#seaweed

Beach Sandskrit

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DSC02349We were walking on Malibu beach yesterday as the tide was going out.

It left behind a long tale of the previous few hours, written in seaweed and flotsam.

I didn’t count how many different types of seaweed left their notes on the sand, but from the number of red lobster shells in the receding water line, I’d say local birds, seals and otters have been feasting. And if there were no lobster claws to be seen, that’s because the California spiny lobster (Panulirus interruptus) doesn’t have any in the first place.DSC02351

The high tide of our own past few hours was marked by an evening spent on a warm terrace with a good friend, and the Auchentoshan Triple Wood he pulled out to share with us.Unknown

As the name says, this Lowland whisky is matured in three different kinds of wood: Pedro Ximenez Sherry casks, bourbon casks and Oloroso sherry.

It has a combustibly sweet aroma, with a taste that echoes dark chocolate, applesauce, toffee and rum.

It was a delight, as was the day and the company.

One who knows how to read what's skirt in the seaweed.

One who knows how to read what’s skrit in the seaweed.

 

Floating Farms

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I always have a soft spot for illustrations of future visions. This image of seaweed carriers is no exception. A company called Seaweed Energy Solutions (SES) has developed and patented seaweed growing technology that it hopes will make possible the cultivation of seaweed on a vastly larger scale than we have seen thus far.

Mass Seaweed Carriers Source: SES

Mass Seaweed Carriers
Source: SES

 

Seaweed has so many uses – as I said on a recent post, some are calling it the potato of the 21st century when it comes to feeding large numbers of people. And it can be cultivated without the use of expensive land and water for irrigation.

Which brings me back to the SES floating farms. The goal for this kind of industrial seaweed farming is to grow enough seaweed to make biofuel. Ethanol, to be exact, using the high level of carbohydrates in the sea plants. It’s not the first time at the biofuel circus for seaweed enthusiasts.

Seagrapes (Botryocladia pseudodichotoma). From a great new book, An Ocean Garden. Photo: Josie Iselin

Seagrapes (Botryocladia pseudodichotoma). From a great new book, An Ocean Garden.
Photo: Josie Iselin

Like algae, seaweed has long been the subject of renewable energy attention, for the same reasons it might be an alternative potato: It doesn’t compete with other food crops for land space or resources and it practically grows itself given the right foundation.

Regions with lots of coastline and little arable land could use a prolific cash crop like that.

I don’t know enough about the topic to say whether there aren’t environmental arguments to be made against the industrialization of seaweed cultivation, although the mass production of any mono-crop usually brings with it some concerns. I don’t know at what stage the seaweed-to-fuel processing technology finds itself, or what distribution channels are already in place.

Maybe, as with many future visions, the idea of seaweed as fuel will float away in time without becoming reality.

Still, I deeply appreciate a technological design that so nicely reflects the very crop it is meant to support.

 

 

 

Seaweed Squares

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http://news.yahoo.com/photos/city-art-from-above-slideshow/

Seaweed Farms - Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia. (Digital Globe/Caters News)

Seaweed Farms – Nusa Lembongan, Indonesia. Click on the photo for the full image.
Photo: Digital Globe/Caters News

When I think of oceans, I think of movement and flow.

When I think of oceanic plant life, I have in my mind an image of free-form fields of seaweed in constant motion.

When life grows for itself, it tends to grow in loose configurations. When I think of tilled land fields, like the ones in my area, I think of grain rising in squared off parameters or the pristine circles of pivot irrigation.

In any case, when we grow for ourselves, we usually grow in geometric patterns. So the multitude of underwater seaweed rectangles in the image above, mirrored in the multitude of angular human dwellings on the neighboring land,  shouldn’t surprise me at all.

Still, these tidy plots, an oceanic harvest of what is being hailed by some as ‘this century’s potato‘ for its farming, nutrition and economic potential, look odd.

Illustration of seaweed farming. Source: Tracy Saxby/Integration and Application Nework

Illustration of seaweed farming.
Source: Tracy Saxby/Integration and Application Nework

Seaweed cultivation has been around for hundreds of years, most of that past spent simply, well, harvesting wild seaweed. Or drifting long ropes to attract seaweed growth, and then pulling in the ropes.

Methods have been improving, but what remains to be seen is if we can manage to farm seaweed without doing what we sometimes do to the places we farm: hacking down everything that was there before to replace it with only the plants we want in tight geometric configurations.

The ocean has a different set of rules from the land, but seaweed farming done right can improve biodiversity, improve air and water quality and feed a lot of people and animals, and maybe even provide a source of biofuel. More on that in a later post.

Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera)

Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera)

Time Pressed

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Seaweed collection circa 1850 Source: Collector's Weekly

Seaweed collection circa 1850
Source: Collector’s Weekly

The Victorians liked collections of all kinds, but those of objects of nature were among the most popular. The bit of the glamour and glory of the great era of exploration could be had in gathering one’s own seashells, or taxidermied animals, or skeletons, or in a version previously unknown to me, seaweed.

Seaweed collections apparently became popular with Victorian ladies around the same time as scrapbooking.

Three pressed seaweed specimens were likely collected near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, by Mary A. Robinson, circa 1885 Source: Collector's Weekly

Three pressed seaweed specimens were likely collected near Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, by Mary A. Robinson, circa 1885
Source: Collector’s Weekly

In Fukishima today, work begins on the extraction of over 1500 nuclear fuel rods from the destroyed nuclear power plant there, two-and-a-half years after the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the area. The rods have been sitting in storage pools of water – they’ll be removed by crane and robot, and transferred to a more reliable storage facility.

And while the Wikipedia page on ‘Radiation effects from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster‘ cheerfully explains that health and environmental risks from leaked radiation really aren’t all that dire (the page is flagged at the top with a note questioning the neutrality of its content), reports of spills and ongoing leaks don’t inspire much confidence.

And so, 150 years after the samples shown here were collected and pressed for posterity, gathering seaweed along the rim the Pacific Ocean takes on a less picturesque significance, namely that of testing for radiation exposure.

Two identification diagrams from David Landsborough’s “A Popular History of British Seaweeds,” which was first published in 1849. Source: Collector's Weekly

Two identification diagrams from David Landsborough’s “A Popular History of British Seaweeds,” which was first published in 1849.
Source: Collector’s Weekly

Wind Barriers

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Estuary at Limantour Beach, California Photo: PK Read

Estuary at Limantour Beach, California
Photo: PK Read

Walking on Limantour Beach in Marin County, California, we had to make our way against major headwinds. Small groups of ankle-high bluffs dotted the long beach. They were clumps of knotted dry seaweed which prevented the sand from being blown smooth and flat, an unexpected illustration of the relationship between vegetation, sand, and erosion, reflecting the high cliffs all around.

Sand and seaweed, Limantour Beach Photo: PK Read

Sand and seaweed, Limantour Beach
Photo: PK Read

There was also this crab shell that formed its own miniature sand bluff.

Crab shell wind barrier Photo: PK Read

Crab shell wind barrier
Photo: PK Read