Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 17
Floating Seaweeds and Their Communities
Eva Rothausler, Lars Gutow, and Martin Thiel
17.1
Introduction
Floating seaweeds have fascinated sailors and naturalists since the first ships sailed
across the oceans, where they discovered immense rafts of seaweeds far from shore.
Christopher Columbus was one of the first who documented dense aggregations of
floating algae. In September 1492, his crew encountered masses of floating seaweed
as they were approaching the Bahamas: “They saw so much weed that the sea
appeared to be covered with it
...
.and there was a great deal of weed and they found
crabs in it” (Farlow
1914
).
Floating
Sargassum natans
and
S. fluitans
from the Sargasso Sea and especially
their specifically adapted fauna are remarkable biological communities. Full-grown
algae that form dense masses without ever having been attached to the seafloor pass
their entire floating life cycle via the propagation of vegetative fragments (Parr
1939
). While floating algal populations in other seas appear to originate from
benthic source populations, the size of algal rafts and the length of their ocean
voyages equal or even surpass that of
S. natans
and
S. fluitans
.
E. Rothausler
Universidad Cat
´
lica del Norte, Larrondo 1281, 1781421 Coquimbo, Chile
Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Kashiwanoha 5-1-5,
Kashiwa-shi, Chiba-ken, 277-8564 Japan
e-mail:
Rothaeusler@gmail.com
L. Gutow
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Box 12 01 61, 27515 Bremerhaven,
Germany
e-mail:
Lars.Gutow@awi.de
M. Thiel (
*
)
Universidad Cat´ lica del Norte, Larrondo 1281, 1781421 Coquimbo, Chile
Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Zonas
´
ridas (CEAZA), Coquimbo, Chile
e-mail:
thiel@ucn.cl
