Welcome to the Seaweed Site
The
anticarcinogenic properties of brown seaweeds (kelp) are
well known in some cultures. Traditional Chinese Medicine
includes the
brown
alga
Laminaria
in the treatment of
cancer and it has also been recommended in
ancient Ayurvedic texts. There is even a mention in the
Ebers Papyrus of the ancient Egyptians having used seaweed
to treat breast cancer.
The first use of
seaweed to treat cancer in Western medicine was in the
1960s, when something called Algasol T331 was used in Italy.
According to a paper presented in 1966 by Claudio and
Standardo, 68% of 162 patients made a good recovery
following intramuscular injections. The good recovery seems
to have been improved well being following chemotherapy,
including increasing appetite and hair re-growth.
What
are seaweeds?
 Seaweeds
are marine algae: saltwater-dwelling, simple organisms that fall
into the rather outdated general category of "plants". Most of
them are the green (1200 species), brown (2000 species) or red
(6000 species) kinds shown on this page, and most are attached
by holdfasts, which just have an anchorage function. Most people
know two major groups of seaweeds: wracks (members of the brown
algal order Fucales such as Fucus) and kelps (members of
the brown algal order Laminariales such as
Laminaria),
and some have heard of Carrageen Moss (a red alga, Chondrus
crispus) and Dulse (also a red alga, Palmaria palmata).
Seaweeds make up the Sargasso Sea, a large ocean gyre in the
western Atlantic where drift plants of the genus Sargassum
accumulate. Seaweeds are very important ecologically: they
dominated the rocky intertidal in most oceans and in temperate
and polar regions dominate rocky surfaces in the shallow
subtidal. Some are found to depths of 250 m in particulalry
clear waters.
Can
we eat them?
 Seaweeds
are found throughout the world's oceans and seas and none is
known to be poisonous. Many are in fact eaten and considered to
be a great delicacy. Seaweeds are used in many maritime
countries for industrial applications and as a fertiliser. The
major utilisation of these plants as food is in Asia, where
seaweed cultivation has become a major industry. The main food
species grown by aquaculture in China, Korea and Japan are Nori
(Porphyra, a red alga), Kombu or Kunbu (Laminaria,
a brown alga) and Wakame (Undaria, also a brown alga).
In most western countries food and animal consumption is
relatively restricted and there has not been any great pressure
to develop mass cultivation techniques. On this site, seaweed
aquaculture, including nori, a Japanese red seaweed, is
described in detail with a range of pictures.
What
use are they?
 Industrial
utilisation is at present largely confined to extraction for
phycocolloids and, to a much lesser extent, certain fine
biochemicals. Fermentation and pyrolysis are not being carried
out on an industrial scale at present but are possible options
for the future, particularly as conventional fossil food run
out. Seaweeds are being used in cosmetics, as fertilisers. They
have the potential to be used as a source of long- and
short-chain chemicals with medicinal and industrial uses. Marine
algae may also be used as energy-collectors and potentially
useful substances may be extracted by fermentation and pyrolysis.
Seaweed extracts appear in the oddest of places: you have
probably eaten some sort of seaweed extract in the last 24 hrs
as many foods contain seaweed polysaccharides such as agars,
carrageenans
and alginates!
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