I More Than Most People Know—

Or Maybe Want To Know-

But Should Know  About The Uses Of Algae

 

Seaweeds are grouped by colors: reds, greens, and browns. Just to complicate matters, greens do not always look green, reds do not always look red, and browns, you guessed it, don’t always look brown

 

The nineteenth century produced just a whole hunch of wonderful things. In just that one period, the potato chip was invented and the purple eggplant was developed (they were originally white, you know). On the literary front, the word “frumious” was created by Lewis Carroll and the redoubtable Oscar Wilde penned "The Importance of Being Ernest" .Yes, altogether it was a marvelous century.

On the other hand, the twentieth century has produced only two things of any importance: Velcro and the Internet. Velcro is extremely useful because.,well, it’s Velcro. And the Internet is spiff because it allows you to waste huge amounts of time while actually seeming to be usefully engaged.

For instance, knowing that I would be writing an article about the ways humans use algae. Just a few minutes ago I searched the Web for the word “sushi” ( many types of sushi contain seaweed). I came up with literally hundreds of entries. My favorite was the Tokyo Food Page HTTP://www.twi cs.com/’”rohbs/) a guide to Tokyo restaurants. And the best part of the Tokyo Food Page was the “sushi multimedia page” where you can actually hear the sound of dried seaweed being wrapped a round rice. I mean, heaven can wait.

Of course, humans use algae for many different purposes, not solely to entertain bored marine biologists.

Algae (singular alga) encompasses a wide variety of relatively primitive aquatic plants. Unlike land plants they have no roots, no stems, no leaves, no vessels to carry material up and down the plant, and nothing resembling a flower. Among the many thousands of species, you can find just about every size imaginable, from microscopic ones to 200—foot giants. We usually call any marine algae that is not microscopic “seaweed. ‘‘The word “kelp” is also often used for many types of algae, and the word comes from eighteenth cen­tury Scotland. Scottish potash makers originally derived potash (which they used in making fertilizer and black explosive powder) from wood ashes. Dwindling supplies of wood led them to use seaweed ashes, which were referred to as “kelp.” For a while, this was a real growth business, the time— share industry of the time. By about 1730, 60,000 persons in Scotland and environs were out torching seaweed.

Seaweeds come in a fashionable array of colors, and, in fact, that’s how they’re usually grouped. There are the greens (Chlorophvta, chloros = green. phyta = plant). reds (Rhodophyta. rhodon= rosy red, and browns (Phaeophyta, phae = tail, dusky). Just to complicate matters. greens do not always look green, reds do not always look red, and browns, you guessed it, don’t always look brown.

Humans have used seaweeds of various sorts for thou­sands of years. In Roman days, women reddened their cheeks with rouge extracted from Fucus, an algae whose name comes from the Latin word for rouge.  Peoples worldwide have eaten these plants, fed them to domestic animals, or used ‘them as fertilizers. One of the earliest records of human seaweed consumption occurs in a Chinese text dating from about 600 B.C. By about 1000 AD. the Chinese considered the red algae. Porphyra. such a delicacy that the peoples of southern China annual­ly presented the emperor with gifts of that plant. Today, over 450 species of algae are used for food or fertilizer, in medicine or in industry. Most of these are eaten directly, either fresh, dried, or as pickles or candy. The Japanese are the world’s biggest algae eaters; there, over twenty varieties of seaweeds are regularly eaten. Algae may make up perhaps 100 percent of Japanese food requirements.

Among the edible seaweeds,Porphyra is close to numero uno.. Extremely popular around much of the Pacific and also eaten in the North Atlantic, it is know as nori in Japan, zicai in China, and purple laver in Great Britain, This is really good stuff; it has the vitamin C con­tent of lemons, is loaded with B vitamins, and contains just gobs of iodine and other trace elements. Worth over one billion dollars to the Japanese seafood industry, it is one of the world’s most valuable seafood products. Much of it is cleaned, chopped, dried on mats, and sold in thin sheets. From there it’s added to sauces or soups or (as you have probably noted) wrapped around our rice to form sushi. While Porphyra is an extremely important edible algae, many other species are eaten fresh, fried, dried, or pickled. You can often find these in Asian markets, labeled as hijiki, wakame, ogo (Gracilaris) and kombu (Laminaria).

Okay, let’s leave the wonderful world of kelp pickles and journey into somewhat more rarified circles. You know the motto of that famous pork processors (whose name escapes me),that they use everything except the squeal? Many seaweed processors use everything except the slime. Agar is a gelling agent found in red seaweeds, including agarweed (Geidium robustum) and feather branch seaweed (Pterocladia).  It’s used as a culture substrate in growing bacteria in research and medicine. in canning fish, thickening ice cream, cream cheese, and making jams.

(Chondrus crispus) and Eucheuma. It, too, is used to thicken foods, particularly dairy products.  Here's a hot tip. Carrageenan is one of the only additives that can keep the chocolate in chocolate milk from settling out. It is often used in gelatin dishes in the tropics where refrigeration is unavailable because carrageenan gelatin holds together at relatively warm temperatures. It is also a major component of one fast— food operation’s “lean” hamburger. In fact, a good chunk of the Philippine seaweed industry goes to producing carrageenan for McSeaweeds.

Carrageenan has another property which makes it extremely useful to industry. Take a dab of toothpaste and smear it on the counter. Go on, there’s no one watching and besides if your roommates let you sing in the show­er, you can surely do this. Do you notice that the paste has a rather attractive sheen? Carrageenan is often used to produce that desirable quality.

Here in the good US of A, harvesting kelp, primarily giant kelp (Macorcystis) is a major industry. While some kelp had been harvested in California during the early 190Os, the industry w as very small until World War 1. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States obtained nearly all its potash from German mines until it was recognized that the US had become dependent on Germany potash and a domestic supply was sought by the Government. Kelp was quickly found to be a good source, and from 1914 (when Germany cut off its potash supplies to the world) to 1919 there were many kelp harvesting companies in California. Undoubtedly the biggest of these was the Hercules Powder Company of Chula Vista, which extracted not only potash, but also ace­tone, both for explosives production.   Using these chemicals derived from kelp, Hercules produced huge amounts of explosives, including 23.000 tons of cordite for the British alone. ‘With the end of World War I, the market for these products collapsed, and it was not until the late 1920s that kelp harvesting again became a major industry.

From its rebirth until today, the kelp harvesting industry in California has primarily aimed at producing one product, alginic acid or algin. Algin has the curious ability to hold a large number of water molecules in suspension. This allows it to be used in a bewildering array of products. When added to water-based foods (such as bottled salad dressings or ice cream), it produces a thicker, creamier con­sistency. When placed in such bakery products as cake mixes, the baked goods tend to have an improved texture and retain moisture better. Among just a few industrial applications, algin products are used to coat paper, help print textiles, produce dental impressions, and aid in tablet dissolving. This is an extremely valuable commodity in California. The Kelco Company, today the largest of the kelp harvesters in California, estimates that its sales of algin alone exceed thirty-five million dollars per year.

I think beer commercials are what make America what it is, and without seaweed, those commercials would just not be the same. I love it when those really manly men, with teeth the size and color of the iceberg that sank the Titanic, stride into their favorite tavern and call for beer and lots of it.  Usually the manly men are celebrating winning some manly man contest, such as car eating, head butting, or trying to pull shoelaces through shoe holes after the little plas­tic sleeves have worn off.  And have you ever noticed that that manly men seem more excited about the foam than the brewski? Inevitably, the smiling bartender produces tankards of brew with sufficient foam to allow F-14's to make emergency landings. Really, I think that if the foam failed, the manly men would proceed to dismantle the tav­ern and, as an afterthought, the barman. Algin is sometimes used in brewing beer and, more importantly for the bartender, is added to many beers to stabilize all that foam.

Most kelp harvesting occurs between Monterey and San Diego, aboard harvesting vessels. These specially designed ships move slowly through the beds, pushing cutting racks ahead of them. The cut kelp is gathered on conveyors and loaded about the vessel. Kelp harvesters are limited by law to cutting only a limited amount of the plant including the surface canopy and the fronds, floats, and stipes which live

down to about forty feet below the surface. After harvest, the kelp is taken to a shore—based facility where it is chopped, washed, cooked, and clarified to remove various impurities. The algin is then dried, and finely ground.

While a lot of seaweed is harvested wild, aquaculture for these plants is a big, big business. This is particularly true in Asia, where most of it is produced and much of it is consumed. Worldwide, over five million tons, worth around five billion dollars, are grown in the spectacularly successful algae aciuaculture. China is the Big Kahuna in this business, with Japan and the Philippines a distant second and third.

What do you do for a headache? Oh, sure, you can take a couple of aspirin. meditate, or break out the old biofeed­back tape. I have a friend who lays her head over a package of frozen corn. But the word on the street is that many years ago the Native Americans of the Sitka, Alaska, region had a singular way of coping with a throbbing cranium. Apparently, when headache number twenty—three (lost a leg to a killer whale) hit, the sufferer would hobble (or in this case hop) down to the beach and search for a piece of bull kelp (Nereocystis). Bull kelp stipes are long, hollow tubes, with a flotation bulb at one end. The patient would insert one end of the stipe into an ear and put the bulb end on a hot stone. The heat would cause steam to form and that would travel up the tube into the ear, and I think you get the point.

Well, in a country where copper bracelets, magnets, and weird fungus soup are all viewed acceptable treatments for any number of ailments, it goes without saying that with just a little bit of the right kind of marketing, this could be very popular indeed.