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

Summary

Ologies with Alie Ward: Macrophycology (Seaweed) – Episode Summary

Release Date: June 11, 2025

In this captivating episode of Ologies with Alie Ward, host Alie Ward delves deep into the fascinating world of Macrophycology, the study of large seaweeds, with an expert panel comprising Dr. Patrick Martone, Dr. Charles Yarish, Danielle McHaskell, Angela Jones, and Becky Swerida. The episode explores the evolution, diversity, ecological significance, and potential climate impact of seaweeds, blending scientific insights with engaging anecdotes and humor.

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Introduction to Seaweed Science

Alie Ward kicks off the episode by introducing the diverse team of macrophycologists:

• Dr. Patrick Martone: Leads the Martone Lab at the University of British Columbia, focusing on seaweed evolution, anatomy, biomechanics, and ecology. Creator of the Seaweed Sorter app.

• Dr. Charles Yarish: Professor Emeritus at the University of Connecticut and Chief Scientist at GreenWave.org, recognized as the "wizard of seaweed" for his pioneering work in seaweed cultivation and farming.

• Danielle McHaskell: PhD candidate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, specializing in non-native seaweed ecology and the intersection of art and science.

• Angela Jones: Fifth-year PhD candidate at Northeastern University, studying sea star morphology with extensive research in algae pressing as art therapy.

• Becky Swerida: Stewardship Coordinator at Maryland Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, known as "Becky the Sassy Seagrass Scientist."

Notable Quote:

Alie Ward (00:20): "This episode on seaweeds and kelps and algae has five, count them, five ologists. And it's a wild ride into the ocean waves."

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Evolution and Diversity of Seaweed

The discussion begins with personal anecdotes from Daniel McCaskill about his childhood in Florida collecting sargassum and the subsequent inspiration to pursue seaweed science. Dr. Yarish elaborates on the global diversity of seaweeds, highlighting the predominance of kelp in nutrient-rich, cold waters of the Pacific Northwest and Asia, contrasting with the smaller, calcium carbonate-producing seaweeds in tropical regions.

Notable Quotes:

Daniel McCaskill (10:00): "My thesis and my PhD, I was really interested in all the different shapes and sizes and colors of seaweeds and how they can cling to the rocks under big breaking waves."

Angela Jones (12:12): "There are seaweed that can grow in dim light or, I probably should say, in moonlight."

The panel delves into the classification of algae, distinguishing between green, red, and brown seaweeds based on their pigments and evolutionary history. They explain that brown algae, such as kelp, have evolved more recently compared to red and green algae, emphasizing convergent evolution where seaweeds resemble plants but are not closely related.

Notable Quote:

Daniel McCaskill (19:50): "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."

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Ecological Significance and Climate Impact

The experts discuss seaweed's role in ecosystems, including providing habitat and food for marine life. Angela Jones shares her experience of studying seaweeds beneath ice sheets, revealing their adaptability to various environments.

A significant portion of the conversation addresses the potential of seaweed in climate change mitigation. Danielle McCaskell and Angela Jones highlight efforts by organizations like GreenWave to cultivate seaweed for carbon sequestration and nitrogen uptake, although they caution that more research is needed to fully understand its impact.

Notable Quote:

Angela Jones (53:02): "The sargassum is really something. It's floating at the mercy of the currents, but it's been able to form very large beds that are really wrecking havoc with tourism in the Caribbean and also in the Gulf of Mexico around the coast of Florida."

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Culinary Uses and Aquaculture

The panel explores the global culinary significance of seaweeds, particularly in Asian cultures where species like nori are staple foods. They discuss the burgeoning seaweed aquaculture industry in North America and Europe, emphasizing its economic potential and sustainability.

Daniel McCaskill shares innovative approaches to seaweed farming and culinary experimentation, such as his course's "Top Chef Seaweed" competition, where students create edible seaweed dishes. The conversation also touches on the challenges of differentiating edible seaweeds and ensuring sustainable harvesting practices.

Notable Quote:

Daniel McCaskill (36:26): "I really do like some of the locally harvested pyropias, like the local noris. If you crisp them up just right, they can have a really nice salty taste."

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Reproduction and Anatomy of Seaweed

The episode delves into the reproductive cycles of seaweeds, explaining the lack of seeds and flowers, and detailing the processes of spore production and fertilization in different seaweed species. Angela Jones elucidates how chemical attractants aid in sperm-egg pairing in the vast ocean.

Notable Quote:

Angela Jones (77:21): "The female releases a chemical attractant 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."

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Seaweed and Human Impact

Listeners' questions address the environmental concerns associated with seaweed, such as sargassum blooms exacerbated by nutrient runoff from sewage and agricultural fertilizers. The panel discusses the dual impact of sargassum on marine ecosystems and coastal communities, highlighting both ecological disruption and opportunities for resource utilization.

Notable Quote:

Daniel McCaskill (51:03): "There are a couple different species that live off the coast like that. And from what I understand, those sargassum areas, because of ocean warming, have not only gotten larger over time, 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."

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Innovations and Future Directions

The experts explore innovative uses of seaweed beyond culinary applications, such as bioplastics development. Companies like Sway and Notpla are pioneering the creation of biodegradable packaging from seaweed extracts, aiming to reduce plastic waste.

Notable Quote:

Daniel McCaskill (69:55): "There are several businesses that are taking extracts from kelp and from red algae and making, yeah, bioplastics out of them."

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Personal Connections and Community Engagement

Throughout the episode, the guests share personal stories and connections to seaweed, from Dr. Martone's passion manifesting in a seaweed tattoo to Danielle McCaskell integrating seaweed studies with visual arts. These narratives underscore the community and cultural aspects of macrophycology.

Notable Quote:

Daniel McCaskill (91:37): "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."

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Conclusion and Upcoming Content

Alie Ward wraps up the episode by highlighting the importance of continued research and community involvement in seaweed science. She teases the next week's focus on Aquaculture, promising to explore sustainable farming practices and their ecological implications.

Notable Quote:

Alie Ward (99:51): "We're looking at farming stuff from the sea and whether or not it's a terrible idea. I'm invested in seaweed. I love it."

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Key Takeaways

• Seaweed Diversity: Seaweeds encompass a vast range of species across different climates, each adapted uniquely to their environments.

• Ecological Role: Seaweeds are crucial for marine ecosystems, providing habitat, food, and contributing to nutrient cycling.

• Climate Mitigation: While promising for carbon and nitrogen sequestration, the full potential of seaweed in climate change mitigation requires further research.

• Culinary and Industrial Uses: From sushi to bioplastics, seaweeds offer versatile applications that are economically and environmentally beneficial.

• Community and Culture: Personal stories and cultural practices surrounding seaweed highlight its significance beyond scientific study.

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This episode of Ologies not only educates listeners about the intricate world of seaweeds but also inspires appreciation for their ecological and cultural importance. Through engaging discussions and expert insights, Alie Ward successfully makes macrophycology accessible and intriguing for all audiences.

Transcript

[Alie Ward]

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[Charlie Yarish]

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[Alie Ward]

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[Charlie Yarish]

It's really beautifully designed. It's very easy to use.

[Alie Ward]

It's a great gift. It's good for parents, it's good for grandparents.

[Charlie Yarish]

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[Alie Ward]

And if you wanna learn more, check out the Feathersnap Smart bird [e-mail] I'm very choosy of supplements that I put into my gullet and also on this podcast and ritual is one that I am currently digesting. It's literally in my stomach right now. I take it every day.

[Charlie Yarish]

Ritual is a multivitamin that science oriented people trust. They have clinical trials already done for their bestselling products.

[Patrick Martone]

I take Ritual every day because I got back some labs with some low.

[Alie Ward]

Vitamin D levels, probably because I'm in a dark studio all day long and sometimes I eat Cheetos for dinner. And I also tend to feel better when I'm not depleted on B vitamins. So thank you. Ritual for that goes down the hatch easy. It's got a minty flavor. It's not the only Ritual that I have and I like though. They also have a stress relief vitamin that has L theanine, which my doctor recommended for me because I tend to be on the anxious side. It's got some Ashwagandha in there. So if you're looking for some good.

[Charlie Yarish]

Supplements, Ritual is the one I like.

[Alie Ward]

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[Patrick Martone]

We have to say that.

[Alie Ward]

Oh hey, it's the guy testing out the patio furniture at Costco. Alie 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 going to get into them. We have Dr. Patrick Martone, who heads up the Martone lab in the botany department at the University of British Columbia. He studies the evolution and anatomy and biomechanics and ecology of seaweed. Also, he's a tech mogul. Not really, but he did invent an app called the Seaweed Sorter that you can get and it helps you identify and what he has said hopefully fall in love with more than 100 seaweed species. So that's called the Seaweed Sorter. Patrick was recommended to me over three years ago by this guy named Colin, who wrote in called him a gregarious, intelligent seaweed evangelist who exudes enthusiasm and would be a perfect addition to Ologies. And then Colin said, as nominated by his partner and longtime listener to the podcast, so that was the cutest thing I ever read. And I'm in. He also has a seaweed tattoo, so checks every box. But then your favorite oceanology guest, Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson, pointed me toward a gaggle of marine people right around the same time, and they pointed me toward Dr. Charles Yarish, who has been hailed as the grandfather of commercial seaweed and also the wizard of seaweed, both in like published media. Someone called him a wizard of seaweed. He's a professor emeritus at the University of Connecticut and the chief [e-mail] and he's been a founding kind of mover and shaker in seaweed cultivation and farming. But his research spans decades. 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 macropycologists via black and marine science who want to nerd out with me about big ocean algae. And indeed, we got to hear from Daniel McCaskill, who is finishing up a PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Angela Jones, who is a rising 5th 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 Sworita, who is a stewardship coordinator at Maryland Chesapeake Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, and listeners may recognize her as Becky the Sassy Seagrass Scientist via her great Patreon questions. So we asked her to send a clip about the differences between the grasses and the weeds. So somehow this episode ballooned into this beautiful forest of seaweeds and grasses and we dip below the surface into a whole new world. So we made it harder on ourselves, but more complex and beautiful for you. But before we get to the episode a quick thank you to the patrons like Becky who make the show possible by submitting their questions to ask ahead of time. You can join for as little as a dollar a month via patreon.com ologies thank you to everyone poking seaweed on a beach in our Ologies podcast. Tank tops and beach wear and hats and [e-mail] 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 from Mogbar who wrote I had never thought academia, especially not science, was something that I was cut out for, but your show made it accessible and exciting. I decided to go back to school for a bachelor's degree in agroecology. Future episode they write might need to be a three parter and they also said I just turned in my senior thesis and will be graduating with honors next week. Mock Bar there's no crying in baseball, but there's plenty of it on my face right now. So congratulations kiddo. The whole Ologies fam is so, so proud of you. Okay, Macrophycology. This means big ass algae. Let's get into it and talk about where seaweed grows, whether or not it will save us all, what it has hidden in its cells, the best ones to eat, how fast it grows, how deep it gets cold versus tropical seaweeds, moonlit seaweeds, what to do if your vacation pictures feature mounds of sargassum, whether or not kelp can kill a chicken, and then a sneak peek. Next week's episode is on Aquaculture. So week you'll hear all about cultivating and eating things, from seaweed to shellfish to shrimp farmed in a basement doughboy pool. So this isn't really a two parter, but the two episodes are friends and they hang out in the same circles. So join us now with five dazzling macro phycologists, Dr. Charlie Yarish, Danielle McCaskill, Becky Suerida, Angela Jones, and this week's guest in chief, Dr. Patrick Marton.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yes, me too.

[Charlie Yarish]

What were you doing when I texted you?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Charlie Yarish]

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. Realize that I tend to do is, 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 distract you.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Of course. That was great.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Kind of busy right now.

[Charlie Yarish]

No, but I. 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?

[Daniel McCaskill]

You know what? I actually grew up in Florida.

[Charlie Yarish]

Okay.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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. Is collect seaweed that was floating sargassum off the coast of Florida. And I would collect the sargassum, and I would shake it out in a bucket, and then I would collect all the little fishing crabs and 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. I can trace my interest in seaweed quite through many years, back to my childhood.

[Charlie Yarish]

You know, it's funny. A lot of people probably think of.

[Alie Ward]

Seaweed, and they Think big plant ocean.

[Charlie Yarish]

But you must have thought about it in like three dimensions, more of just like how much it harbors and what's in there.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yeah, for sure. My thesis and my PhD, I was really interested in all the different shapes and sizes and colors of seaweeds and how they can cling to the rocks under big breaking waves and, 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

Well, what's the difference between this argassan 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?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Alie Ward]

I love them.

[Charlie Yarish]

Everything that Florida has to offer and not offer. Yes, other than that, Florida's 10 out of 10.

[Daniel McCaskill]

That's exactly it.

[Charlie Yarish]

Just the seaweed.

[Alie 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

And what about in other parts of the world?

[Alie Ward]

Are there certain zones that are more.

[Charlie Yarish]

Seaweed rich, like off the coast of Japan or closer to the poles? Or how does seaweed population, how does.

[Alie Ward]

That vary across the globe?

[Angela Jones]

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 Antarctica, there are seaweed that are growing beneath the ice sheet.

[Charlie Yarish]

Oh, wow.

[Angela Jones]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

No.

[Angela Jones]

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, 600ft below the surface. It was growing. That's the important. So you have seaweed growing in all the oceans and they're adapted to the environments that they're in. There are seaweed that are warm temperate. They like the warm temperate environment, sort of like where most people like to be. There are the tropical seaweeds that are going to be found in the tropics. There are seaweeds that are in cold temperate environments. So when you're in a cold temperate environment, that is a favorite for the kelp.

[Alie Ward]

Let's ask Patrick. Why?

[Charlie Yarish]

Well, okay, you said something about cold water and nutrients, and my brain doesn't process the correlation there. Why are there more nutrients in cold water? Or why is it a better environment, a better sort of broth for kelp and seaweed to live in?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 to support so much primary production.

[Charlie Yarish]

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.

[Alie Ward]

I'm like, warm beaches don't have huge piles of rotting kelp that you can poke with a stick, which is half.

[Charlie Yarish]

The fun of the beach if you're someone who needs SPF 90.

[Alie Ward]

Love a tide pool, though. Get me to the beach in a turtleneck. And as Charlie said, unlike the largest species of kelp, Macrocystis pyrifera, 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.

[Angela Jones]

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.

[Alie 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.

[Angela Jones]

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 can find are these calcareous.

[Charlie Yarish]

Oh, I'm so sorry. If I ever go to the Bahamas, I'm so sorry. Algae. I'm sure that that's just part of life.

[Angela Jones]

Well, you'll have to look for one when you're down in the Bahamas. It's called Neptune's Shavings Brush. REM fashion shavings 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, 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.

[Alie 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 indust. Where's all this nitrogen coming from? Well, some of it is fertilizer runoff, but a bunch is sewage. So more people near beaches, more sewage, more sargassum. Tropical seaweed loves it. It's like a food buffet made of delicious toilet. Finally, they've got a new restaurant in town. Now we know that colder water tends to have more nutrients, which means more naturally thriving kelp and seaweed. And Charlie mentioned red and green and brown. But let's rewind a little to Patrick and just get back to basics.

[Charlie Yarish]

But so, okay, seaweed, not a weed first off, right?

[Daniel McCaskill]

You know, weed has a negative connotation.

[Charlie Yarish]

Okay.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

Okay.

[Daniel McCaskill]

And, you know, this comes back to defining algae. So I think of myself as a phycologist, which is someone who studies algae. And algae is a really funny term because it's a catch all term for things that photosynthesize. They tend to be aquatic, living in water. But that means they can be phytoplankton, which would be little microscopic things like diatoms and dinoflagellates and all kinds of other plankton. But they can also be the macroscopic things like the seaweeds. Seaweed is a macroscopic algae.

[Alie Ward]

Okay.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Alie Ward]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

They sometimes look like plants, like a kelp can look like a little tree, but actually they're not closely related to plants at all. Yeah, they're not that closely related to plants whatsoever. So everything that you see is an example of convergent evolution. Like the closest common ancestor between a kelp and a plant would have been a single cell. So that's just been evolving completely independently. They've arrived at common endpoints that look like little plants.

[Charlie Yarish]

That is nuts.

[Alie Ward]

So seaweed, not a plant, not a weed. And to link them together, you would 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

Let's say that you were drawing an algal cell for your homework. We know that, like, an animal cell looks squishy and a plant cell looks boxy. What does a seaweed cell look like microscopically?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

Yes, please.

[Patrick Martone]

I don't know what the hell that is.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Patrick Martone]

Bring it on.

[Alie Ward]

Bring it on.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Okay. Okay. So do you know. So plants have chloroplasts, right?

[Patrick Martone]

Of course, yes, yes.

[Alie Ward]

The little green bobbles in plant cells.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Charlie Yarish]

Okay.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Alie 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Blue Green cyano. Yeah. Cyan. Yeah. Okay, so blue green algae. Yeah. So cyanobacteria are the same as blue green algae. Okay, let's talk about cyanobacteria for a second. Okay, so cyanobacteria are extremely old. If you look back in time, even through the fossil record, some of the first evidence of life on Earth was that these cyanobacteria existed something like 2 billion years old. Like really, really old.

[Charlie Yarish]

2 billion years old?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yeah.

[Charlie Yarish]

I didn't even know that was a possibility. Okay, that's amazing.

[Alie Ward]

My brain just completely blanked here. And I was like, wait, isn't Earth only like 4 or 5 billion years old? Is that right? So, yes, according to the University of Chicago article, the origin of life on Earth explained, earth is about 4.5 billion years old. The oldest known fossil is about 3.7 billion. And life on Earth may have emerged before that, 4.3 billion years ago. So life came at us pretty fast. Plants have been here for about 400 million years, they think. But green seaweeds, those go back a billion years because they made friends with their food.

[Daniel McCaskill]

So cyanobacteria play a critical role in the evolution of all other life because cyanobacteria, as photosynthesizers, were pumping oxygen into the atmosphere. Remember that cyanobacteria, as a byproduct of photosynthesis, generate oxygen. You can look at the oxygen levels on Earth spike, increase after cyanobacteria evolve and we see photosynthesis. We can thank cyanobacteria for oxygenating the atmosphere and letting animals evolve because we need oxygen.

[Charlie Yarish]

It was all because of them.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yes.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Exactly.

[Alie Ward]

It's my privilege. Thank you.

[Angela Jones]

Thank you.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yeah, yeah. So that's sort of the birth of the first algae 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Totally.

[Charlie Yarish]

Okay, good.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

What?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Alie Ward]

It's a tur.

[Charlie Yarish]

Turducken.

[Patrick Martone]

It's like a turducken.

[Daniel McCaskill]

An algal turducken. Exactly. What?

[Charlie Yarish]

And so does that mean that brown algae is farther down evolutionarily, or was that just happenstance?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

It sounds like you have a serious.

[Becky Sworita]

Case of middle child syndrome.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 all land plants have evolved from a common ancestor with the green algae. So, you know, I think of green algae as being close relatives of land plants, whereas the red algae and the brown algae, you know, are very, very different from plants altogether. And the brown algae never even made it to land. The brown algae are only aquatic, and there are freshwater red algae, but nothing compared to sort of plant diversity. Yeah.

[Charlie Yarish]

And then are there Freshwater, brown or green or. I know we have a seagrass scientist who also emailed in about the difference between seagrass and seaweed. And she sent us a little audio clip, which is very helpful.

[Alie 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.

[Danielle McCaskill]

Hi, Ali, 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.

[Alie Ward]

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

[Danielle McCaskill]

So my favorite algae, I love good old Ulva lactuca, or sea lettuce. This is probably the most common seaweed or macroalgae on the east coast here in the mid Atlantic where I am. You've definitely seen it. It is a beautiful light translucent green. They form these sort of frilly sheets that just wave in the water and look so pretty. And you see it washing up on shore a lot. And then when you're a kid, you want to throw it at each other and it's great. And it is actually edible, both to a lot of wildlife and humans, although it just tastes like salt water. But who doesn't like a salty, slimy snack? It's great. So ovalactica, or sea lettuce. It's beautiful, it's useful, provides habitat and food source for lots of critters. And that would be my favorite algae or seaweed. Okay, bye.

[Alie Ward]

So that is Becky, the sassy seagrass scientist, clarifying once again that seaweed, not a plant, not a seagrass. But if she had to choose a favorite seaweed, it would be Ulva lactuca, which looks like gorgeous fluffy tufts of.

[Charlie Yarish]

Like Heineken bottle green colored seaweed.

[Alie Ward]

So there are freshwater plants or hydrophy. There are marine plants, AKA sea grasses, there's marine algae, AKA seaweed. But what are non marine, thus non sea freshwater algae called, I think when.

[Daniel McCaskill]

I go to a lake and I get my feet tangled up in lakeweed, you know, I sort of call those that lakeweed versus seaweed. But another way to kind of divorce yourself from this idea of how salty does the Water need to be for us to call something a seaweed. You can just call them macroalgae. So that's more about their size. Right. Regardless of where they're living. But there are freshwater and saltwater red algae and green algae. Brown algae tend to be marine. I think they're like 99% marine.

[Charlie Yarish]

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.

[Danielle McCaskill]

Right.

[Charlie Yarish]

Broadly speaking. But what is kelp doing that's different from the other seaweeds? And do we eat other seaweeds or.

[Patrick Martone]

Do we just eat types of kelp?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Oh, we probably eat more of other seaweeds than we do of kelp. Oh, for example, if you think about nori, you know, you think about what you eat in your sushi. That is a red alga.

[Charlie Yarish]

Oh, what?

[Daniel McCaskill]

So that's not a kelp at all. The genus is Pyropia or Porphyra. That's a genus that's cultivated throughout Asia and is a huge multi billion dollar industry. And of course, you know, lots of people eat nori every day. And there are other species, other red algae in particular, that produce carrageenans and produce agaran. So if maybe you've heard of carrageenan, this is like a thickener that's in your toothpaste and your ice cream, you know, that all comes from red algae. So there's a big sort of aquaculture industry for cultivating red algae. And agar is the same thing. So the people who use agar to make petri plates or have other reasons for, you know, this natural thickener and all kinds of products that also comes from red algae.

[Alie 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, 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Okay, so this brings up something interesting, which is, what are the differences between greens, reds, and browns in terms of their pigment? I think one important thing to point out is that all of them use chlorophyll in red algae, and in brown algae, they are still using chlorophyll for photosynthesis, but they have additional colorful pigments that help absorb other wavelengths of light that chlorophyll cannot. So there are. In the red algae, there's a group of pigments called phycobilins, which tend to look pink, purpley red. There are a few different phycobilins, and they tend to be a little bit better at absorbing some of those other wavelengths, like green, that the chlorophylls can't absorb. And it just broadens the kinds of spectrum of light that these algae can absorb.

[Alie 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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 phycobilins that look red. And then the brown algae tend to have carotenoids like carotene, beta carotene, fucoxanthin, that make the look kind of browny, like almond brown, sort of. Yeah.

[Charlie Yarish]

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. And that kind of like the color wheel, essentially.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Exactly. So there are a lot of algae. Like, if you go to the shore around San Francisco, there are. There's a lot of seaweeds that will just look black. Yeah, 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.

[Alie Ward]

When you eat seaweed.

[Charlie Yarish]

I'm assuming you eat seaweed. I do, of course.

[Patrick Martone]

Do you, like.

[Charlie Yarish]

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?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Oh, I'm still dissecting it. I'm sorry. I can't leave that behind. Especially if you get a seaweed salad that has, like, fresh seaweeds in it. They've often shredded them and so you can kind of. They've almost done a cross section for you and so I'll notice. Oh, there's a cystocarp. I can tell this was a female seaweed blade that they cut into. Yeah, no, I definitely do that.

[Charlie Yarish]

Do you have a favorite to eat?

[Patrick Martone]

Yes.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Well, I really do like some of the locally harvested pyropias, like the local noris. If you crisp them up just right, they can have a really nice salty taste. Kelp chips can be really delicious. Again, if you crisp them up, they can be really good.

[Alie Ward]

And we are pairing macrophycology 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 5 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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

I have to tell you that I teach a course every year out on Vancouver island in Bamfield, and I do a thing called Top Chef Seaweed where I do a big cooking competition with my students. I just let them collect whatever they want. You can eat all of the seaweeds in the area. Some of them taste better than others, but nothing's gonna hurt you. And I just let them innovate. And we have had some really cool recipes that have come out of it. I had a student make what looked like onion rings from the bull kelp. You know the bull kelp stipe? The really long one?

[Charlie Yarish]

Yes, yes.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Oh, the pneumaticist.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

I Think there is enough truth to that? Actually, yeah, we studied the gas. I had a student who studied the gases inside of the pneumaticist. There's some interesting stories there, but one of them is that, yeah, there is carbon monoxide inside of that. And there was a study that really did these calculations on sort of what kind of animals would pass out if they breathed in this gas. But we estimated in a paper that we wrote that there's enough volume of carbon monoxide in those big pneumaticists that if a person inhaled that they might actually pass out.

[Alie 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 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 a young chicken died in the kelp gas in about one minute. 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 Pneumatocysts in Bull 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 phycological adage, given that carbon monoxide concentration of of 0.01% could kill or render a person unconscious. The largest pneumaticist analyzed in this study, which held about a wine bottle full of gases, had a CO concentration of 1.6%, resulting in total concentration of 15 times greater than the maximum concentration of carbon monoxide someone with an average lung capacity could tolerate before passing out. So yeah, don't huff a bulk help bulb. I mean, maybe a lot of the gas would escape outside of laboratory settings, I don't know. But if it doesn't kill you, it might taste like a sandy fish butt either way.

[Charlie Yarish]

But I mean, don't get any ideas at home obviously, but you really Gotta 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 new medicine.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Very dramatic. Yes.

[Charlie Yarish]

When it comes to bull kelp, you mentioned the blade and the nematocyst. 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.

[Alie Ward]

So please enjoy our echinidology 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 ooni 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, but what kind.

[Charlie Yarish]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

Well, let's start with the anatomy of the seaweed itself. Okay, so at the bottom, you have this we call the holdfast, which looks like roots. Again, I'll just remind you that these aren't plants. So 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 hold fast. Because the hold fast doesn't absorb nutrients. It doesn't work like roots on land. The whole purpose of a hold fast is just to hold onto the rock. Right? That's how they stay in one place and don't drift away. So they have this hold fast. Then they have a 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. And as they grow, many kelps will start to divide that single blade into more and more blades. And of course, in things like the bull kelp and in the giant kelp, you have the stipe that actually starts to open up and form gas on the inside, which allows them to inflate to form those little gas bladders. Maybe it's obvious, but I'll just say having those gas bladders allows them to float and to gain height without needing to invest in wood. We think of plants, if you want to grow up, to maybe compete for light, they have to invest in wood. But living in water, they have this cool trick where all they have to do is add a little bit of gas into a little gas bladder and they can grow straight up. I like to imagine if we had this on land, it would be plants with helium balloons, you know, holding them up in the air.

[Charlie Yarish]

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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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?

[Patrick Martone]

How does that work?

[Daniel McCaskill]

No one knows.

[Alie Ward]

What.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 because you would explode, basically. Right?

[Charlie Yarish]

Yeah.

[Daniel McCaskill]

And what she found is at all sizes of the bull kelp, when they were teeny tiny, like, you know, 6 inches long versus 20ft long, the pressure inside of that bladder was always less than atmospheric pressure at the surface.

[Alie Ward]

So the bends or decompression sickness, it's a very serious condition for divers when gases that are dissolved in your blood start, start forming bubbles if the pressure change on the ascent is too quick. So these bull 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 nematocyst, which gets its name from pneumata, from air or vapor and chamber, it can get bigger than a bocce ball. And it's sometimes called a mermaid bladder. No, but it has to have very precise pressure inside to get the job done.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 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 bull kelp and you want to, you make a little float and then as you get bigger, you continue to adjust the pressure inside of that thing if you accidentally chose a pressure that was higher than the atmosphere, then when you got to the atmosphere, you would eventually pop because then you're over pressurized. Because when you're underwater, there's all this negative pressure from the water pushing on you. You. But as you move forward up 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.

[Angela Jones]

Ouch.

[Charlie Yarish]

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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yes.

[Charlie Yarish]

But they're not exploding.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yes. Isn't that cool?

[Charlie Yarish]

That's so much evolution to get that right.

[Daniel McCaskill]

I know. So there's a cool amount of selection that has probably happened where all the ones that accidentally were over pressurized, they all sank and died because they popped. And all the ones that had a pressure that was lower didn't pop. And so they survived. And so that has basically carried on through these lineages of bull kelps. Isn't that cool?

[Charlie Yarish]

Yes.

[Daniel McCaskill]

So here's the cool thing. When you go to the beach and you pop a bull kelp, just carefully, if you were to pop it, it actually sucks in. You think it's popping out, but it actually sucks in. We measured the pressure inside of those with a, 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 bull kelp to measure the pressure, it sucked all of the liquid out of our manometer into the bull kelp.

[Alie Ward]

No.

[Charlie Yarish]

So it almost like an implosion kind of.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yeah.

[Charlie Yarish]

I had no idea.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

Why do you think it's carbon monoxide and not dioxide?

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so this episode is a little wonky because we just talked to so many people. We got really excited and listener questions are coming up. But Barbara, Blackie and Sabrina had undoubtedly the weirdest question. And I just couldn't wait. Sabrina. My name is Sabrina. Shot from Snohomish, Washington. And I'm curious if there is really enough carbon monoxide in the floaty end of bull kelp to kill a chicken or perhaps even a man.

[Charlie Yarish]

I was like, I don't even know what gas. Who. What gas is in there.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Why the gases that are in there are there. Is carbon monoxide there is Also carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen. So we think that it's the same kinds of gases that we have in the atmosphere, but the ratios are all different. Carbon monoxide tends to be a byproduct of degradation and cell death. And I think what's happening is as that nematocyst is opening up and you have the tissue that's dying on the inside to make that gas bladder, I think carbon monoxide is being produced as a byproduct of that, you know, question.

[Charlie Yarish]

Do you ever get panicked emails from brides saying, my Cancun wedding's coming up, 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 and I didn't know it in the Caribbean.

[Alie Ward]

Are perfect for a destination beach wedding. If a clear beach is a top.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Priority for you, you should think about sargassum, that brown seaweed that can wash.

[Alie Ward]

Up on the shore or float in the water. Some areas it gets so bad it even smells.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Although it can be pretty unpredictable.

[Charlie Yarish]

It happens like, what is happening. And our seaweed experts called into like by.

[Daniel McCaskill]

We have an action team. Ali, 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, have not only gotten larger over time, so the amount of sargassum that's offshore is larger, but also because of changes in currents and winds, you end up getting multiple species combining into, like, a mega island of Sargassum that all washes ashore.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, no.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Alie 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 co workers. On your wedding day, things are gonna go wrong and they might even look uglier than expected. But all that matters is that there will be people there that you love who love you and they will one day be dead. And if the backdrop literally stinks, it doesn't matter if you like who you're marrying. In fact, one day it might even be hilar. So just roll with it.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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. So it can really mess up the whole ecosystem.

[Charlie Yarish]

Does that then feed more sargassum? If you've got like runoff of all this nitrogen, does that just sort of.

[Alie Ward]

Feed more algal blooms?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Possibly other algal blooms, but not sargassum? I think 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 can gets dumped, I think that's more affecting local communities and bacteria on the beach right there, which is plenty stinky and can have really bad results for the ecosystem, not to mention smothering all the animal life. You just get buried alive by islands of sargassum.

[Alie Ward]

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

[Angela Jones]

The sargassum is really something. It's floating at the mercy of the currents, but it's been able to form very large beds that are really wrecking havoc with tourism in the Caribbean and also in the Gulf of Mexico around the coast of Florida. And what's fueling this problem actually is, well, climate change is one and the other is humans. Humans produce a lot of nutrients. People like to go. They like to go to tropical areas and those nutrients are not processed properly and they end up in the local coastal zone and they just feed the blooms of the sargassum.

[Alie 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 blade, which Charlie was investigating.

[Angela Jones]

I did something really foolish, which I didn't realize at the time. Instead of just swimming in the bloom and looking at the seaweed like everybody else was doing, I decided to go down to the bottom. Oh, and I said, what happens to that seaweed when it decays? Oh, where is all of it going? And I snorkeled down to about 30ft and I noticed the bottom is covered with white bact. 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

Was your hearing affected?

[Angela Jones]

No. Fortunately I had some very good doctor at the 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. 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.

[Alie Ward]

And of course, to do fieldwork and collect samples and maybe contract surgical grade ear infections. You gotta get your feet wet and see the world. Charlie has been a diver for decades and ask any macrophycologist about their passport stamps in the name of algae. Actually, I did.

[Charlie Yarish]

I asked Patrick what about different parts of the world? Because when I texted you, you were coming off of like a float plane, which is not something that most of us do for our jobs. But have you gotten to see a lot of parts of the world in search of seaweed? Or do you plan your vacations around like, does Australia have good seaweed? I don't know. Oh, yes, like Korea. Where have you gone in search of seaweed?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Where have I not gone in search of seaweed? It seems like every place that I go that has a coastline, inevitably I'm going to be collecting seaweed. I actually just spent a sabbatical in Australia for many months. And the Australian flora is super interesting. They have Tons and tons of seaweeds. They actually don't have that many kelp species, but they have tons of red algae and other brown algae and tons of Sargassum species and all sorts of really interesting seaweeds down there. Yeah, I think that's one of the beauties of being a seaweed scientist is wherever I go to the beach, I get to look for seaweeds and learn new names for things, new species and compare across regions. Most of my work is in the Northeast Pacific, so sort of between California and Alaska. So I know this flora very well. But I've spent time in Japan. Amazing seaweed diversity in Japan, some of which is shared with our coast, but a lot of it is not. Although you almost see things that looks. Look familiar, but then they're different species.

[Alie 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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

So, yeah, why does that Asian coast, why are they so good at seaweed? And other cultures haven't made use of seaweed from a culinary standpoint that we could.

[Daniel McCaskill]

You know, it's an interesting question. One thing that I'll say is that. So back to speaking about nori. There is obviously this multibillion dollar nori industry in Asia, in Japan specifically, and it has been collected by indigenous people in Asia forever. And we have the same thing happening in the northeast Pacific. So we work with a number of indigenous communities on this coast that also. We have a different species of nori here. It has been collected and eaten and traded by indigenous communities in the Northeast Pacific as well, forever. Thousands and thousands of years. And so there is something about that sort of. That type of seaweed that is culturally important to a lot of people.

[Charlie Yarish]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

And can I ask you a couple questions from listeners? Do you have time?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Sure.

[Charlie Yarish]

Is that okay?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yeah.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, so we'll ask a bunch of patron questions in a moment with Patrick and Charlie, plus some favorite seaweeds of other favorites, favorite macrophychologist. But first, let's scatter some coin in the sea to some causes. And this week we have three of them. So Patrick directed his toward the Rain Coast Education Fund, which delivers a broad range of high quality educational and interpretive programs such as field school speaker series, summer camps, school programs and events focused on the natural environment and cultures and communities of the Clayoquot and Barkley Sound region. And Charlie would like his to go to greenwave.org which replicates and scales regenerative ocean farms to create jobs and protect the planet by training and supporting ocean farmers and they work with coastal communities to create a blue economy. And we're also sending a donation to the wonderful Black and Marine Science, which was founded in 2020 and born from a recognized need for greater representation and support for individuals and communities in marine science. And they have built a wonderful, ongoing, powerful network dedicated to advancing marine science and conservation. And for more on its founder, Dr. Tiara Moore, see our Forensic Ecology episode with her, which we're going to link in the show notes. We will also link, of course, blackandmarinescience.org greenwave.org and raincoast education.org so thank you so much to sponsors of the show for making those three donations possible this week.

[Patrick Martone]

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[Charlie Yarish]

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[Charlie Yarish]

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[Patrick Martone]

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[Alie Ward]

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[Patrick Martone]

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[Alie Ward]

So am I.

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[Alie Ward]

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[Charlie Yarish]

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[Alie Ward]

You got this. 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 [e-mail] Ologies and I started with Charlie. Some people had textural questions. Let's see.

[Charlie Yarish]

Klur Elise. Stacy Pinkowitz, the amazing Ms. J, wanted to ask, in Claire's words, slime.

[Alie Ward]

Why?

[Charlie Yarish]

Elise wanted to know why are some types slicker than others? What is it in seaweed that gives it that texture?

[Angela Jones]

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, sort of like our skin, sloughing off the skin. And this then sloughs off the grazing animals. Now, that slime is not only coming from the seaweed, but it's coming from organisms that evolved with the seaweed. 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.

[Alie Ward]

So slime, part of it is just the seaweed and doing an exfoliation. Part of it is bacteria that loves that stuff. All of it is the juicy goodness of nature. And some seaweeds produce something like the tannins in acorns and oak leaves, which helps ward off hungry sea snails. And scientists are trying to figure out what that is and see if they can select for that in seaweed farming so that they don't get kelp robbed by some hungry gastropods. Now, speaking of industry clouds and bugs and shrooms, Chloe Willow Hall, Sue Myshak, Kirit Singh, Nikki G. Road less traveled, light brown pillow and first time question askers Nina Toy and Ursula Goodwin as.

[Charlie Yarish]

Well as Ed wanted to know. Ed from Chicago asked I had a question about seaweed plastic. How does that work? Like making plastic out of seaweed or making things out of seaweed to avoid using plastic. How are we doing with.

[Alie Ward]

With that?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 alginates and in the reds you have things like carrageenan 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, say that I have seen especially for dried products, I've seen some things coming out of Europe where they're making sort of like cookie wrappers that are made out of algae so that they're 100% biodegradable. I've seen stuff that looks kind of like boxes or sort of Tupperwares that are made of these bioplastics vases for dried things. That is, I think for liquids it's a little more complicated. There I remember seeing something about, about using alginates to make these little. 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 alginates where they had made a little sphere that had the water inside. So like if you're in a marathon, you can grab one of these little water balls and pop it in your mouth and eat the whole thing.

[Charlie Yarish]

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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Me neither. And I had wondered if you could use that to make condiments. Like you could make a little mustard blob or a ketchup blob and squeeze that into your burger. I don't know.

[Charlie Yarish]

That's a great idea.

[Alie Ward]

So there's one company called Sway and they're making compostable packaging out of seaweed. Lollyware makes drinking straws and notpla. Which notpla, I suppose it means not plastic has been creating food packaging made from seaweed and they also make that little bubble called an uhoh 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, Ryan the Tiger Bronte, Rebecca Morrison, Tegamonte, Melanie Ng, Andy Pepper, Annie for Question Asker, Gwen Kelly Prijukli, Megan Morgan, Brenna Hull and Thorpassasaurus Jess. Who asked, will seaweed save us all? And how about with the global impacts.

[Charlie Yarish]

And carbon capture of farming seaweed, are you finding that it's good for people who want to eat it and also for the planet? Is that one thing that drives you with aquaculture?

[Angela Jones]

Well, that's a very good question. I thought maybe you might ask that. And you know, in the greenwave organization, when I was telling Brent 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 via process of photosynthesis. Well, we developed a Kelp climate Fund. These farmers are producing high quality food, 2.3 million pounds. And today I could say we have actually sequestered over 37,000 pounds of carbon and 4,500 pounds of, of nitrogen, all being removed from the environment through our kelp Climate fund. So we're doing our piece and There.

[Alie Ward]

Was a 2023 paper titled Potential Role of Seaweeds in Climate Change Mitigation. And it notes that we're looking at a few ways to beg seaweed to save our asses. One of them restoring the wild stuff or more seaweed farms. Both of those two have uncertain net impacts at large scale. There's also using seaweed products like methane, reducing cattle feed or better packaging to reduce emissions in the first place. That they say shows some promise. There's also the option of growing a bunch of seaweed as a sink to capture carbon, which this paper notes raises ecological concerns. And the paper continues with a hand on seaweed's shoulder, offering a consoling quote. Seaweed provides many other ecosystem services that justify conservation and restoration and, and the uptake of seaweed. Aquaculture will contribute to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. But yeah, we need way more Research to figure out if it will even help or make a dent. And an April 2022 paper titled Seaweed ecosystems may not mitigate CO2 emissions is also kind of a bit of a water bubble burster. And Patrick says that fixing the whole climate crisis is probably too big an ask of seaweed. But, yeah, more research is needed. And Charlie, as chief scientist at Greenwave, acknowledges that we need to make sure we don't get too far ahead of the science. He says we have to build an industry on a strong science foundation, not false space. So scientists are learning more every day, and cross your fingers, they'll fix the planet. Now, if seaweed did catch a break and could restore itself, what are the mechanics there? Well, since we already know they're not plants, which, according to Becky, the sassy seagrass scientist, have roots, stems, seeds, flowers, shoots, and leaves, how does kelp make more kelp?

[Charlie Yarish]

Courtney Peterson, Diana Teeter, Anna Thompson, Jeffrey Bradshaw, and Chris Lipford wanted to know, in Courtney's words, what is their reproduction cycle like? Diana wanted to know, does seaweed have seeds? Anna Thompson asked if it gets pollinated.

[Alie Ward]

But.

[Charlie Yarish]

But given it's not a plant, I don't know. It must not. It doesn't have flowers, right?

[Angela Jones]

Well, seaweeds have not reached the level of producing structures called seeds. They don't have that. They also don't have true roots, they don't have true leaves, they don't have true stems. However, what seaweeds do have is sex. And they do have complex reproductive cycles. The kelp, in the springtime, also in the fall, they produce this dark brown tissue. 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. 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

Is anybody out there?

[Angela Jones]

The female releases a chemical attractant 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 fertilizer. 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.

[Alie 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.

[Angela Jones]

They produce that gametes and the gametes find each other. And because you can't tell them apart, you call them plus and minus, but they just 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. Oh, and once again, you got sex. So seaweeds have some very interesting sexual stories.

[Alie Ward]

I love this for them. Now, a few folks patrons. Mariah Waltzer, 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, 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 and those are the levels posted for commercial fishermen. 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.

[Charlie Yarish]

Be knowing about the water temperature, the.

[Alie Ward]

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?

[Charlie Yarish]

Do you have any tips for a beachgoer or a lake goer? 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?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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, 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, need that. I think it's just paying attention to what's out there. Personally, I like. So if I'm collecting in cold weather, I wear gloves where I've cut the fingers off so that my fingertips are still showing because I really get a lot out of feeling the texture of different seaweeds. Some of them can be quite slippery, Some of them can 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 for 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.

[Alie 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 Angelenos, they're out, ready to party, especially for the annual Seaweed Festival. And the site, California seaweedfestival.org, says that in collaboration with Alta Sea and the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, they're having the sixth annual California Seaweed Festival. It's going to happen between October 10th and 11th, 2025, in San Pedro. And they say that if you have ideas on hosting a panel or workshop or demo, feel free to contact them via their website, California seaweedfestival.org so chefs or foragers, farmers, macrophycologists get in on that. Now, one macrophycologist you should know about is Danielle McCaskill, who has been studying seaweed for the last six years and is finishing up a PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. And Danielle says that she's dedicated her life to seaweed, focusing on non native seaweed ecology. And I was introduced to her via black and marine science. And she's amazing. She's also been collaborating with the visual arts department at her university, working on art exhibits to highlight the wonders of algal ecology. And she's really passionate about using community science to rebottle 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.

[Angela Jones]

Hey Allie, My name is Danielle McCaskill. I'm a fellow macrophycologist finishing my PhD at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and my favorite seaweed right now is Undaria pinnatifida. I'll share four reasons why 1. Andari Daria's pretty. So cute.

[Alie Ward]

And this gorgeous, leathery, deep dark green, almost purplish color kelp is also known as wakame and it grows off the cold water coast 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.

[Angela Jones]

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 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. 2. Andaria is edible. It's super tasty. It's healthy. I've personally only had it as seaweed salad, but a friend from Korea says that they deep fry, try 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. Undaria is interesting. So Andaria is a non native seaweed that has been introduced to many countries throughout the world. People are wary of non native seaweeds because they could cause negative changes in the ecosystem. However, the impacts of Andaria throughout the world are ambiguous and in some cases some regions we don't even really know. Some of the basic questions about undaria, like when do they start growing and how do they get here? Which is exactly what I've been studying.

[Alie Ward]

Which is why Danielle is so cool.

[Angela Jones]

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, Undaria 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.

[Alie Ward]

And Danielle, we are very thankful for you and the cool stuff you do. You can follow her @seaweedsista on Instagram, which we will link in the show. What a great macrophycologist. I'm also a big fan of scientist Angela Jones, who studies primarily sea stars, but told me that she does algae pressing as a restorative form of art and therapy. And she says using rack algae as a form of art has been helpful for myself, my volunteers and the community. And that caused me to look up rack algae because I was like, I don't know what that is. W R A C K. And apparently that's the insider term for the seaweed that's washed ash. 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.

[Becky Sworita]

Hello Alie Ward and Ologies listeners. My name is Angela Jones. I am a rising 5th 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.

[Alie Ward]

And these are so pretty, like fanned out out deep purplish or red or ochre imprints with all kinds of species and hues represented on these sheets of white paper.

[Becky Sworita]

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 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 Vicodris Rubens sea oak leaf. It has these really nice veins to it and it's red so it looks like how you would picture an oak leaf, but just as if it grew underwater. Those ones are here in New England and so I press them quite often and I think currently those are probably my favorite. But any red anything that I 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 Phycogis Rubens, the sea oak.

[Alie 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?

[Angela Jones]

My favorite thing about seaweed?

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Angela Jones]

Well, I got to tell you, my favorite thing, besides the taste, I just think seaweeds are amazing. They're beautiful. The beauty of seaweeds. And I think a friend who comes from the Bay Area, you may have met her. If you haven't met her, you should. Her name is Josie Iselin.

[Charlie Yarish]

Okay, I'll look her up.

[Angela Jones]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

The Curious World of Seaweed.

[Angela Jones]

Yes.

[Alie Ward]

A lovely book, by the way, from Heyday 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 [e-mail] ologies macrophychology.

[Angela Jones]

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 still to this day is something that I just, you know, look at and just say, boy, this is fantastic. You look at a giant kelp and you say to yourself, boy, look at around the kelp. You know, the fish that are associated with that community and the structure, the red seaweeds, some are very feathery, like, some are very long. Some are many different colors and so forth, depending where they're growing.

[Charlie Yarish]

Oh, gorgeous.

[Angela Jones]

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.

[Alie Ward]

Oh, how beautiful, how gorgeous. But what sucks? Let's ask Patrick. You mentioned cold weather.

[Charlie Yarish]

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?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Well, I'll tell you one of the hard things, which is that the diversity is very high and being able to differentiate species. So one of the things that we're doing is, is we've been following seaweed communities for 14 years on this island called Calvert Island.

[Alie 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 Bull harbor, right in there. And it's mainly used for research with maybe like 30 people on it. And I made the mistake of looking at photos and unfortunately it is gorgeous and I would like to live there eating kelp.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 smaller than the size of your finger. So there's often debate. Just yesterday I got a text from someone with a picture of a tide pool saying, what's this species? And I'm saying, okay, well, here's a guess, but did it feel like this? And did it bend kind of like this? And what was the temperature of the tide pool? And I don't know. So the diversity can be a bit overwhelming, let's put it that way. Exciting and amazing, but can be overwhelming.

[Charlie Yarish]

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?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Alie 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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

It is called Erythrophyllum. It's a red seaweed that looks like a big feather. You can see how it's kind of feather like. Yeah, it's just a really cool seaweed. It only lives in really wave exposed areas where there's big waves crashing. And then it's just like this burst of red feathers hanging off the rock. It's a very cool. And so that's definitely one of my favorites because it's just so amazing. There are other interesting ones, like Botryocladia is this little red alga that all of its branches are full of mucilage. So 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.

[Alie Ward]

When you got your tattoo, did the.

[Charlie Yarish]

Tattoo artist ask you a lot of questions? Did that tattoo artist end up knowing a lot about that species when you left? Yes.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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. For. For the tattoo.

[Alie Ward]

Just a shout out to his tattoo artist, Michi Kojima at Sacred Heart tattoo in Vancouver, BC, and you can look for her Instagram @tattoosbymitchie. M I C H I E. Oh, that's stunning.

[Charlie Yarish]

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.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Alie Ward]

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

[Daniel McCaskill]

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 erythrophyllum.

[Angela Jones]

And.

[Daniel McCaskill]

And I was like, you're my people.

[Charlie Yarish]

Do you go to seaweed conferences?

[Daniel McCaskill]

Yes.

[Alie Ward]

Yeah.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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.

[Charlie Yarish]

Yeah, they need to have, like, a roll call for if you have a seaweed tattoo. Like, come to the photo booth if you're willing to show. Let's see it, and just make a book for the next year, because I think that's so beautiful.

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

Do you know yet, or is that under wrap?

[Daniel McCaskill]

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

[Charlie Yarish]

Okay, I respect that.

[Alie 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 weed. 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 macrophychology you can check out Dr. Patrick Martone's app too. It's called the Seaweed Sorter. You can go romp on a seashore somewhere and enjoy your new ancient algal friends. We are at Ologies on Blue sky and Instagram. I'm alieward on both. We have swear free short episodes for kids called Smallogies. You can hear wherever you get podcasts or linked at the Show Notes. Ologies Merch [e-mail] and you can join us on [e-mail] Ologies Erin Talbert admins Theologies Podcast Facebook group Avileen Malik makes art professional transcripts Kelly A.R. dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth is our holdfast scheduling producer Ologies Neptune and managing director is Susan Hale and co captains of Editing Steering the sounds are the wonderful Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio and the trusty Jake Chaffee who put this all together. Nick Thor is the siren who made the theme music. And if you listen until the end of this, I tell you a secret. This one is that this one time I was out as a teenage goth, I was taking biology courses in Santa Barbara and I was just cavorting around a pier at night like a straight edge oppressed suburban goth mite. And my friend Mikey found a bottle of like abandoned tobacco sauce open near a pile of fish guts and started swinging it around and I hollered for him to stop. And as I did so my sweater and my open mouth became the receivers of a not insignificant amount of this Tabasco. And to this day I cannot smell or eat Tabasco sauce. Other hot sauce, fine Tabasco, get it away from me. Also at the time I was studying at the Santa Barbara Community College there. Love it. And my botany professor was Dr. Bob Cummings. And and one day he was normally a really nice guy, but one day he was like there's gonna 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 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 two of her 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 everyone. Keep your heads up, speak your mind, stand strong for each other. I'm in LA and as you can imagine, this week has been a rough one. And that's all I'll say about that right now. Okay? All right, be good to each other. Bye Bye.

[Charlie Yarish]

Pachydermatology Homeology Cryptozoology Litology Nanotechnology Meteorology Olfactology.

[Patrick Martone]

Mapology Serology Selenology.

[Angela Jones]

Kelp worked hey Fidelity.

[Alie Ward]

What'S it cost to invest with the Fidelity app? Start with as little as $1 with no account fees or trade commissions on US stocks and ETFs. That's music to my ears. I can only talk.

[Daniel McCaskill]

Investing involves risk, including risk of loss. 0 account fees applied to retail brokerage accounts only sell order assessment fee not included. A limited number of ETFs are subject to a transaction based service fee of $100. See full [e-mail] commissions Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC Member NYSE SIPC.

[Alie Ward]

Okay, one more secret for you.

[Patrick Martone]

My garbage isn't stinky. If you're like impossible and why are you bragging?

[Alie Ward]

It's not me. It's because I have a mill food recycler. You can take your food scraps and your leftover food, your vegetable peelings, whatever. You walk over to the mill, you drop it in. It always reminds me of that scene.

[Patrick Martone]

At the end of Back to the Future. The future where Doc is just putting.

[Alie Ward]

Stuff in the car. It's like that, but for food scraps.

[Patrick Martone]

You put it in there while you sleep.

[Alie Ward]

It dehydrates and churns them up. You can fill it for weeks and it doesn't smell. And it also keeps leftovers out of my garbage so that my garbage doesn't smell or get juicy, which is what you don't want your garbage to be. So it transforms your scraps into these nutrient rich grounds.

[Patrick Martone]

They look like coffee grounds.

[Alie Ward]

You can put them in the garden, you can put them in your compost mill. Can even get them to a farm for you. There's no mess, there's no stress, and it keeps food waste out of the landfills, so it can't create a ton of methane, which is a very potent greenhouse gas. So mill makes it easy to do something good. And you can get $75 [e-mail] ologies that's mill.com ologies.