Seaweed II - Kelp

Back in January I posted a photo of some of the green lettuce-like seaweed that often piles up on the shoreline along the Westbay Walkway and I mentioned that another kind of seaweed also forms large drifts on the beaches. I referred to it as, "spaghetti-like tangles of giant kelp" and you can see what I meant in the above photo. Its latin name is Macrocystis pyrifera and it is the largest of all algae. It can grow as much as 2 feet in a day. Wikipedia has an interesting article on this plant.