Marine biologist highlights the importance of seaweed in new children’s book | 24CA News

Seaweed: not so nice when it brushes in opposition to your leg whereas swimming, fairly smelly when it is washed ashore, and even smellier when your roommate roasts it within the oven late at evening. 

To Amanda Swinimer, it is also a part of her “office” and her livelihood

Swinimer is an expert seaweed harvester and a marine biologist based mostly on Vancouver Island.

She’s additionally an creator — and not too long ago revealed a youngsters’s e-book highlighting how vital seaweed is for diet, and for shielding the planet in opposition to local weather change. 

A day within the life

As a seaweed harvester, Swinimer says her days differ relying on which kind of seaweed she’s after. 

But she usually begins by placing on a thick wetsuit with a hood, and gloves and boots. She packs up her mesh harvest baggage, grabs her masks, fins and snorkel, and heads to the seaside.

Then, she snorkels out into the ocean, about 150 metres offshore.

When harvesting bull kelp, she trims the blades off the crops, avoiding slicing the stipe — the big half on the backside. If she retains these intact, she says, the plant will regenerate. 

Swinimer then packs the blades into her mesh baggage and hauls them again to the seaside, earlier than going again out to do it another time. 

“It’s a remarkable place that I get to call my office where I work,” she stated. “There’s all kinds of creatures that I’ve interacted with over the years.”

The most spectacular sea creature she’s come throughout was a Giant Pacific octopus, she says.

“I noticed out of the peripheral of my mask this red colour. It was the head of an octopus and it was about the size of my pillow on my bed, like huge.” 

Sustainability

Creatures just like the octopus depend on seaweed for survival in a technique or different, Swinimer stated.

 According to the Marine Conservation Society, seaweed produces about 70 per cent of the world’s oxygen. 

The society says seaweed additionally absorbs carbon dioxide extra effectively than timber.

“They’re just really, really critical in keeping climate change from running amok and more than it already is and nourishing every single species in the ocean, from the tiny zooplankton all the way up to the orca.”

Nutrition

Seaweed can be filled with nutritional vitamins and minerals, and accommodates wholesome fatty acids, in keeping with Swinimer.

“People have been using seaweeds as medicines and to support health for thousands of years,” she stated.

As for the right way to finest eat it, it will depend on the form of seaweed you are utilizing, she says. Her favorite is dried dulse, by itself.

“Not all seaweeds are edible,” Swinimer provides — however none are toxic, both. 

However, Health Canada has suggested in opposition to consuming hijiki seaweed, on account of excessive ranges of inorganic arsenic.

Education for teenagers

All these factors and extra are issues Swinimer desires to spotlight to younger readers in her e-book, The Science and Superpowers of Seaweed: A Guide for Kids. 

“I teach people all the way from young kids to college and university students,” she informed North by Northwest host Margaret Gallagher. 

“So many kids, when they’re exposed to seaweed, they become really, really interested and excited about it. But a lot of kids just never get that chance.”