What is Seaweed?

Seaweed is a family of about 65,000 living species, a hundred or so, eaten by man. They are scattered in 8% of the total ocean's habitat. Sustainable seaweed farming is offering unique new environments where some seaweed species have adapted well to 'hanging-out', therefore making them more sustainable, and more widely available.

Seaweeds are single cell organisms. I can imagine single-cell organisms as living organisms, with worlds of vibrating activity going on within them. They continually supply oxygen, organic carbohydrates, fats, and proteins for other living creatures.

Seaweed continually giveback not only oxygen but also organic carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. They also protect sea life from predators.

Essentially, seaweeds worship the Sun, constantly reaching-up to absorb the sunlight, while they unknowingly protect other sea-life from predators. They are considered the 'oldest' living form on earth.

CLASSIFICATIONS

You can differentiate between the seaweed species by their color, red, brown, green, and blue-green, determined by the amount of sunlight that reaches them. However, do not worry about their Latin names, for our purpose; we will focus on those that are either brown or green.

The red seaweed likes to live closer to the surface and includes about 2,500 different species. (This book does not include any recipes for the red seaweeds). The green seaweeds prefer a little deeper ocean depth where they are about 5,000 different species. The brown seaweed or kelp, loves the deepest depth, where they live with about 1,000 species. The blue-green algae, also know as spirulina, or chlorella (not covered in this book) comprises unknown thousands of species.