Seaweed's boring…..just the stuff that clutters up the strand line ?
Well, definitely not, for quite apart from creating magical rock pools and underwater forests, seaweed, with its 10000 species of which 650 appear in the UK, has a huge range of uses to man that have been exploited for thousands of years.
Professional phycologist Dr Sarah Hotchkiss, who also happens to be a Coastwise member, gave a comprehensive overview of uses over the last 12000 years. The sheer scale of use is impressive, with some 25M wet Te harvested annually, of which 95% is used in some form as food. About 80% of this is grown in China and Indonesia, but the Japanese are also deeply traditional users and connoiseurs.
There is a wide range of modern medical and cosmetic applications, and laboratory analysis is showing that traditional uses were focussed and quite effective. Main applications are as anti-inflammatories, diuretics and for goitre.
Modern important industrial product applications use hydrocolloids for texturing foods, and alginates in printing.
The pictures show traditional and modern methods of conservational harvesting.
Sarah, who is an authority on the subject, made this a highly entertaining as well as educational topic, and had assembled an impressive and tasty array of seaweed-based and flavoured snacks from round the world.