Sandy Hook Seaweeds - Brookdale College Ocean Institute

Sandy Hook Seaweeds

Sargassum weed from far offshore was very common in the Summer of 2003 because of the storms and Easterly winds that spoiled many beach days.	Floating Sargassum weed harbors a great variety of other creatures including fishes, sea turtles, crustaceans and especially the bryozoan colony pictured above.
	(Left) The gulfweed's air bladders reminded Portuguese sailors of their sargaza grapes and they named the gulfweed after them.
Sea lettuce (Ulva) is the most abundant algae on the bay. It grows in the shallows and high tide line because it is resistant to desiccation and it thrives on abundant light. It is more abundant in areas of high nutrients which is detrimental to some other valuable plants like the eel grass.	Eel grass, a flowering plant, not algaeis one of the most valuable plants of the bay bottom and is affected by cloudy and algae-rich waters in high nutrient areas. Sea grass beds are some of the most valuable and threatened nurseries in the sea. This is a tangled mass of stringy eelgrass which washed out of a river and often ends up on the beach. With it are the brown algae Wrack (Ascoplyllum) and Popweed (Fucus). Brown algae tend to grow at the mid-tide level. (Note the air bladders)
	Red algae like the Irish Sea Moss (Chondrus) is sensitive to drying and is usually found below the tideline in cooler waters to our north.
Algae are important food sources for many creatures and also provide a home for a multitude of other creatures. This film is sometimes called aufwuchs by scientists and is a combined garden and zoo. The lacy structure on the right is a colony Bryozoans or "moss animals."
	(Left) Aufwuchs community: Hydroids (Starting at the upper left), red rock weed, another hydroid, tube worm (Spirorbis), and a baby sea cucumber. (Starting at the lower right), a sea anemone, nemertean worm, foraminifera, encrusting red algae and an ostracod. Drawings from Ken Gosner and American Littoral Society UN Vol. 18, No.2
Some of the activities you can do with algae are: plant pressing (Below) and studying the use of algal-based products like carageenan and agar, and of course eating algae like commercially grown seaweeds found in health food stores, Oriental food markets and restaurants.	Aufwuchs inhabitants on a piece of seaweed include a large nematode worm, masses of tiny bacteria and spindle-shaped diatoms.
	This odd find (We call them devil's heads) is actually the seed from a freshwater flowering plant, the European water nut (Trapa natans). These drift down the Hudson River and are stranded on the beach. To read more about this and other Sandy Hook "sea beans" click here.
	Green fleece (Codium) is non-native seaweed that is a nuisance in some harbors. It thrives on pilings and floating docks, and is the newest plant reported in Sandy Hook Bay. The other odd item on the right is a decorator worm tube.
(Right) New growths of red algae are sometimes mistaken for marine animals like urchins.
	Red rock weeds (Agardhiella and Gracilaria) are sensitive to drying and thrive in the deeper water below the low tide line. They are cast up during storms along with worm tubes and shells they are attached to.
	Farther North, brown kelp weeds dominate the sub-tidal areas. Follow these links to Gulf of Maine, Gulf of St. Lawrence and West Coast waters.

Algae is collected for pressing by well-equipped and adventurous teams who go into the water snorkelling and seining, or if you don't want to get your hair wet - with underwater viewers.