According to a study, brown algae remove 550 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually and store it in their slime for up to thousands of years.
While it mainly uses the carbon to grow, seaweed converts some of it into algal slime and deposits it in seawater.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany have analyzed the composition of this slime in detail.
They found that it is made up of about 50 percent of the persistent molecule “fucoidan,” which contains carbon.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Germany analyzed the composition of the algal slime produced by the brown algae known as “bladderwrack”.
They found that about 50 percent of algal slime consists of the persistent molecule “fucoidan,” which contains carbon
Therefore, this compound remains untouched in the ocean “for hundreds to thousands of years,” said first author Dr. Hagen Buck meadow.
The researchers believe that the seaweed helps to counteract global warming by locking the carbon in the slime over the long term.
Brown algae are believed to outperform forests in the amount of carbon they absorb from the air each year, but only use about two-thirds of that for growth and energy.
The rest is excreted in the form of sugary waste, some of which is used by other organisms while the rest sinks to the sea floor.
Fucus vesiculosus, or “bladderwrack”, is a species of brown algae found in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and North Atlantic that grows up to 30 cm long and attaches to rocks
WHAT IS BROWN ALGAE?
Brown algae typically live in temperate and cold ocean regions, and there are up to 2,000 different species.
These include seaweed, which forms meter-high forests beneath the sea, and bladderwrack, which was examined for the study.
It has a variety of different uses, both in nutrition and medicine. Bladderwrack, for example, was the original source of iodine, discovered in 1811.
Brown algae typically live in temperate and cold ocean regions, and there are up to 2,000 different species.
For the study, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists examined the algal slime of Fucus vesiculosus, or “bladder wrack” in Finland.
This is a species of brown algae found in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and North Atlantic that grows up to 30 cm long and attaches to rocks and stones.
It is named for the air pockets in its leaves, which look like small bubbles and provide buoyancy in water.
dr Buck-Wiese: “The excretions of brown algae are very complex and therefore incredibly complicated to measure.
“However, we managed to develop a method to analyze them in detail.”
His team found that fucoidan is largely responsible for its carbon-removing properties, making up about half of its slime.
“The fucoidan is so complex that it is very difficult for other organisms to use it. Nobody seems to like it,” added Dr. Added Buck meadow.
“This makes the brown algae particularly good helpers in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in the long term – for hundreds to thousands of years.”
Bladderwrack is named for the air pockets on its leaves, which look like small bubbles and provide buoyancy in water (stock image)
Since brown algae are estimated to absorb a billion tons of carbon annually, that means up to 150 million tons of it is stored in slime as the robust fucoidan.
This equates to 550 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, exceeding the 505 million tonnes the UK produces annually, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The loss of fucoidan in the mucus also does not affect the growth of bladderwrack as it does not contain beneficial nutrients such as nitrogen.
dr Buck-Wiese said: “Next we want to study other brown algae species and other locations.
“The great potential of brown algae for climate protection must be further researched and used.”
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