Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 22
Seaweed and Man
Cornelia M. Buchholz, Gesche Krause, and Bela H. Buck
22.1 Aquacultural Production of Seaweeds
and Its Economic Relevance
22.1.1
Introduction
Despite an Asian aquaculture tradition of many centuries, aquatic farming on the
global scale is still a young sector of food production that has grown rapidly in the
last 50 years. Seaweeds, a colloquial but widely used term for macroalgae, play an
important role in this business which remains a growing, vibrant, and important
production sector for healthy human food.
As archaeological investigations in Chile testified, seaweeds have been used by
humans for about 14,000 years (Dillehay et al.
2008
). According to earliest written
records, they were consumed in Japan during the Asukaand Nara Era approx.
1,500 years ago. Even food products directly made from seaweeds have a long
C.M. Buchholz (
*
)
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Am Handelshafen 12,
27550 Bremerhaven, Germany
e-mail:
Cornelia.Buchholz@awi.de
G. Krause
Center for Tropical Marine Ecology (ZMT), Fahrenheitstrasse 6, 28359 Bremen, Germany
e-mail:
Gesche.Krause@zmt-bremen.de
B.H. Buck
Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), Am Handelshafen 12,
27550 Bremerhaven, Germany
Institute for Marine Resources (IMARE), Bussestrasse 27, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany
Bremerhaven University of Applied Sciences, Applied Marine Biology, An der Karlstadt 8,
27568 Bremerhaven, Germany
e-mail:
Bela.H.Buck@awi.de
