in moonlight.

• 12:12Speaker 03

  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.

• 12:57Speaker 03

  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.

• 13:05Alie Ward?

  Let's ask Patrick, why?

• 13:08Alie Ward?

  Well, OK, you said something about cold water 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?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  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's higher. Whereas in the Northeast Pacific and sort of colder areas, you tend to have a lot of upwelling. The deep water that 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, all those nutrients get used up. They tend not to have enough nutrients

• 14:08Speaker 01

  to support so much primary production.

• 14:10Alie Ward?

  I grew up in San Francisco, so, you know, growing up in the Pacific, you're kind of like beaches have kelp. And then it didn't strike me till 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.

• 14:28Alie Ward?

  Love a tide pool, though. Get me to the beach in a turtleneck. And as Charlie said, Unlike the largest species of kelp, Macroscystus pyrrephera, 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.

• 14:45Speaker 03

  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.

• 15:10Alie Ward?

  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.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  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.

• 16:02Alie Ward?

  Ah, I'm so sorry. Never if I ever go to the Bahamas, I'm so sorry, algae. I'm sure that that's just part of life.

• 16:09Speaker 03

  Well, you'll have to look for one when you're down in the Bahamas. It's called Neptune's Shavings 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 Shavings Brush. They are common in the Bahamas. And there is 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.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  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.

• 17:02Alie Ward?

  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

• 17:44Alie Ward?

  to Patrick and just get back to basics. But, um, so, okay, seaweed, not a weed, first off.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Right? You know, weed has a negative connotation.

• 17:56Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  I guess the question here is, what is a seaweed?

• 17:59Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  And, you know, this comes back to defining algae. So I think of myself as a physiologist, which is someone who studies algae. And algae is a really funny term because it's sort of a catch-all term for, you know, 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.

• 18:38Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  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 floem, you know, like plants might have.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  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 they're acquiring all of their nutrition from the water around them. And then they generally don't have floem, which would be a way to move sugars.

• 19:37Alie Ward?

  And for more on the botanical structure and the vascular highways going up and down, it keep trees and plants reaching and growing. You can see our excellent and fan favorite episode dendrology with tree expert J. Casey Clapp.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  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 a 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.

• 20:21Alie Ward?

  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 a 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?

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Well, a seaweed cell would look a lot like a plant cell because they have a cell wall around them, which gives them a structure. You know, that's a kind of a way to differentiate animal cells from these sort of photosynthetic cells. Chloro... Okay, I think we need to talk about endosymbiosis, Ali.

• 21:19Alie Ward?

  Yes, please. I don't know what the hell that is.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  You know, I was trying to avoid it, but I think we gotta talk about it.

• 21:26Alie Ward?

  Bring it on, bring it on.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  Okay, so do you know, so plants have chloroplasts, right?

• 21:35Alie Ward?

  Of course, yes, yes, the little green baubles in plant cells.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  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, yeah, are photosynthetic. So endosymbiosis is the process by which a eukaryotic cell,

• 22:22Speaker 01

  so a cell with a nucleus and organelles, was eating other cells. It was eating bacteria.

• 22:29Alie Ward?

  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, cyanobacteria. Now, the cyano makes me think of a color, like a blue color?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Blue-green, yeah, cyano, yeah, cyan, yeah.

• 22:53Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  So blue-green algae, yeah, so cyanobacteria are the same as blue-green algae. Okay, let's talk about cyanobacteria for a second.

• 23:01Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  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 2 billion years old, like really, really old.

• 23:16Alie Ward?

  2 billion years old?

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:19Alie Ward?

  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? Four or five 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.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  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, you know, we need oxygen.

• 24:30Alie Ward?

  It was all because of them?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 24:32Alie Ward?

  We should literally thank them in an acceptance speech. Couldn't have done it without them.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:37Speaker 04

  It was my privilege, thank you.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  So, 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 is 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.

• 25:24Alie Ward?

  It's like livestock, kind of. It's like having a goat.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  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. And there is no doubt that the chloroplast used to be a free-living cyanobacterium.

• 25:50Alie Ward?

  Oh, I love that. It seems like they're friends. It seems like it's working out well for both of them.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 25:56Alie Ward?

  Okay, good.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  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

• 26:40Speaker 01

  kelps are brown algae, their chloroplast used to be a free-living red alga.

• 26:46Alie Ward?

  What?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  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.

• 27:01Alie Ward?

  It's a turducken. It's like a turducken.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  An algal turducken, exactly.

• 27:06Alie Ward?

  What? And so does that mean that brown algae is farther down evolutionarily? Or was that just happenstance?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 27:29Alie Ward?

  Well, what about the green? Is that just a middle child? Is that Jan Brady?

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Sounds like you have a serious case of middle child syndrome.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 28:23Alie Ward?

  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 was very helpful.

• 28:37Alie Ward?

  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.

• 28:56Speaker 05

  Hi, Ally, 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.

• 29:17Alie Ward?

  Roots, stems, seeds, flowers, shoots and leaves. I can confirm that is fun to remember.

• 29:22Speaker 05

  So my favorite algae, I love good old Olvalactupca 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's... 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? It's great.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  So, ulva lectuca, 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.

• 30:16Alie Ward?

  So that is Becky DeSassi, sea grass 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 lectuca, which looks like gorgeous fluffy tufts of like Heineken bottle green colored seaweed. So there are freshwater plants, or hydrophytes. There are marine plants, AKA seagrasses. There's marine algae, AKA seaweed. But what are non-marine, thus non-sea freshwater algae called?

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I think when I go to a lake and I get my feet tangled up in lake weed, you know, I sort of call those that lake weed 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.

• 31:21Alie Ward?

  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?

• 31:41Speaker 01

  Oh, we probably eat more of other seaweeds than we do of kelp. For example, if you think about nori, you know, you think about what you eat in your sushi, that is a red alga. What? So that's, that's not a kelp at all. The genus is, is Pyropia or, or Porphyra. That's a genus that's, 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 carriginen's and produce agar. So if, maybe you've heard of carriginen. This is like a thickener that's in your toothpaste and your ice cream. You know, that all comes from red algae.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 32:41Alie Ward?

  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?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Okay, so this is, 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 there are, in the red algae, there is a group of pigments called ficobillins, which tend to look Pink, purply, red, there are a few different ficobellins. And they tend to be a little bit better at absorbing some of those other wavelengths like green that the chlorophylls can't absorb.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  And it just broadens the kinds of spectrum of light that these algae can absorb.

• 34:16Alie Ward?

  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.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  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 ficobellins that look red. And then the brown algae tend to have carotenoids like carotene, beta-carotene, fucosanthin, that make them look kind of brownie, like almond brown, sort of, yeah.

• 34:51Alie Ward?

  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 stuff, like the color wheel, essentially.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  Exactly. So there are a lot of algae, like if you go to the shore around San Francisco, there is a lot of seaweeds that will just look black.

• 35:12Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 35:12Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:28Alie Ward?

  When you eat seaweed, I'm assuming you eat seaweed?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  I do.

• 35:32Alie Ward?

  Of course. Do you?

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Guilty.

• 35:36Alie Ward?

  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?

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm, 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.

• 36:11Alie Ward?

  Do you have a favorite?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  To eat?

• 36:14Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Well, I really do like some of the locally harvested pyropias, like the local nories. 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.

• 36:34Alie Ward?

  And we are pairing macrophykology 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 his 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.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  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 going to 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 stipe, the really long one?

• 37:47Alie Ward?

  Yes, yes.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 37:58Alie Ward?

  And you could dip them in so many different things, I imagine. You know, if someone asked if there was any truth to the fact that the bulb essentially-

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Oh, the pneumaticist.

• 38:09Alie Ward?

  Pneumaticist has enough carbon monoxide to kill a chicken or a person. Any truth to that?

• 38:18Speaker 01

  I think, 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 pneumatic system. There's some interesting stories there. But one of them is that, yeah, there is carbon monoxide inside of that. And there was a, there was a study that really did these calculations on sort of what kind of, you know, animals would pass out if they, if they breathed in this gas. But we, we estimated in a, in a paper that we wrote that it, there's enough volume of carbon monoxide in those big pneumatic systems that if a person, you know, inhaled that, they might actually pass out. Yeah.

• 38:56Alie Ward?

  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. Postmortem 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

• 39:38Alie Ward?

  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 like 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 Gas Composition of Developing Pneumatic Systems in Bulk Kelp 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 phyological adage.

• 40:21Alie Ward?

  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 bull kelp 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.

• 41:03Alie Ward?

  But I mean, don't, 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 pneumaticist.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Very dramatic, yes.

• 41:19Alie Ward?

  Um, when it comes to bull kelp, you mentioned the blade and the pneumaticist. 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.

• 41:39Alie Ward?

  So please enjoy our echinodology episode all about sea urchins and why the California Department of Fish and Wildlife is like 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 want to ruin otters forever for yourself. I recommend that. They're linked in the show notes and just, I'm sorry, in advance.

• 42:05Alie Ward?

  But what kind of happens in a kelp forest? What kind of things are we seeing? What anatomy are we seeing of the seaweed?

• 42:11Speaker 01

  Well, let's start, let's start with the anatomy of the seaweed itself.

• 42:14Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  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 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, on land. The whole purpose of a holdfast is just to hold on to the rock. Right. That's how they stay in one place and don't drift away. So they have this holdfast, then they have a stipe, 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 holdfast, a single stipe, and then one blade.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  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, to gain height without needing to invest in wood. You know, we think of plants, if, 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 and do a little gas bladder and they can grow straight up.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Like I, I like to imagine, you know, if we had this on land, it would be like plants with helium balloons, you know, holding them up in the, in the air.

• 43:49Alie Ward?

  Oh, that's so cute. I've seen so many of them on the seashore. And, you know, growing up as a kid, they were just simply things to try to pop with your sneaker. If you could.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  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?

• 44:09Alie Ward?

  How does that work?

• 44:11Speaker 01

  No one knows.

• 44:12Alie Ward?

  What?

• 44:13Speaker 01

  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 Ligon, 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.

• 44:36Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Because you would explode, basically, right?

• 44:40Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  And what she found is, at all sizes of the bulk kelp, when they were teeny tiny, like, you know, six inches long versus 20 feet long, the pressure inside of that bladder was always less than atmospheric pressure at the surface.

• 44:56Alie Ward?

  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 kelp, 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 pneumatic cyst, which gets its name from pneata, 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.

• 45:36Speaker 01

  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 halfway hollow down that stipe. And so what we think is, if you imagine you're a baby bulk 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 overpressurized.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Because when you're underwater, there's all this negative pressure from the water pushing on you.

• 46:25Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  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.

• 46:41Alie Ward?

  So 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.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:48Alie Ward?

  But they're not exploding.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Yes. Isn't that cool?

• 46:52Alie Ward?

  That's so much evolution to get that right.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  I know. So there's a cool amount of selection that has probably happened where all the ones that accidentally were overpressurized, they all sank and died because they popped. And all the ones 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 bulk kelps. Isn't that cool?

• 47:12Alie Ward?

  Yes.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  So here's the cool thing. When you go to the beach and you pop a bulk 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 and 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 kelp.

• 47:43Alie Ward?

  No. So it's almost like an implosion, kind of?

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:46Alie Ward?

  Oh, I had no idea.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  There's cool stuff happening in there. Yeah. And we don't know how that works.

• 47:52Alie Ward?

  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 Becky and Sabrina had undoubtedly the weirdest question. And I just, I couldn't, I couldn't wait. Sabrina? My name is Sabrina Shaw. I'm from Snohomish, Washington. And I'm curious if there is really enough carbon monoxide in the floaty end of bulk kelp to kill a chicken or perhaps even a man?

• 48:21Alie Ward?

  I was like, I don't even know what, what gas, who, what, what, what gas is in there?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. The gases that are in there are, there are, there is carbon monoxide, there is also carbon dioxide, oxygen and nitrogen. So we think that it's, 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.

• 48:59Alie Ward?

  You know, question, if, do you ever get panicked emails from brides saying, my Cancun wedding's 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.

• 49:24Speaker 06

  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.

• 49:37Alie Ward?

  Like, what is happening and are seaweed experts called in to like?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  We have an action team, Ally. Call in the seaweed action team, yes. No, there are, 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, you know, 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,

• 50:31Speaker 01

  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.

• 50:50Alie Ward?

  Oh, no.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Which is horrifying for the beachgoers and the, you know, the brides who were so excited for their photo shoot that day.

• 50:58Alie Ward?

  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 coworkers. On your wedding day, things are going to 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.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  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.

• 52:02Alie Ward?

  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?

• 52:11Speaker 01

  I possibly other algal blooms, but not sargassum. I think that most of those sargasso 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, 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, by islands of sargassum.

• 52:43Alie Ward?

  Of course, Charlie, loving the warmer waters, also had thoughts on this plague to beach days.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  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 wreaking 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,

• 53:32Speaker 03

  and they just feed the blooms of the sargassum.

• 53:35Alie Ward?

  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.

• 53:57Speaker 03

  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.

• 54:11Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  And I said, what happens to that seaweed when it decays?

• 54:16Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  Where is all of it going? And I snorkel 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 diver, 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.

• 54:55Alie Ward?

  Was your hearing affected?

• 54:57Speaker 03

  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, you know, stay where the seaweeds 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.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  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.

• 56:01Alie Ward?

  And of course, to do fieldwork and collect samples and maybe contract surgical grade ear infections, you got to get your feet wet and see the world. Charlie has been a diver for decades and asked any macrophysicologist about their passport stamps in the name of algae. Actually, I did. I asked Patrick. What about different parts of the world? Because I, 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.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 56:41Alie Ward?

  Like Korea? Where have you gone in search of seaweed?

• 56:45Speaker 01

  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. 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

• 57:24Speaker 01

  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 looks look familiar, but then they're different species.

• 57:45Alie Ward?

  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.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, Australia was fantastic. I've collected in Taiwan. I've collected in Italy. I've collected in England. So, yeah.

• 58:18Alie Ward?

  Why does that Asian coast, why are they so good at seaweed and other cultures are not, haven't made use of seaweed in, from a culinary standpoint that we could?

• 58:29Speaker 01

  You know, it's a, 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

• 59:13Speaker 01

  sort of that type of seaweed that is culturally important to a lot of people.

• 59:18Alie Ward?

  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 patron questions in a moment with Patrick and Charlie, plus some favorite seaweeds of other favorite macrobiologists. 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 schools, speaker series, summer camps, school programs, and events focused on the natural environment and cultures and communities of the Klaikwatt and Barclay Sound region. And Charlie would like his to go to greenwave.org,

• 1:00:00Alie Ward?

  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, blackinmarinescience.org, greenwave.org, and raincoasteducation.org. So thank you so much to sponsors of the show

• 1:00:45Alie Ward?

  for making those three donations possible this week. This episode of Allogies with Ali Ward is brought to you by Alloy Health. As you may know, we've talked a lot about estrogen and hormones on this podcast. We have a three-part menopause episode. And there's something that nobody tells you. And this is that your skin changes that start in your 40s, they aren't just aging, they are hormonal, specifically estrogen loss. So estrogen naturally helps maintain collagen. It helps support elasticity, keeps your skin hydrated. And as it declines, your skin gets thinner and drier. So if your skin is feeling thin or dry or dull after 40, Alloy has prescription M4 skincare. It's designed for perimenopause and beyond with convenient virtual consultations and redelivery. So try M4 skincare from Alloy.

• 1:01:29Alie Ward?

  And see results in as little as eight weeks. Head to my alloy.com and use the code OLOGIES to get 25% off your first order. So your menopause specialized doctor will help you build a skincare plan for your needs. Plus you get $0 unlimited messaging with your doctor. So head to M Y A L L O Y.com and use code OLOGIES to get 20% off your first order. This code is valid on products only. These are compounded products, not subject to FDA approval. 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 slash Ologies.

• 1:02:13Alie Ward?

  And I started with Charlie. Some people had textural questions. Let's see, Claire, Elise, Stacy 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 that texture?

• 1:02:33Speaker 03

  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. You know, 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 evolve with the seaweed.

• 1:03:16Speaker 03

  And these are certain types of bacteria. And 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.

• 1:04:02Alie Ward?

  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 Misha, Kerit 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,

• 1:04:47Alie Ward?

  I had a question 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?

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  I have seen a few, there are several businesses that are taking extracts from kelp and from red algae and making, yeah, bioplastics out of them. In the kelps, you have things like alginate. And in the reds, you have things like carraginin and agarin. And those are gels, they make these gels. And that can, that can be used to make a plastic. Don't ask me how they make the plastic. But 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.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  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 there. I remember seeing something about using alginate to make these little.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  I don't know if you saw this, it was on the internet for a while. They had these little water containers that were like calcium alginate 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.

• 1:06:15Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  I'd me neither. 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.

• 1:06:33Alie Ward?

  That's a great idea. So there's one company called Sway and they're making compostable packaging out of seaweed. Lolliware makes drinking straws and Not Pla, which Not Pla, 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 of the future, let's talk climate change. Requested patrons, Spicy Native, Ride of the Tiger, Bronte, Rebecca Morrison, Tegamonte, Melanie Eng, Andy Pepper, Annie, first time question asker, Gwen Kelly,

• 1:07:18Alie Ward?

  Priukle, Megan Morgan, Brenna Hall, and Thor Passasaurus 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, it's good for people who want to eat it and also for the planet? Is that one thing that drives you with aquaculture?

• 1:07:38Speaker 03

  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 Bren Smith at that time, when he was basically one of my disciples, I said to Bren, 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 via process of photosynthesis. Well, we developed a kelp climate fund. These farmers

• 1:08:21Speaker 03

  are producing high quality food, 2.3 million pounds and

• 1:08:27Speaker 03

  Today, I could say, we have actually sequestered over 37,000 pounds of carbon

• 1:08:38Alie Ward?

  Wow.

• 1:08:38Speaker 03

  and 4,500 pounds of nitrogen, all being removed from the environment through our Kelp Climate Fund. So we're doing our piece.

• 1:08:49Alie Ward?

  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,

• 1:09:32Alie Ward?

  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."

• 1:10:16Alie Ward?

  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 seagrass scientist, have roots, stems, seeds, flowers, shoots, and leaves, how does kelp make more kelp?

• 1:10:43Alie Ward?

  Courtney Peterson, Diana Teter, Anna Thompson, Jeffrey Bradshaw, and Chris Lippford 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, it, I don't know. It must not, it doesn't have flowers, right?

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Well, seaweeds have not reached the level of producing structures called seeds.

• 1:11:10Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 1:11:10Speaker 03

  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, it has cells that are called sporangia.

• 1:11:55Speaker 03

  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.

• 1:12:24Speaker 06

  Is anybody out there?

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  The female releases a chemical attraction called a pheromone, sort of like, you know, 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 bigger plant. So that's one type of life cycle where you have eggs and sperm.

• 1:12:56Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:13:07Speaker 03

  They produce the gametes and the gametes find each other. And because you can't tell them apart, you call them plus or minus, but they just, 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 amoeboid.

• 1:13:33Alie Ward?

  Oh.

• 1:13:34Speaker 03

  And once again, you got sex. So seaweeds have some very interesting sexual stories.

• 1:13:43Alie Ward?

  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 coast with our Japanese-American community back in the 1980s. It was one of my most vivid cultural memories. Is this still a safe thing to do, water quality wise? And is it legal to forage in this way? I'd love to keep this tradition alive with my 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."

• 1:14:28Alie Ward?

  And those are the levels posted for a commercial fisherman. But anyone who's out there, you know, 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 beachgoer or a lakegoer? Is it cool to bring a loop? Do you want to do some sketching? Do you want to look ahead of time on iNaturalist? Like, what's the best way to appreciate the seaweed in your life?

• 1:15:09Speaker 01

  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 want to look carefully. Some of them do have really nice, like, microscopic structure. But a lot of times, you don't even, you don't even need that. I think it's just paying attention to what's out there.

• 1:15:52Speaker 01

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

• 1:16:28Alie Ward?

  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, CaliforniaSeaweedFestival.org, says that in collaboration with Altacay 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, macrophytologists, get in on that. Now, one macrophytologist you should know about is Danielle McCaskill,

• 1:17:12Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:17:50Speaker 07

  Hey, Ally. My name is Danielle McCaskill. I'm a fellow macrophytologist, finishing my PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And my favorite seaweed right now is Andaria panaraphida. I'll share four reasons why. One, Andaria is pretty, so cute.

• 1:18:08Alie Ward?

  And this gorgeous, leathery, deep, dark green, almost purplish color kelp is also known as wakami, 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.

• 1:18:24Speaker 07

  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 water is 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 pine cone. Two, Andaria is edible. It's super tasty. It's healthy. And 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.

• 1:19:08Speaker 07

  So Andaria is a 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.

• 1:19:33Alie Ward?

  Which is why Danielle is so cool.

• 1:19:35Speaker 07

  So Andaria 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, Andaria 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 Andaria 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 Andaria, 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.

• 1:20:09Alie Ward?

  And Danielle, we are very thankful for you and the cool stuff you do. You can follow her at Seaweed Sista on Instagram, which we will link in the show notes. What a great macrophykologist. 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 wrack algae as a form of art has been helpful for myself, my volunteers, and the community." And that caused me to look up wrack 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.

• 1:20:51Speaker 08

  Hello, Ally Ward and Allogies 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.

• 1:21:32Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:21:42Speaker 08

  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 name. That one was a favorite for a bit. I currently am gravitating towards Phycodra rubens, sea oak leaf. It has these really nice veins to it and it's red. So it looks like how you would picture it 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.

• 1:22:26Speaker 08

  But any red, anything that I 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 Phycodra rubens, the sea oak.

• 1:23:08Alie Ward?

  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?

• 1:23:15Speaker 03

  My favorite thing about seaweed?

• 1:23:16Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Speaker 03

  Well, I gotta tell you, my favorite thing besides the taste, I just, 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 Iselin.

• 1:23:41Alie Ward?

  Okay, I'll look her up.

• 1:23:42Speaker 03

  Josie.

• 1:23:44Speaker 03

  Has a great book. Let's see if you could see it right there.

• 1:23:48Alie Ward?

  The Curious World of Seaweed.

• 1:23:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:23:51Alie Ward?

  A lovely book, by the way, from Hayday 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 aliward.com/ology/macrophykology.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  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, you know, look at it 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 seaweeds, some are very feathery light, some are very long, some are many different colors and so forth,

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  depending where they're growing.

• 1:24:55Alie Ward?

  Ah, gorgeous.

• 1:24:56Speaker 03

  It's the beauty that's there. There is the economic value that I could say it's sitting there, and we're starting to appreciate that in North America.

• 1:25:06Alie Ward?

  Ah, how beautiful, how gorgeous. But what sucks? Let's ask Patrick.

• 1:25:11Alie Ward?

  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?

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:25:39Alie Ward?

  Calvert Island, side note, it's north of Vancouver, just off the coast. You know, it's right near Goose Bay. It's near the 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.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  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, 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, 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, the diversity can be a bit overwhelming. Let's put it that way. Exciting and amazing, but can be overwhelming.

• 1:26:33Alie Ward?

  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?

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:26:52Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  It is called erythropanthum. It's a red seaweed that looks like a big feather. You can see how it's kind of feather-like.

• 1:27:09Alie Ward?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  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 very cool. And so that's definitely one of my favorites because it's just so amazing. There are other interesting ones, like botryocleidia 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.

• 1:27:43Alie Ward?

  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 you left?

• 1:27:50Speaker 01

  Yes. Like it or not, she's gonna, I'm gonna fill her, fill her head full of seaweed facts. Actually, my, 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 was a really good fit, but yeah. I felt like I really found the perfect tattoo artist for the tattoo.

• 1:28:18Alie Ward?

  Just a shout out to his tattoo artist, Michi Kojima at Sacred Heart Tattoo in Vancouver, B.C. And you can look for her Instagram at Tattoos by Michi, M.I.C.H.I.E.

• 1:28:28Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  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 kelp. No, it's not a kelp. And then we talk about why it's not a kelp.

• 1:28:56Alie Ward?

  It's a red alga and not a round one. Like, hello?

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  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 erythrophilum. And I was like, you're my people.

• 1:29:17Alie Ward?

  Do you go to seaweed conferences?

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:29:20Alie Ward?

  Yeah?

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:29:34Alie Ward?

  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.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  I agree. I agree. That's right. Yeah, I'm already kind of planning out my next seaweed tattoo. I feel like it's gonna happen.

• 1:29:50Alie Ward?

  Do you know yet or is that under wraps?

• 1:29:52Speaker 01

  I have ideas, but I can't reveal that right now.

• 1:29:54Alie Ward?

  Okay, I respect that.

• 1:29:57Alie Ward?

  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, alieward.com/ologies/macrophycology. You can check out Dr. Patrick Martone's app, too. It's called the Seaweed Sworder. You can go romp on a seashore somewhere and enjoy your new ancient algal friends. We are at Ologies on Blue Sky on Instagram. I'm at @Alieward on both. We have swear-free short episodes for kids called Smologies. You

• 1:30:41Alie Ward?

  can hear wherever you get podcasts or link to the show notes. Ologies merch is at ologiesmerch.com and you can join us on Patreon at patreon.com/ologies. Erin Talbert admin's the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kellyard 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

• 1:31:21Alie Ward?

  around a pier at night like a straight-edged oppressed suburban goth might. And my friend Mikey found a bottle of 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

• 1:32:05Alie Ward?

  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 bye.

• 1:33:05Speaker 03

  Kelp worked.

• 1:33:07Alie Ward?

  Father Ward, you say, there's no way you would need a career coach. You have it all together. That's a lie and you know it. I actually hired a career coach and without them I wouldn't have started Ologies. It was one of the best investments I've ever made. And if you're like, I don't know where to find a career coach, I can help you. You need an experienced pro who asks the right questions, sets you down a path where you're most likely to succeed. And that's what you can expect from a coach at today's sponsor, strawberry.me. This is so cool. They match you with a certified coach who's been vetted to work closely with company founders. And yeah, sometimes I'm like, oh, wait, that's right. I am one. And if you're founding a business, even if you're along the way and you're maybe stuck in a rut, or you have to make a decision about expansion, or what

• 1:33:51Alie Ward?

  direction you want to take your company, that's what I did. I went to strawberry.me and I was like, okay, can you help me pare down some stuff? I think I have too much on my plate. I'm not sure what to say yes to, what to say no to. And they were super helpful in helping me streamline. And now I get to sleep more and I enjoy that. So get the help every entrepreneur needs. Go to strawberry.me/ologies. That's strawberry.me/ologies. You're the boss. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. So was my entire life. I've used Squarespace ever since I started this podcast. So whether you're just starting out or you are scaling your business, Squarespace is an all in one website platform. It's designed to help your business stand out and succeed. They give you everything you need to offer your

• 1:34:34Alie Ward?

  services, to get paid, all in one place. Whether you're doing things like consultations or events, you can show the world what you do with this great customizable website. It's designed to To help grow your business. You can get paid on time. I love that. They have on-brand invoices. They have online payment. All of the things that you are overwhelmed to do, Squarespace can handle. You can also streamline your workflow. They have built-in appointment scheduling and email marketing tools, which are huge right now. Again, I love Squarespace. Whether you are starting from the ground up and you just need a simple website, or if you're a business and you want better, more streamlined portals, Squarespace, they know I love them. You know I love them. So head to squarespace.com/ologies for a free trial.

• 1:35:18Alie Ward?

  And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code OLOGIES to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or a domain. Go do it.