AU-streaming: Seaweed - with marine biologist Annette Bruhn

Seaweed comes in an impressive variety of colours, shapes and sizes beneath the ocean surface. Like forests on land, kelp forests along the world's coasts are crucial for marine ecosystems - from pole to equator they serve as food sources and shelter for fish and small animals. Seaweed also plays a role in regulating the marine environment and climate by absorbing nutrients and CO2, releasing oxygen and counteracting ocean acidification.

For millennia, humans have used seaweed for food, animal feed, fertiliser, gunpowder and materials. Today, seaweed is being pointed to as a possible answer to the climate crisis, food crisis and biodiversity crisis - but what does it actually deliver?

Marine biologist Annette Bruhn examines what seaweed and algae are as organisms, how they differ from plants and animals, and what methods are used to cultivate them - both at sea and on land. She also looks at what sustainable contributions seaweed can realistically make within climate, biodiversity and food. There will be an opportunity to taste seaweed.

The lecture is an updated version of a presentation from autumn 2020.