Dallas Road 2

As a result of recent winter storms there is alot of seaweed washed ashore. The variety, color and textures are really quite amazing. - Fern

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.

Seaweed

It seems that every few weeks the small beaches that line the West Bay Walkway are covered with dense drifts of seaweed. Sometimes it is just spaghetti-like tangles of giant kelp but other times it is the bright green lettuce-like weed pictured here. It can lie on the beach for several days or a week before changing tides and currents wash it away and often it becomes quite smelly. I suspect it would make good fertilizer if applied to the garden.

Seaweed

One is never very far from the seafront in Victoria. Here is an example of the kinds of seaweed that are thrown onto the beach after a storm.