The shore of Loch Shieldaig boasts an amazing variety of seaweeds, which was the inspiration for this post, and as I don’t know much about this familiar seashore organism, I have found it quite interesting to carry out a little Phycology.
Seaweeds are the basis of the marine food chain, they take their energy from the sun, turning it into food and also remove carbon dioxide from the air, and as plants do on land, they provide shelter for sea creatures.
Seaweeds can be catergorised as green, brown and red but are all from the marine algae family. Many uses have been found for seaweed, probably the most familiar is for for food, but it is to be widely found in many industries, for example medicines, cosmetics, toothpastes and fertiliser.
Due to requiring an anchor point, most seaweeds can be found on the seashore, although they can extend for miles out to sea, the main other requirement being a good source of sunlight, to enable the plant to photosynthesise.
