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A Season for Seaweeds
- University Press of New England
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147 bag and—voilà!—the desert has blossomed like a rose, or rather, like a mold, four separate species to be exact, in colors ranging from black to orange to blue-green. I have my fungi, and I couldn’t be happier. o p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p aseasonforseaweeds In poetry, art, and song, the sea is celebrated as having unsurpassed beauty (“I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky”—Masefield); but, truth to tell, there is much in the ocean that is, at first blush, downright ugly—to the uninitiated. I don’t know where the term seaweed originated, but it is clear that the person who came up with it harbored little esthetic appreciation for these plants. I, for one, can’t seem to get enough of them; and I take pride in having introduced many students to their wiles. One of the high points of the semester is when I indulge one of my great pleasures—collecting seaweeds for my marine biology class. It is, of course, possible to simply present my students with “pressings” or—gasp—photographs, but what fun would that be? In order to develop esteem for the understated beauty of seaweeds, one must engage them in the slimy flesh, hands on, with eyes, nostrils—and even taste buds—open. I understand why seaweeds seem to fall comfortably into the category of the “esthetically challenged.” The reasons are many. They don’t flower, they’re slimy, they rot on beaches, and their spectrum of colors is limited to just red, brown, and green, usually in subdued hues. Even some of their names sound disagreeable : Chondrus, Ulva, Fucus (pronounced like “mucus”). 148 p b o u n d l e s s m o m e n t s This points up one of the problems of getting people to come around to seaweeds. Many seaweeds don’t have English, or common , names. But those that do, often have fanciful monikers: there’s Irish moss (very tasty), sea colander, knotted wrack, and my favorite—gorilla ogo, an invasive Pacific seaweed that, like the proverbial 600-pound ape, goes wherever it wants. My students’ experiences with seaweeds do nothing to ennoble them. They relate childhood episodes of splatting their siblings with gobs of the stuff. Others describe having smelled it decaying. Now and then I encounter the intrepid soul who has eaten it, vowing never to do so again. Of course, some seaweeds, like kelp, are relished for some quality only an eater of seaweeds could explain. To me, my students’ attitudes toward seaweeds represent nothing less than a challenge. To take something that at first glance seems uninteresting at best, and then reveal the beauty within is, for me, a deeply satisfying aspect of teaching. As I drive through the low, snow-covered hills along the Penobscot here in central Maine, my anticipation steadily heightens as the river widens toward the bay. I don’t know what excites me more, the seaweed or the idea of being absolutely alone on a Maine beach in the very heart of winter. Perhaps it is some intangible combination of the two. I arrive at Blue Hill Falls at low tide—heaven for the marine biologist in search of algae (did I mention that seaweeds are algae? In short, this simply means no flowers, no roots, no leaves, no internal conducting vessels for water and minerals—just like the stuff that one scrapes off the glass of a home aquarium). I get out of my truck, put on my rubber calf boots, and crunch through a thin layer of ice as I make my way over the rocks and down to the beach. The cold air smells of salt and I also get a whiff of putrefaction. The seaweeds are near. My students seldom ask why seaweeds are slimy; they just take it for granted that they are, and that this is part and parcel of their essence. But like everything else in nature, there is [3.95.233.107] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 02:17 GMT) A Season for Seaweeds p 149 rhyme in the slime. It allows the nearshore seaweeds to withstand exposure to air until the tide rises again. Other seaweeds are always submerged and are, consequently, in less need of a protective coating. I have chosen this collecting day carefully, being sure to arrive at...