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WILD BLUE BRITAIN
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MISSED A PROGRAMME?
Go to the Listen Again page |
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Lionel Kelleway is at his best fronting up this new series about our coasts - Wild Blue Britain - and he doesn't hold back on his infectious enthusiasm.
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| Presenter Lionel Kelleway gets to grips with some seaweed |
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 听Listen again to the programme
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Episode 2 - Seaweed World
Northern Ireland, it seems, is a great nation for seaweed and these marine plants form a kaleidoscope of colour and texture on the sheltered shores of Strangford Lough.
Queens University Belfast boasts not one, but two professors of phycology (the study of seaweed) - Prof. Mathew Dring & Prof. Christine Maggs who join Lionel on the shore.
Seaweeds are truly amazing organisms but only the vivid green weeds are true plants. The brown and red seaweeds are not plants, in fact, they resemble human parasites!
Lionel discovers that the slipperiness of seaweed protects them against abrasion from neighbours and rocks in wave surge and also stops grazers (marine snails especially) getting a foothold.
Seaweeds have some interesting applications too. Not only are they edible - we hear about the famous "dulse" as a salty nibble, rich in iodine and vitamins - but also calcium deposits in some red seaweeds can be used to help bone reconstruction in surgery.
Newest of all are the trials using brown seaweed to mop up the excess nutrient from the effluent of treated sewage. Currently, this nutrient-rich water is pumped into the sea but using seaweeds to take up this nutrient is proving to be a very effective way of reducing this "pollution" of our coast line.
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RELATED LINKS |
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UK Wildlife - Habitats
TV Coast series
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