Seaweed with Allison Poklemba

Allison  0:00  
The first impulse about seaweed is that it's a nuisance gross, smelly, associated with like unpleasant low tide smell. And when you look at here, it can just sort of look like this maroon colored blur. And so I just love helping people to zoom in on that blur and bring it into better focus to see like there's amazing diversity here. 800 different types growing along our coast here.

Michelle Fullner  0:24  
Hello, and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever actually stopped to look at the seaweed that washed up on shore. I'm Michelle Fullner. And today, we're talking seaweed with Alison puck Lembah, whose voice you just heard. In this episode, we descend into the intertidal zone to taste seaweed fresh from the ocean, and to discuss the difference between plants and algae, seaweed recipes, anti cancer compounds how to soothe your sunburn while in a tide pool, the Irish potato famine and why seaweed matters so much to the many organisms living around it, including us. And if you have a friend who's ever made you read a poem they wrote about a tree or who hikes incredibly slowly because they have to stop and look at every plant. Please send them your favorite episode of this podcast and tell them why you think they'll like it. And thank you to all the people already doing this Golden State naturalist is now ranked in the top 1% of podcasts globally, which does not feel real and is absolutely only possible because of each person who has shared an episode with a friend. Thank you also to the wonderful people supporting the show on Patreon for as little as $4 a month you make the show possible and because of your support, more and more people all the time are learning about the natural world all around them. If you too would like to support the show while getting access to bonus audio from interviews of patrons only book club and more. You can find me on Patreon at patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu ll en er, you can find me on both Instagram and Tiktok at Golden State naturalist. But now let's get to the episode. Alison book. Lembah is a teacher botanist herbalist, environmental educator, artists mother friend and always curious student of nature. In 2012. She co founded backcountry press where she and her husband Michael Kaufman are on a mission to enhance the human connection with the natural world through easy to understand science and direct experience in nature. Together they publish a beautiful collection of books and craft both online and in person experiences in service of this mission. Alison is also the co director of the dandelion herbal Center, which offers classes and adventures that share plant wisdom for health and happiness. She has been teaching with the dandelion herbal center since 2002, where she offers annual sea vegetable adventures to tide pools on the north coast of California. Alison earned a BS in botany and a science teaching credential from Cal Poly Humboldt. She worked in the field of environmental education for almost 20 years where she taught teachers how to incorporate environmental literacy into their teaching practices both in and outside the classroom. So without further ado, let's hear from Alison book number on Golden State naturalist.

I met up with Allison on the Northern California coast just south of Trinidad in Humboldt County, all the way back in early April, we parked our cars under an overcast sky and as the tide was going out pulled on cozy jackets and waterproof shoes. Alison graciously loaned me a pair of hers so I wouldn't soak my feet through the old pair of sneakers I brought for the occasion and clipped mics to our callers, we hiked down a narrow path cut across a sandy beach and headed to the water where the sand vanished and gave way to rocks covered in marine life visible now that the tide was almost all the way out. As we picked our way across the rocks, pools of all shapes and sizes appeared around our feet, the occasional waves sloshing into them hermit crabs shuffling back and forth seriously under the surface while Nyan anemones grace the edges and sea stars cloned to the lowest parts of boulders and surrounding an underpinning all of this life was seaweed, a purple shag carpet coating the rocks with a burst of bumpy all of green here and a ribbon of Maroon there. Come with Alison and I to this space between the tides. We'll meet you there after a quick break.

Today's episode of Golden State naturalist is all about seaweed with Alison Puck limbah. Here we are in Northern California tide pool back in April right in the middle of the intertidal zone. But what exactly does that mean?

Allison  5:13  
It is just as narrow band where the sea meets the land. And it doesn't take up very much of our planet. But yet there is such diversity to be found in the stretch of rocks.

Michelle Fullner  5:23  
Alison and I were probably 20 to 30 feet away from the sandy beach and out into the rocky intertidal zone. What we're looking at

Allison  5:30  
here is a whole gradient of both moisture and sunlight and temperature. It's like very complex, this intertidal area, and intertidal just means the area that is covered up by the highest tide, and then exposed at the lowest tide. So that's our intertidal zone. And you can picture pretty easily that at the depths of that are going to be both plant, animal and algal species that are best adapted to living in more moist environments, as opposed to drier environments, if you get further up towards the beach there. And then the same thing happens if you look like right before us there is a large boulder, right? And you can even just look at this one Boulder and see this gradient in action, like what do you see growing at the top of the boulder, a bunch

Michelle Fullner  6:20  
of moss are those muscles, those muscles? Yeah, a bunch of muscles. And then there's a little bit of seaweed on the top. But then it sort of changes as it goes down. And as you go all the way down to the bottom. Now there's a bunch of sea stars a bunch of sea urchins.

Allison  6:32  
Right? And did you see how the colors of the seaweed that's growing change as you go down the rock as well? Yeah, so we have this gradient, the things that are growing at the top, they really want to capture the most sunlight, they have different pigments in them to do that, versus the things at the bottom are different color. So we have more all of the green things growing at the top and more maroon, darker things growing at the bottom. Also, like the structures of them are different, like you'd look at these ones that are growing at the top, and we can get close to those but they have little little bulbs in them that help them float up towards the surface a little bit more, they can stand being dried out more than the ones at the bottom. So when I bring someone to the intertidal for the first time, I provide them with a map like I gave him a sample of my intertidal map,

Michelle Fullner  7:20  
Alison gave me the simultaneously cutest and most helpful hand drawn map of where you can expect to find about a dozen different species of seaweed in the intertidal zone, I'll post a picture of this map on Instagram, which will give you an idea of what it looks like. But if you want your own copy of it to learn from or to take with you out to the ocean, you can head over to that country press.com/seaweed and download it for free. Because Allison rocks like that, that

Allison  7:47  
shows you where things predictably grow? Is it higher up on the rocks lower down on the rocks? To our right, we have some pretty strong wave action, there are certain things that like that and require it to reproduce and to thrive. And if we look towards the shore a little bit more looking, I'll still the water. Isn't that cool? All right, looks like a reflective glass top like you're at a pond. And so things growing there are going to thrive in a different

Michelle Fullner  8:15  
way. And they might get some of that wave action, but not as consistently as this area down here.

Allison  8:22  
That's right.

Michelle Fullner  8:23  
There's so much incredible complexity in an intertidal zone. And I want you to know that there's going to be an entire episode on tide pools, mostly focusing on all the critters like sea stars and urchins and kittens that live in tide pools leader this season. Okay, back to seaweed. What is kind of a favorite species that you're seeing right now?

Allison  8:42  
Okay, see this one right behind you? Yeah, this is called Sea cabbage. You don't feel sessile and I love the texture of it. So one thing that I tell people when they are learning to identify seaweed is that it's all about texture, because the same species might be growing somewhere where it gets strong wave action, and so it might grow smaller or in a certain shape. And then it might grow somewhere where it's more protected and be a different shape, or different size. So when you're looking at like land plants, you kind of expect to see the same leaf shape and size on an older tree wherever you find it all through trade. Right? But not really that way for seaweed, but the texture is always the same for seaweed. So you see how this is sort of leathery, kind of like a like a fruit leather, I would say sort of stretchy, and then you see this texture towards the base of it. It grows like in a rosette. Wow, with it almost looks like a belly button in the middle. This one's all curled up. You can see that really well. Yeah.

Michelle Fullner  9:44  
And it's it's really wavy and bumpy and it gets it almost feels more slimy. It's not like if you take your fingers away and rub them together. It's not slimy, but it almost feels like it's smooth. Maybe smooth is a better word. Yeah, smoother and slippery or

Allison  9:59  
yeah And then this texture, I like to think of it as sort of like seersucker fabric. Can you see that? Like, because it has those wrinkles in there like that. So take a little nibble

Michelle Fullner  10:12  
and that's okay. You can just come out and taste them.

Allison  10:15  
You can taste them. Absolutely. Think about the flavor. Okay, that's

Michelle Fullner  10:19  
way more like crunchy than I expected.

Allison  10:21  
Do you see the slime Enos coming out now in your mouth? Yeah. Yeah, so see cabbage is sort of like, I think of this is sort of a shy seaweed because it's not. We're coming to the titles at an interesting time of year. Some of these or we can think of them as perennials, and some as annuals. And right now, it's so early in the spring that the flush of annuals isn't really out yet. So the rocks are looking a little bit barren. This is a perennial, it's been here all winter, it has clearly been weathering some solid storms, because it's pretty torn up. But this would grow to be a much more leafy looking thing. And this is the one where if I'm taking a group out for the tide pool tour, and they have a list of things that they're looking for people that were always like, where is that see cabbage? I didn't see that. Yeah. down at your feet. There it is. It sort of hides out, unlike the downward side of a rock where it's just not that obvious. But we see it more clearly now because there's not a lot going around it.

Michelle Fullner  11:23  
Yeah. And speaking of kind of when you're walking around out here, we walked on a lot of rocks that have seaweed growing on them, like, Should we be careful where we stop? What's kind of the etiquette of coming out here and visiting the intertidal zone.

Allison  11:37  
Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. It's always best to step on bare rock, if you can, is one thing, because there are so many living things, whether it's the mussels, the barnacles, the chitin, the anatomies, which oftentimes will grow in clusters, and their outsides are sort of sticky, and they're covered with small pebbles to protect them. And so they look like a rock they do. But if you were to put your hand on it, you'd see it's a little bit mushy. Yeah, so those are very easily disturbed by stepping on them. So bare rock is best. Also, it can be hard clamoring around in the tide pools because it's so slippery, right. And so oftentimes, people will want to bring like a hiking pole or something. And that's actually like, I think the biggest hazard out in the tide pools because wherever you put your pole, it really concentrates at the tip of that pole, all the pressure, and it will just destroy whatever living thing.

Michelle Fullner  12:28  
Don't impale your marine friends, leave the hiking poles at home, friends, don't stab friends.

Allison  12:35  
Also, you just want to think about not prying off living things. It's okay to pick things up if they're free from being attached. But then after you show them to your friends, make sure you put them back in the same spot. That would be some good title etiquette. And one thing I do want to mention also in encouraging people to come up to the titles and explore is just safety. And that you know, like we tell our children never turn your back on the ocean. Like that's true for you to the the waves can be pretty unpredictable. And so go with a buddy and take turns being the lookout footwear and let's talk about footwear. You know, there's a lot of things out here we just talked about the muscles and the barnacles. So you don't want to come out and like your tacos or your TiVos barefoot because you're just like get sliced in days. So close toed clothes. Yeah, and you know, old sneakers or great or rain boots or surf booties, something like that. Okay, it's totally fine.

Michelle Fullner  13:31  
I don't know if you've ever explored a tide pool. But if you have, you've probably also slipped on a rock. While trying to avoid stepping on an anemone it's not easy to navigate these areas because everything is wet and slippery and covered in life you don't want to crush. So thinking about this made me wonder if there are any wheelchair accessible tide pools, and unfortunately, the only ones I could find mentioned online are in Newport, Oregon. And a lot of people in forums say that sand has washed into them and made them not great tide pools. So that is a bummer. And hopefully someone is working on a creative solution for tide pool access. But in the meantime, I did find something cool while researching this, which is that the California Coastal Commission offers beach wheelchairs at dozens of beaches up and down the California coast for free. I had never seen or heard of beach wheelchairs before. But they are so cool. They have these massive tires that are completely smooth all the way around and look like Big Sandy donuts. If you need one of these chairs for yourself or for a friend. They're available either on a first come first served basis, or by calling and reserving them in advance. Depending on the location. Definitely call ahead though, because it seems like each Beach has its own system. I'll put a link to the page with all this information and phone numbers and a map of all the beaches that offer the chairs in the shownotes or if you just Google California beach wheelchairs, it should be the top or close to the top of the results. Okay, but how do you stay safe if you've made it out? into a tide pool, and you're ready to gather some seaweed.

Allison  15:02  
And then once you get into wanting to collect little snippets of seaweed, you want to think about also not injuring yourself with whatever knife or scissors you're using. So you'll see I have a folding knife is important, or some sort of shift to keep your knife in,

Michelle Fullner  15:19  
you don't want to be on slippery rocks with a knot.

Allison  15:23  
And I only mentioned all these things, because I've seen them all go wrong, you know, over the years. Exactly. Um, so we should first you know, this is a California centric podcast. And so we should say like, well, what are the rules regarding Yeah, I'm actually harvesting. So in California, the rules are different in each state. So if you're listening to and say, Oregon or Washington, the rules are a bit more strict in those states. In California, this season is open all year. Wow. And the you do not need to get any sort of license or permit. For most species, the limit of how much you can collect is 10 pounds wet weight per day. And that's not using any sort of float assisted harvesting system like you can't paddle out on your surfboard to the awesome bulk help, okay, old and collect like that. Okay, but if you're just walking out, that's what you can do.

Michelle Fullner  16:13  
Okay. Alison also wanted to let you know that you can't gather in a national park or most state parks. This includes seaweed that washes up on shore, and you need proper permissions to gather on tribal lands. According to NOAA, which is not my friend's name, but is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration marine protected area is a broad term that encompasses a variety of conservation and management methods in the United States. So under that umbrella, you have things like the tribal lands and parks that I mentioned before, but you also have things like wildlife refuges, and sanctuaries and areas with local protections. This might all sound extremely overwhelming to navigate. But thankfully, there is a singular map showing all of these protected areas in California. It's created by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife in you can zoom in on it all over the California coast to see which areas are protected. It's a one stop shop. I'll link it in the show notes. But regardless of where you are, don't go after things that aren't actually seaweed, like surf grass, or eelgrass. And if you see some like one foot tall palm trees, bobbing up and down in the surf way out on a rock, those are actually a seaweed called Sea palm, and you need a special license to collect them, because they're super tasty, and people went after them too hard. So now they have to be protected. Instead of harvesting them though, you can always just appreciate their cuteness. When

Allison  17:37  
it grows, the small ones emerge, fully shaped only miniature size and then all the cells just expand. It's like it inflates. And so they're they're perfect as miniature you can picture a miniature palm tree like a half a centimeter tall. And then it just blows amazing.

Michelle Fullner  17:56  
Just add water. It's like one of those little hatching dinosaur egg.

Allison  17:59  
Absolutely. Just a magic sponge in the bathtub. That's exactly what it's like.

Michelle Fullner  18:04  
I need you to know that at this point. Allison was wearing pants with 100 pockets on them. And I don't know what were in the other 99 but she had something delightful in one of them.

Allison  18:14  
I happen to have some in my pocket though. That was harvest time. Commercial collector,

Michelle Fullner  18:21  
she pulled out some dried sea palm. Okay. Oh. You can hear how crunchy it was. Wow. That's amazing. That's like layers. Do

Allison  18:35  
umami,

Michelle Fullner  18:37  
though. Time umami. In case you're not familiar with it. Umami is the fifth taste. There's sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami, which is savory and for a long time, this taste wasn't recognized as its own distinct flavor by science. That is until 1907 When a Japanese chemist named Kikuna, Ikeda was eating a bowl of soup containing a seaweed called kombu and realize that the flavor profile didn't fit into any of the existing categories of taste. So seaweed has lots of that deep savory umami flavor, and we can think seaweed for the fact that we now have a name for this flavor, which is also found in meat, mushrooms, and some other things including certain fermented foods like miso and soy sauce.

Allison  19:20  
Let's rehydrate a few. Oh, we can see what they look.

Michelle Fullner  19:24  
We climbed over more rocks closer to the water while Alison explained a very cool property of seaweed

Allison  19:29  
with pretty much all species except for one called Sea oak. They dry amazingly well. They're like sponges and then you can just instantly rehydrate them and they poop for it back to life like the the Dinos sponge we're talking about. We'll just put this in seawater here, let it rehydrate a little bit.

Michelle Fullner  19:48  
Alison took a piece of the dried sea palm into her hand and plunged it into that icy cold Northern California Pacific Ocean. And

Allison  19:57  
then we'll get to see what the sea palm would have looked like fresh. So This is a seaweed that likes to grow. Where it's in the splash zone. Oh, kind of like. So it'll be like out on the furthest rocks. And that is because like I'm looking over in that direction. You see how the when the waves crash, it makes a spray of water? Yeah, like right then they would want to be in that spray of water because the water droplets going down these little frauds carry it spores out into the water. They rely on that they rely on that. Allison

Michelle Fullner  20:32  
had had her hand in the cold water for a while now. And it was honestly stressing me out. I don't know about you. But I can't put my hand into cold water for more than about three seconds. And I could feel the pain of the cold water even though it wasn't my hand submerged in it. Listen to me trying to be casual as I asked her about it. How long do they have to stay in the water?

Allison  20:53  
Well, if we had warm water, it would be pretty skin temperature this ocean water is pretty chilly.

Michelle Fullner  21:04  
So it takes a little bit, but she finally took her hand out of the water. And I felt so much better.

Allison  21:10  
Coming back to life. Slowly but surely. So now you're starting to see those ridges on them. Right? Yeah.

Michelle Fullner  21:16  
It was to kind of like shriveled and desiccated before

Allison  21:20  
Yeah, and that you're getting like more of the true color. They're just more all of green. And in those ridges are where the spore producing cells are located. And so when the spray droplets land, they run down those little ridges, carrying the spores back into the ocean. And oftentimes, these grow out of really dense muscle clusters on the high rocks. And so the spores will get carried into those muscle clusters and just grow right out of the muscles. And so they've grown and grown but this part that we're eating, it's the reproductive structure of the allergy. So

Michelle Fullner  22:00  
if you take a lot of it, right, it's taking its babies. Yeah. And

Allison  22:04  
this is one that is actually an annual. So if we're collected the reproductive structures from the annual splash zone, then we're really impacting its ability to thrive. We want to try it Yeah. rehydrated state here. Yeah.

Michelle Fullner  22:21  
Notice the complete lack of crunching sounds this time around. Oh, well, sure. We are which we are. The flavor is more immediate. Yeah, thanks for sharing. That's a special one. Being in the tide pools in April may not have been the best for seeing fully developed seaweeds everywhere we looked. But it did have its advantages when it came to seeing their whole lifecycle. See

Allison  22:46  
these are the annuals just starting to come back who

Michelle Fullner  22:49  
just looks like almost I would think it was a slime on the right, I didn't look

Allison  22:54  
closely. I know, I know. I know. So the green that you're seeing here is over, which is a clearly a green seaweed. And this we call sea lettuce this will grow big and leafy. And then these little ones that you're seeing here are the little tiny hyperopia or nori just starting to come back. So the pyrope Yeah, it engages in what we call alternation of generations. So it splits its time. During the spring and summer it grows as a leafy thing growing on the rocks, the Shi'a Pomo of Sonoma County, their traditional name for it is made bill which means see leaf, and it really is leaf like so that whole leafy part will dissolve into spores. That then we'll find home overwinter as a little feathery thread like thing inside of like a oyster shell. And then that produces, I'm forgetting which one is the gamete producing and which is the spore producing, but it's alternating between these two life forms. Wow, those gametes or spores, whichever it is, will be released from that shell. And then they'll find a home on the rock to grow into the leafy bits. And it's just such a brilliant way to like overwinter This is doing it as well. This is mesto carpus or deny. At

Michelle Fullner  24:13  
this point, Alison pointed at what looked like just bare rock to me. So I was stunned by the fact that the rubbery substance on the rock was actually seaweed. But even crazier than that, is that right next to it a small, red feathery looking algae that could not look more different from those subtle rubbery marks on the rocks were the exact same species

Allison  24:34  
that looks like a black rubbery tar spot on the rock. And this was, I didn't even think you were I didn't even see that at first. You were talking about this little leafy guy here. And when you look at this rock, you see these spots. This is an algae

Michelle Fullner  24:48  
Whoa, I would have assumed that's just the coloration of the rock.

Allison  24:51  
Oh, I know this was one of the more recent discoveries and you're probably like in last 50 years or so that people realize that these were actually the same species, okay,

Michelle Fullner  25:00  
but if the annuals weren't really out yet, and some seaweeds were still in their overwintering phase, what would be the best time of year to come out and forage for seaweed?

Allison  25:10  
It depends on what species you're after. And going back to the kashaya pomo, that indigenous people all along the Pacific coast have really relied on seaweed as an important food staple. Certain species like for example, this Nori, which is like the Japanese term for it may bill, if you're using more European language, it's called lover. This is 30 to 40% protein 40 to 50% minerals. So it's a superfood, superfood. And so in some cultures, it's been seen as a family food and another place is more of just a staple, right, in some places a delicacy depending on how its prepared. So back to indigenous people of Sonoma County, there was a saying that when the when the grass is green, it's seaweed time. And we know like Kate wolf would sing about in California, but hills are brown in the summertime. So it's before the the hills turn brown is when you're going to get it. So really, we're thinking like late spring is ideal. We know this has been an incredible winter 15 atmospheric rivers have so far hit at least the north coast of California this winter, like things are really delayed. Yeah. So look at how tiny these are. We're looking at things that are like as big as my fingernail.

Michelle Fullner  26:34  
Yeah, it looks like somebody just came and drew on it. It doesn't even look like it's growing yet.

Allison  26:40  
So if we came in, we're looking to harvest this later into the summer. What happens is that eventually is really going to break down because the entire what we call phallus

Michelle Fullner  26:52  
that is T H A L L U S, just so we're all on the same page here.

Allison  26:58  
You wonder like, Well, what do you call a seaweed? Is it a plant is it his body, and the whole thing is called a phallus. Okay. And so it's that was will start to disintegrate into spores as it's returning to the ocean for its next phase of its lifecycle. And also, lots of little things will want to live in it. You see all these little hairy Winkle, snails and things that are on the rocks. It's great habitat for those and they're really hard to eat. Your hardest to him for eating, munching on snails is like not ideal, and they're really hard to pick off. Right? Not difficult, but just time consuming. Okay, so late spring, early summer is the best for these sorts of leafy varieties. In theory, you can harvest the larger kelps that grow deeper out in the water all year. The issue is just that in the winter months, the ocean is much more rough and it's difficult to access because that's growing and the deeper water deeper in the intertidal zone. A little more dangerous. Yes. So there is something that will feed you all year. And that is why in certain places, CBD is looked at as a famine food, like if we think about back into the mid to late 1800s. In Ireland when the potato famine was going on. People were really hard up for some nourishment. And so coastal people look to the ocean look to see it was on the rocks and seaweed became sustenance that was keeping people alive. And to this day, there is a phrase that is said that if you die in poverty that you've died with a piece of seaweed in your mouth. And that's sort of what it represents versus looked at more of a Delic as more of a delicacy in the Pacific Northwest. That something will always feed you and what's growing right on top here.

Michelle Fullner  28:39  
Alison pointed out a cute little seaweed the whole thing just a few inches in diameter that had an olive green color and flat what I would call leaves, but they're actually called bleeds with the tiniest puffs at their Lobi ends.

Allison  28:53  
This is Fucus or ladder rack. Oh, which is this something that grows at a similar latitude all around the planet where there are rocky coastal areas and Fucus rhymes with the word. Do you know what I think? Yeah, yep.

Michelle Fullner  29:10  
Yeah, I don't mind it's okay.

Allison  29:12  
So when I just separated the little blades right here you can see some light like right here you can see some lines of mucus stretching between the Nook is easy to remember. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  29:23  
amazing. And it reminds me a little bit of like a Valley oak leaf like at the end, I will make anything be about oak trees sort of that lobed lobed look, except these have like just pairs of two.

Allison  29:37  
Yes, it really does like branch dichotomously. So they're always going to it's always going to split into forked and you can see how this one right here that did seem more slimy. Yeah. How it's puffed up a little bit. And as the season goes on, this will turn into more of a puffed up textured pillow little thing in this is the reproductive part of this perennial. Okay seaweed and I call Oh, this one affectionately the aloe of the sea Aloe of the sea because these little pockets right here if I break one open, it's almost like splitting open an aloe fillet on the inside. It has a lot of mucilage which is very soothing, cooling demulcent which just means like softening and moistening to the skin. Okay, let him use

Michelle Fullner  30:25  
a 2002 study from the Journal of cosmetic sciences concludes that Fucus vesiculosus extract possesses anti aging activities that should be useful for a variety of cosmetics, which is very exciting, but please recall that I am not a dermatologist or physician of any kind. And nothing you hear on this podcast is medical or even cosmetic advice because I literally learned about this 30 seconds ago on PubMed, and

Allison  30:50  
the properties of this are anti inflammatory and cooling so you can picture that if you were at the beach it was like the first real sunny day of summer you're wearing your tank top and you oops, totally sunburn your shoulders you have this Aloe of the sea that you can grab some little tips of and rub that soothing gel on your sunburn to help make you feel better and he'll that right up. So if you're looking at edibility of seaweed, you know, one thing we didn't mention is like well which seaweeds Can you eat in which Yeah, she's gonna ask you about that. Are

Michelle Fullner  31:21  
there some that are like toxic? There is

Allison  31:22  
one picture this an escaped ornamental. No. Yes. Like how would you have an ornamental seaweed? What? For your fish tank? Exactly. And somebody dumped their fish tank in the ocean? Yeah. Southern California.

Michelle Fullner  31:38  
Okay, so I just googled it and depressingly aquarium dumping is a whole thing happening all over the place, and not at all an isolated incident as I had naively hoped. Sue Williams and evolution and ecology professor from UC Davis stated in a Huff Post article that globally, the aquarium trade has contributed a third of the world's worst aquatic invasive species. That same article goes on to say that in California 13 species found only in fish tanks have escaped into the state's marine waters, presumably due to release by aquarium owners or importers. But what should you do if you get a fish tank and then realize that you can't take care of it anymore, or maybe just have one super aggressive fish like the angel fish I had as a kid that ate all of my other fish. A page on pet helpful.com has a bunch of suggestions including joining a fish club where someone might be happy to take any misfit fish off your hands, finding a pet store that may want and even pay you for the fish posting it for sale or for free online, donating it to an office nursing home or school where it might add some beauty and color. So find a good home for your fish and never ever dumped them in a pond, river or ocean. Because these are hardy species that can cause absolute havoc on native ecosystems. Okay, but what about that escaped algae in California that Alison mentioned.

Allison  33:00  
And it's been making its way up the California coast is not in Humboldt County, but it has made it as far as Mendocino County. Oh, that. That's pretty far. Yes. This is just the county south of Humboldt. Where we are, that seaweed actually has some toxic compounds in it. Okay. It doesn't look like you would want to eat it. I mean, it looks more like moss or something like that. Yeah, it doesn't look like you would just be like, Oh, let me try it. But it doesn't look food like okay, there is one other one that could look food like called Desmo Oresteia or acid kelp. Ooh, it's sort of it can be quite large. It is very flat and branch like a fern. Okay. That one it is not toxic, but it has pretty high levels of sulfuric acid in it. Oh, so it could cause GI upset. And if your collected in your collection bag at all, it will actually start to digest the other things that you've collected. So you'll get home to process your seaweed and find you have a bag of bush. Wow, it's that quick. Yes, it's that quick, but everything else but everything's. So what we say is edible, not necessarily palatable. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So there are about a dozen like choice edible species.

Michelle Fullner  34:20  
Okay, so the best course of action is to learn a handful of species that are definitely edible. Make sure you can truly identify them, and then only harvest those ones you're super certain about. For more about safe and ethical foraging, check out the foraging episode with meow antler that came out between seasons two and three of the show. And remember that this podcast is not an identification guide. And it's your job to verify what's safe to eat, and where is a safe and legal place to harvested from and

Allison  34:49  
let's see what we've seen so far. We've seen the sea cabbage. We've seen the Fucus now Fucus, I would say is a choice edible for someone that really loves okra. It's like oh It's slimy, okay, but it's really nice and say like, making your soup raw, okay, imparts flavor it imparts a thickness sort of a feeling. And also this is a great medicinal so that kind of aloe of the sea vibe that Soothing Gel is awesome to drink as if you're, you consider this like making a tea for say like a sore throat or for healing any sort of gut inflammation and you know if you were sadly suffering and the potato famine you could fill your belly with Right, right, right. One thing we haven't talked about is that seaweed or just algae live in marine environments.

Michelle Fullner  35:42  
Seaweeds aren't plants because they don't have a vascular system stems, roots or leaves as plants generally do. Although there are nonvascular plants like mosses that we shouldn't forget about. And while most plants can only photosynthesize in their leaves, seaweeds can photosynthesize in all of their tissues, which is kind of like if we could eat in and out burgers through our skin. This is also how seaweeds roll. When it comes to gathering all of the nutrients they need. They don't need a vascular system to pass things like minerals around because they're in water, and they can just absorb what they need right from the ocean.

Allison  36:14  
And they can be grouped into three big it's like takes you back to like seventh grade science class, you have your greens or reds in your brow. Okay. And this is a beautiful example of a red group seaweed. This is our Pacific version of DOS. Paul Marissa

Michelle Fullner  36:32  
this poem, Marissa is also known as bacon of the sea, and we tasted it and I think it was my favorite seaweed of the day settle with a very approachable texture that is not slimy or chewy. I think of it as a good beginner seaweed when it comes to palatability, but seaweed pros also appreciate it.

Allison  36:50  
This is a delicious addition that once you were to dry this, you can easily flake it up and just sprinkle it on you know, popcorn salads, eggs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. It's a great addition just to give it an umami flavor, and amazing nutritional value.

Michelle Fullner  37:06  
Nice.

Allison  37:07  
The cool thing about the red seaweeds is that they do this thing called chelation, which means that they key Late Heavy metals in your body, they attract them were heavy metals, they sort of circulate through your body. And what happens is they will be filtered out through your bloodstream, wind up in your intestines, like keep floating around, but it's hard to actually get rid of them. And so this interacts with whatever heavy metals are in your intestinal tract, wow binds with them to create a new molecule that your body can't reabsorb and passes out amazing. That's the red ones. The red ones go red. This is the adults here is really the star.

Michelle Fullner  37:55  
Hey, pop quiz. Am I a doctor? Nope. Still no. Please talk to yours before you experiment on yourself with seaweed. But something really cool about seaweeds ability to absorb heavy metals is that according to a 2022 study published in the journal molecules, algae and seaweed biomass can be used to sustainably eliminate heavy metals from wastewater. Of course, this also makes me wonder if their incredible ability to absorb what's in the water is always a good thing in a potential food source. I mean, this is growing in the ocean. And it's exposed to I don't know, whatever's in the ocean, right. Yeah. So is the seaweed absorbing those pollutants? And is that something that you should be worried about when harvesting and eating it? That

Allison  38:37  
is a very good question. And you know, seaweed does do that it concentrates what's in the ocean water into its thalis for better or worse, as we are concerned, right? So the theory is that with the heavy metals specifically, and that ability to key late those, that that happens right here and these leafy bits that we're looking at. And so if you are ingesting this in say this has accumulated some heavy metals in it, that they are in a form that will pass right through your body. Also, this is why seaweeds are so good for us why they have incredible mineral content is because they're concentrating those elements from the ocean water. So there's that okay. But you do want to harvest seaweed from the least polluted places possible. That's really important. It may look very pristine in an area that you can look up through the Coastal Commission, their beaches are sampled and given a grade of how nice how clean the water actually is. So there might be failing septic systems right over that hill that are draining over here, or there might be runoff from agricultural areas or what have you. So that's good to know. I would say away from stream or river mouths is important And to some extent,

Michelle Fullner  40:01  
then you're getting all of that concentrated runoff from the land, whatever pollutants are on the land. Is that why

Allison  40:07  
yes. Okay. Yeah, potentially. Speaking of where seaweed

Michelle Fullner  40:09  
comes from a listener and patron of the podcast, Tory was wondering whether seaweed at the grocery store is generally farmed, or wild harvested is pretty much all of the seaweed that you buy at the store farm from across the ocean,

Allison  40:23  
I would say no, it's not. But in our country, I would say probably 97% or so was locally, you could find people that are foraging locally and really selling on a small scale. Yeah. How wonderful is that to be supporting their efforts, as long as they're not being too extractive in certain locations, right. There are farming operations going on, which are have primarily been in Alaska, Maine, British Columbia. However, our university here at Cal Poly Humboldt is kind of leading the way in California to figure out how to navigate that permit wise, it's very challenging to get a kelp farm permitted that is actually in marine waters, not on land. Wow. But they are doing it. And they're a couple of years in on the process. They have proved the concept is working. Right now. They're growing bull kelp. And a couple of weeks ago, I got to go out on the little boat into Humboldt Bay to check out their farm. Oh, super cool. I'm so proud of what they're doing over there.

Michelle Fullner  41:30  
What an unconventional farm.

Allison  41:32  
Yeah, but it's happening slowly. But surely, it's a slow process. Right. So into the future, you could very likely be buying California farmed sea vegetables at your local grocery. Fantastic. It's happening minimally so far,

Michelle Fullner  41:47  
right? It's gotta be tested for Yeah, cool. So this episode was recorded after a truly wild winter in California, there was so much rain that based on conversations Allison had after our interview with Cal farmers from Cal Poly, humble and private ventures, the runoff actually temporarily lowered the salinity of Humboldt Bay, which wasn't good for kelp crops and caused some crop failures, these rain patterns will likely become more extreme with climate change. The projects like this are even more important in the face of climate change, because kelp is great at carbon sequestration. More on that later, but I hope they find a way to make these farms work in the long run. Also, thankfully, rains didn't seem to adversely affect the seaweed in the ocean, which Allison tells me was incredibly abundant this year. Okay, at this point, the tide had started to come in. So Alison, and I made our way up the beach and got settled on a log, because I still had more questions about seaweed and its ecological importance, and also how Allison got interested in it. How did you initially get interested in the natural world, and then specifically, seaweed.

Allison  42:49  
I have always had this just like sense of wonder about plants specifically. And I remember this is so silly, but I remember growing up, I grew up in New Hampshire, and I had my sister and I had this beloved cat fluffernutter, she was a big, fluffy calico cat. And I remember wandering around beside her as she like, walk through the little Fern forest that we had in our front yard. And it was like going through these Fern tunnels and looking up through the fern fronds towards the sky. It was really magical. They left such an impression of Wonder on me.

Michelle Fullner  43:24  
Did you see like fairies in there?

Allison  43:26  
I wish. I've always wished they would just start telling me you were just

Michelle Fullner  43:30  
watching. They were watching you.

Allison  43:33  
I was inspiring. Exactly. But yeah, I've just always been super curious. Like, I'm one of those people that just wants to like, I have a lot of questions about like everything. I feel like the natural world, it just lends itself to wondering. And I just wonder about all these different things. And I just feel pretty happy, like, look at where we are, I feel very happy being here. And so I think that in my adult life, I have just found excuses to spend more time in places like this going in that direction really helped to spend more time outside, I never really pictured myself having a career that was like really desk centered, though. Now I do spend a considerable amount of time behind a desk because you have to not just have this experience and these wonderings and this kind of knowledge accumulation of things that might be happening outdoors. But then you have to find a way to creatively communicate about that to share it with other people. And oftentimes that part could happen at a desk, right? As I'm sure you find, as well.

Michelle Fullner  44:31  
How did I end up getting into the seaweed sort of avenue of things? How did that happen? Ah,

Allison  44:36  
yes. So plant world was really calling my name hard. Yeah. And I found that at what was Humboldt State University is now in Cal Poly Humboldt. Oh my gosh, they have the most amazing botany program there. That wasn't just looking at things at you know, collected dried samples of plants, but it was really field based in many Ways. So that was fabulous for me to get out and really explore and see firsthand what the plant world had in store. And so one of the classes that was taught as I was studying botany at the university was psychology or the study of algae. So that piqued my interest. And I was running sort of like two parallel courses in my life. And I've talked to you about this before, but I also am very much into herbalism. And I'm the co director of an herbal school called the dandelion herbal Center, which I really feel like is the intersection between my scientific brain in like, my spiritual side. And that, to me is like what wondering is, you know, it's like, Yes, I have these, these questions that maybe could be answered scientifically about something about what's happening here with the seaweed, for example. But there's also this like element of mystery that I really adore. So it was wasn't just learning psychology and like, the different characteristics that make this species this and that species that but it was also like, How do humans intersect with this, and that was really like the herbalism part was studying that alongside the scientific botany and how but another name for that could be like ethnobotany. But really having firsthand not studying necessarily someone else's experience with it as like a sociologist, but having my own firsthand experiences of getting to know plants in that way of ingesting wild plants, creating medicines, using plants for health and happiness in different ways. I did get some funny like, so being in like, the science lab nibbling on things, people weren't really used to seeing that.

Michelle Fullner  46:38  
That's so interesting. And that's really too bad to me. Like, that's more data, right? Like, use all of your senses get more data go back tomorrow. Yeah.

Allison  46:47  
And I do feel like, you know, that was in like, the late 90s, early 2000s. When I was a college student, I feel like in the last 25 years or so, like, the world has opened up a little bit more in that regard. You meet I don't think you'd get as many stunt guys. Yeah.

Michelle Fullner  47:01  
Thanks for breaking the ice. Yeah. That's amazing. And so you're kind of talking to about the medicinal uses of these not plants of the algae, the seaweed? And and I'm kind of wondering, where is the line between food and medicine? Or would you say there is a line between food and medicine?

Allison  47:19  
Oh, I love that question. Well, I mean, ideally, like our food would be our medicine, that would be great. And I would say that like with seaweed, they are so nutrient dense, that oftentimes it is that nutrient denseness of them, that is the medicine that's needed in a particular case. I think if something as you know, like our allopathic model, is you take this for that ailment that you're experiencing, and that the medicines can oftentimes be more heroic in nature, where like, you need a remedy for your remedy. You know, you're having other side effects because you're taking this particular thing and that that's not really helped plant medicine works that it's I don't know, like could you eat too many carrots? I suppose you could eat too many carrots and feel ill turn a little yellow. Yeah, yeah. But usually there would be like a natural consequence like the it could you have too much seaweed? Yes, you could. It's has a lot of fiber. So you know, that might impact you in a certain way. And that's how you would know that you would have to do it.

Michelle Fullner  48:19  
The power that food has in our bodies, is exactly why doctors and nutritionists are always trying to educate us and get us to eat better. And of course, whether our medicines are plant based or pharmaceutical, the gold standard for determining their effectiveness is double blind, peer reviewed research because especially when misused, there are both plants and conventional medicines that can do us a lot of harm. With this in mind, I think we could all do really well to remember that everything we put into our bodies could potentially impact our health, particularly when it comes to the things we regularly consume, which is why the food we eat every day can itself be thought of as medicine. And one way in which seaweed medicine is meeting conventional medicine is in cancer research. A 2021 lit review published in Applied Sciences looks at the recent studies around seaweed and cancer and which specific compounds from seaweed hold promise. It states that among the natural products obtained from the seaweeds, several compounds with therapeutic potential are able to induce cancer cell death through various signaling pathways. So that's very exciting. And I'm looking forward to seeing all the ways in which that develops, I'll link that article in the show notes in case you want to dive deeper on that one.

Allison  49:32  
I also just really love the idea of adding a little bit of wild into your diet. Like it doesn't take a whole lot. This is why I love seaweed as like a condiment that maybe lives as a sprinkle on your kitchen table that you've sprinkle a little bit on what you're eating. So I really want to discourage people from looking at a title as like their full on grocery store. You know if everyone was doing that, imagine the impact that we would have but it's really just giving a little haircut here or there to some Of the species that are growing and doing your own little experimenting with them to add some of those flavors into your diet and some of those nutrients into your diet as well. Right? And

Michelle Fullner  50:09  
there's all the kinds of ethical harvest things, right? You're not like tearing it off of the rock, you're just trimming it, like you mentioned, and you're only taking the amount you need for it to be that condiment or the occasional salad or

Allison  50:21  
that kind of thing. Yes, yes, exactly. Yeah, it's really having an awareness of like the anatomy of this being too so that you're not harvesting the reproductive structures, you know, you want them to be able to keep going, like you said, leaving the holdfast attached to the rock. So these things can keep growing. Now, this is where sort of like the farming of kelp comes into play, because people are really looking at seaweed as one of the potential answers here to how we're going to feed our planet, how we're going to get protein into bodies into our meat machines, with relying on cattle, because these are such protein rich organisms right here, right? So the farming is one potential insolent answer and their carbon sinks. They're cleaning the water. They're doing all these different, amazing ecological services for us.

Michelle Fullner  51:08  
And I have a listener, Eric was actually wondering about carbon sequestration. And you just mentioned that, like, have you heard anything about like blue carbon projects? Or do you know anything about like, their power for sequestering carbon and any ideas about where that might go? Or if that might become more of a thing?

Allison  51:25  
You know, I don't know too much about that. Honestly, I just know that they're doing it. I

Michelle Fullner  51:31  
didn't know about blue carbon at all until Eric sent me this question on Patreon. But my good friend NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has a wonderfully informative page titled Understanding blue carbon. It is so fascinating. Honestly, this topic could be an entire episode, but I'm going to practice some self control and just read you a small section of this page. It says blue carbon refers to carbon dioxide that is absorbed from the atmosphere and stored in the ocean. The vast majority of blue carbon is carbon dioxide that has been dissolved directly into the ocean. Much smaller amounts are stored in underwater sediments, coastal vegetation and soils carbon containing molecules such as DNA and proteins and ocean life from whales to phytoplankton. And this is all gotten a lot of attention, particularly carbon stored by saltwater ecosystems in their vegetation and soils. In terms of total areas, these ecosystems salt marshes, mangroves, seagrass meadows have a small global footprint, but their deep waterlogged soils can bury many times more carbon per acre than even a tropical rainforest. It goes on to say that coastal ecosystems carbon storing power is a double edged sword, because when they're disturbed or drained, they can release surprisingly large amounts of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, but protected or restored, they can become an important tool for offsetting carbon dioxide emissions, especially for island nations and developing countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are relatively low. And because these ecosystems have multiple other benefits, from wildlife habitat to hurricane protection, strategies for protecting and restoring coastal blue carbon ecosystems are likely to play a growing role in US and international climate policy in the coming years. So cool. So I'm kind of curious about their role in the intertidal ecosystem. So you mentioned that like a lot of critters kind of hanging around on the seaweed kind of what place in the ecosystem do they serve? Oh, yeah,

Allison  53:30  
they're a fabulous food source. We looked at the wandering meatloaf the government out there who is eating seaweed? Yeah, so that's great. Really quick.

Michelle Fullner  53:40  
The gumboot chitin is a kind of marine mollusc, that sometimes called a wandering meatloaf because it looks like a wandering meatloaf.

Allison  53:47  
The abalone rely on kelp. This is part of the reason why the abalone fishery is has been populated besides just fisheries, the population has done such a nosedive is because the purple urchins are eating these large caps that are growing and the deeper intertidal, which is an effect starving out the abalone,

Michelle Fullner  54:06  
purple sea urchins like to eat kelp, like a lot of kelp. Since the urchins are a native species in California. This has always been fine. Since the urchins, natural predators such as sea stars have always kept their numbers in check. But then sea stars started getting sick and dying of sea star wasting syndrome and the purple sea urchin population exploded and devoured 95% of our coastal kelp forests between 2014 and 2019. The wastelands they leave behind are known as urchin barrens. The good news is that there are current active efforts to restore kelp ecosystems, but they're going to take a lot of management for a long time. National Geographic suggests eating Guney which is sea urchin as one solution but supporting climate solutions and restoration efforts are also great ways to help starting

Allison  54:56  
to make a comeback. So we're we've been on this long cycle they're starting to make Come back. But we have like a lot of substrate that is created by you can picture the scene here in the later spring or the summer, where ever you can't really see any clear rock surface. It's all covered by marine algae growing. And so in there, there's habitat for snails and invertebrates of all types. And another key part is like it's providing architecture in the intertidal. So this then becomes like a nursery for little fish. Things are laying their eggs in it, that its habitat, it's creating habitat, food and habitat. So twofer two for why

Michelle Fullner  55:35  
can you kind of think of it the way that you think of plants on land, just sort of that like, the building blocks for the rest of the ecosystem to be able to make its way and exist? Yeah,

Allison  55:45  
you can with like, a lot of epiphytes. Yeah, you know, when you think about like one of these, like, beautiful Sitka spruce trees that we're looking at here, and yet, there's all this lichen growing on it in firm mats and its upper branches. And that's sort of how the, how the seaweed is growing. There's just like things growing on top of things growing on top of things, and some species only exist on top of other species, like we know, we saw a little bit of the the nori out there, the petropia, the Mayville, the lover, there are 20. So different species of that, that grow out here on the north coast of California. There's one species that only grows on the super long stipes of the bull kelp. Wow. So some of them are super specialized in that way.

Michelle Fullner  56:35  
Only on another seaweed. Yes. I know, how many total species are there in California? Do

Allison  56:43  
you know about 800 800? Yeah. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  56:46  
that that shocked me more than I thought you're gonna say

Allison  56:50  
no. And, you know, we're talking about macro algae. We haven't even looked at micro algae. Which estimates are that they're up to 500,000 different species of micro algae in our oceans. Only about 50,000 have been described by science. So there's a lot of wandering to go on there. I love that about seaweed and just algae in general is that there's a lot of wandering that goes on. And let's take a deep breath together. We can think the micro algae for that oxygen. You know, it's like we teach our children oxygen comes from trees. Yes, partially, but we have a lot of the oxygen that's coming from the micro algae of our oceans that we are enjoying every

Michelle Fullner  57:35  
day. Ocean doesn't get enough credit. It's out of sight out of mind. I think for a lot of us. Very true when you first started eating seaweed. Did you like it right away?

Allison  57:47  
Or did you have to acquire a taste for oh my gosh, I love that question. I'm trying to think of my first experience. Okay, so usually like the beginner seaweed is Nori, okay, now that's the one that most people have had exposure to because they've had sushi and it came in some sort of nori wrapper or like what kid has not had the nori snacks that come in that little plastic tray in the plastic wrapper that are like super salty and sweet and oily. So yeah, so that was really my first experience was harvest in terms of like what I harvested myself or learned about in that way was working with the nori and we didn't get a chance to try any today fresh from the ocean, but you put it in your mouth and it is like chew your than gum. You just can't you can chew and chew and chew what we sampled today everything was like it broke down pretty quickly for about whether it turned to slime or sort of crunchy. It broke down pretty easy in your mouth is not the nori when it is fresh. But once you roast it, or fry it, it becomes super crispy and amazing. Yeah. And so that's really how it was tradition has been traditionally eaten in this section of the California coast is that it was fried in some sort of fat, whatever you had on hand salmon, bear, what have you, you were frying it in fat, and I mean now you can just like put some coconut oil in a hot skillet and put your nori in there, flip it around for like two minutes and you've got like this amazing emerald Krispies seaweed chip that emerges and

Michelle Fullner  59:21  
that's when it's still dry at first or is that like still wet from the ocean,

Allison  59:25  
I would dry it first. It's you know, we didn't really get to feel it but it's very thin only one or two cell layers thick. And we would have stretched it almost like we were stretching like a latex glove. Wow, super stretchy, and so it dries very quickly in the sun. It was highest up in the intertidal zone and is really used to that type of desiccation. That's what it's evolved to do. So it dries very quickly, like 20 minutes in the sun. And so once you have it, you don't necessarily need to fry it. You could also just roast it in the oven to really dehydrate it. It you know, five minutes at like 300 degrees and now you have crispy nori. Once is at that stage, you can put it in your food processor in your blender. And then with like a 32nd was you can break it down into like little tiny flakes. At that point you can put it in just about anything and it all it does is enhance the flavor and nutritional value and no one even realizes they're eating seaweed. So yeah, this is a classic thing that I started making early on was seaweed candy. Oh, which was basically I went to like the coop, health food store, whatever. And I was looking at like, what goes in bars, you know, like all those package bars like, I want to make some sort of bar and so I like ground that some nuts and some seeds and added my flaked roasted noraim mixed in some sort of immune some sort of sticky stuff is going to like hold it all together. Sure whether it's like a nice buttery thing or a honey or I found actually brown rice syrup is like the stickiest substance known to humankind passively. So I added some of that and pressed it out into a bars and added some chocolate you know melt the chocolate on top a little sprinkle of like candy ginger, you get the time here for this. Yeah, chop it up into some squares and you have voila, your seaweed candy, which is like the salty, sweet, amazing thing. And so for a little while when I was in my 20s I had a little business going of selling seaweed. And so I would you know set up shop at the various fairs and farmers markets and things like that. And people would be like, the world has come a long way. Like I said the best way back when people would mostly turn their noses up like I'm not trying that and then I would hand them a little sample of seaweed candy. It really hooks people in nice Yeah, way drug completely. That's it. So once you've done that you can like skip right over to the other things are familiar with like miso soup, right, which is then the book calm a who we didn't get to meet out here but grows right beyond those rocks. They're a Leiria Marginata which is beautiful. People feel pretty comfortable about that. And then you know, I teach in my classes that seaweed is just another vegetable. So whatever you're making, it's not requiring special equipment or processing or ingredients. You can just you're making your sauteed veggies to go with your whatever you reach for your carrot, your cauliflower, zucchini, your Akami your kombu your Nori, just throw it in the mix, stir to the mix. Exactly. All

Michelle Fullner  1:02:36  
right. And then you've got your super high protein, super high mineral vegetable mixed in with all your regular grocery service. Fantastic. Okay, Brandy, a listener was also wondering about

Allison  1:02:51  
red tide. Oh, yeah. Is

Michelle Fullner  1:02:53  
there ever an issue with safety with red tides?

Allison  1:02:55  
Yes, there is. And you know, if it has been if you're going down to a beach and you're seeing a sign posted that, you know red tide present, you see it in relation to harvesting shellfish, they're saying don't harvest shellfish here. And so red tides have to do with microscopic marine algae that are having a bloom. So their population is just like exploding, and so they are releasing some potentially toxic compounds into the water that then could be concentrated in different organisms that filter those out like shellfish or seaweed. So I would make sure to not harvest if you're seeing that there are red tide postings or alerts in your particular area. Okay, sounds good. Yeah, that's easy

Michelle Fullner  1:03:40  
to avoid Tori wants to know if you can recommend a book you gave me a very cool laminated card to identify. Can you recommend a book for seaweed ID?

Allison  1:03:48  
Yes. Okay, so my favorite book is called just plainly see vegetables. Okay, it's came out in the mid 80s. Unfortunately, not in print anymore, but I am sure that you could find us copies at some place. This

Michelle Fullner  1:04:04  
book is by Evelyn makhana hay.

Allison  1:04:06  
And what I love about this is that it is a identification guide. You know, it's like a mini Field Guide, along with a cookbook. Amazing. It's such a beautiful combination. And you have to take it from the era that it is it's very much like one jello packet plus one packet and you know you add these things, but I love the spirit of it, which is seaweed a really versatile veggie just vegetables that you could incorporate into whatever your diet is. Okay, is

Michelle Fullner  1:04:35  
there going to be a forthcoming back country press?

Allison  1:04:40  
That is the dream for sure. It's a dream.

Michelle Fullner  1:04:43  
Have I mentioned that you should check out that country press.com/seaweed You can get the intertidal seaweed map totally for free. And you can also get a sea vegetable ID card for less money than I spend on a loaf of bread. The page also has Allison's digital courses on sea vegetables of the Pacific coast and am cooking with sea vegetables. So you're all set. If you really need a book, Allison also recommends both seaweeds of the Pacific coast and Pacific seaweeds. But again, backcountry press.com/seaweed

Allison  1:05:11  
I would also say that visiting I naturalist is an awesome resource for not only helping you identify what you have found, but to almost like look in advance of a place that you're thinking about visiting to see what other people have found there.

Michelle Fullner  1:05:25  
That's great. Are there any myths, any common myths that you have heard about seaweed that you're like, No, that's not true.

Allison  1:05:33  
let's dispel that. I mean, the first one is just that like seaweed is a plant. And maybe I'm just like such a super nerd about this. But that one, I'm like, actually, a lot of plant. But we have seaweeds to think, for all of our plants. So you know, we talked about the greens, the reds and the browns, the greens or their Chlorophyta. And these are the ones that like invented the chloroplast oh, gee, I know. It's amazing. I know. And these are the, the ancestors of all of our plants, the ancestors of the plant kingdom. So you know, like seaweeds are not even in the plant kingdom. They're they're oddballs. They're in their own kingdom of that is really just kind of hodgepodge miscellaneous, like, weren't quite sure where to fit these things in. So they just kind of lumped them together and called them. Sometimes they're called Protista. And I think maybe a more modern term is Chromie stuff. Okay. Yeah, ancient to do with you. Yeah. Stand together over. And I would say like, I don't know if it's a myth, or just like a misconception, that seems to be more of like a Western misconception is that like, the first impulse about seaweed is that it's a nuisance, gross, smelly, associated with like, unpleasant low tide smell. And when you look at here, it can just sort of look like this maroon colored blur, right? And so I just love helping people to zoom in on that blur and bring it into better focus to see like, there is amazing diversity here. 800 different types growing along our coast here. And what I love about specifically, where we are right here on the north coast of California, is that we're at the meeting ground for diversity, where things that grow extensively to the north of us are finding their southern range extension here, things that grow extensively to the south are finding their northern ranges extension here and that those are overlapping. So we're like the hotspots beautiful I know, I know, like it's really mirroring what's happening on the land, you know, directly inland from here we have Klamath mountains, which experienced the same overlap of species, you know, things are finding their their Western Range extension, their southern range extension, their northern range extension, plus, there's things that only live right there. So, okay,

Michelle Fullner  1:07:50  
so Alison's husband is Michael Kaufman, with whom she co founded backcountry press. And Michael, in addition to being just a walking encyclopedia, about conifers and Manzanita's, also just edited and published a beautiful natural history of the Klamath mountains. And I went with him and his co editor Justin Garwood to the Klamath mountains, and interviewed him about what makes this mountain range so special. And that episode is coming out next in two weeks. So stay tuned for that. It'll be my first ever set of Back to Back husband wife episodes, because these two are like a pine cone power couple, or some kind of algal symbiosis that needs workshopping. Anyway, listen to the next episode, the interview was so good, and you're gonna love it. Okay, here's the last question for you. You've been doing this for like 20 years coming out here. What about seaweed, sea vegetables, what about coming out into this intertidal zone still takes your breath away.

Allison  1:08:50  
I'm so glad I got to bring you here, because this is really my happy spot. And if you squint your eyes a little bit, do you actually see anything that is like modern human made? Oh, and I mean, you can just feel like you're being transported back in time. And imagine that the footsteps that we made in the sand right here are actually from people who would have been coming to the same tide pools and harvesting the same the same species to feed their families. I just I really feel the energy of all the people that have walked the same path before we have and I pay them so much respect, and and these are cultures that are still thriving here on the north coast of California and no, throughout California, or indigenous cultures, we have much to learn from their ways in their history. So I love that part about it. And then the other part is nothing gets me out of bed earlier than like having to having to like meet up an airplane. You know, always like, Oh God, I gotta set the alarm for 430 For this one, or trying to meet a really good low tide and I am Never ever disappointed when I make the effort to come out, even if it's, you know really pushing it in terms of your creature comforts to get out of bed on that in the dark of dark of morning to make it here for a great low tide. It absolutely takes your breath away every time this place is phenomenally beautiful. And you always see something new.

Michelle Fullner  1:10:20  
I listen. Thank you.

Allison  1:10:21  
Thank you so much

Michelle Fullner  1:10:22  
for coming out here and showing me such a gorgeous spot.

Allison  1:10:25  
I'm so glad you're into it. This is a great excuse to come out so into it.

Michelle Fullner  1:10:29  
So check a tide table head to the ocean for a good low tide stand in awe of the complex system before you and add some wild food to your life. I want to give a big thank you to Allison for taking an afternoon to come out on this interview with me for feeding me seaweed delicacies are right out of the ocean and for lending me galoshes so that I could focus on our conversation and not on my frozen feet. Don't forget to head to backcountry press.com/seaweed and find all the wonderful resources Ellison has brought together there. And as a thank you for sticking around to the end of the episode. I always say something interesting or funny or embarrassing for my week. And this week, it's that one of our good friends just turned 40 And he celebrated with an 80s themed birthday party. And what you need to understand is the last time our friend had a costume party, my husband and I severely under delivered like I think we failed to dress up at all which is embarrassing. So I knew we had to do it right this time to avoid bringing permanent shame to our family. So we got an old milk crate used a circular saw to cut the bottom out of it and zip tied a pair of handlebars we borrowed from our kids bike to the back of it my husband put on a red hoodie and pulled the hood up and I shimmied inside the milk crate and pulled on a finger flashlight, a sheet and an E T mask stand even play the E T theme song at full volume on his phone as we made our entrance. And I think maybe a lot of people didn't quite know what to do with us. But the birthday boy was thrilled and I feel like we redeemed ourselves from our poor showing last time. Okay, that's all for this episode. Thanks for being here and for listening all the way to the end. I can't wait to see you on the next episode of Bodensee naturalist bye.