Abstract
Worldwide, some 291 species of seaweeds are used by humans, mainly for food and hydrocolloid production (e.g., alginates, agar, and carrageenan) and also for medicines, paper, fertilizer, and animal feed. In 2012 close to 21 million t wet weight of seaweeds were used, with just over 20 million t of that cultured as opposed to wild harvest. Production is dominated by Indonesia, China, and the Philippines. Indonesia produces 5.7 million t of Eucheuma. China produces large amounts of Laminaria (4.8 million t), Gracilaria (1.9 million t), Undaria (1.7 million t), and Porphyra (1.1 million t). In the Philippines, Eucheuma dominates with 1.7 million t produced. These five seaweeds made up 96.7% of the total seaweed harvest in 2012.
1. Introduction
In 1999 one of us (WLW) published a summary of world seaweed utilization (
Zemke-White and Ohno, 1999). At the time, reliable data on seaweed harvesting and farming were difficult to come by, and so the data were extracted from the book
Seaweeds of the World, edited by Alan Critchley and Masao Ohno. This resource was updated in 2006 and produced as a CD-ROM entitled
World Seaweed Resources (
Critchley et al., 2006). Since this time, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has compiled and made freely available a dataset of all reported fisheries and aquaculture landings from 1952 to the present (the latest data are currently from 2012). While it is likely that these data are somewhat under-reporting the landings of various species, it is the most current and accurate dataset available.
To provide an update on
Zemke-White and Ohno (1999), we obtained the reported seaweed production weights from the
FAO (2014) dataset. The detail of the reported seaweed classification ranged from phylum/family level right down to individual species. When the seaweed was not reported to the species level, we used
Critchley et al. (2006) to elucidate genera or species where possible. This resource was the primary source of information on economic seaweed species. We further supplemented country-specific seaweed species from the relevant literature that was found by Google Scholar using the following search terms: seaweed, aquaculture, production, and country. The literature used for each country is listed in
Table 2.1.
Table 2.1
Sources of Information on Country-Specific Seaweed Information
| Country (or Region) | References |
A direct comparison between
Zemke-White and Ohno (1999) and these current data is difficult as the former reported dry weight landings, while the FAO report used wet weight. However, using a dry:wet weight conversion, some comparisons are possible. Certainly the actual species that are utilized and their source countries can be compared for changes over the past 10–15 years.
As mentioned earlier, the way data are reported in the FAO dataset means that it is not always possible to determine the species being reported. Sometimes only the higher level grouping of Chlorophyte, Phaeophyte, or Rhodophyte (for green, brown, and red seaweeds, respectively) was reported. There are also issues with particular species groupings. For example, various species of the genera
Eucheuma and
Kappaphycus are farmed extensively and almost all for the production of carrageenan. To avoid confusion we have referred to all of these as
Eucheuma. Likewise all species of
Undaria are grouped under that genus. Renaming of species and/or genera can also be confusing. In 2006 the genus
Laminaria was split and 18 of its species were put into the resurrected genus of
Saccharina (
Lane et al., 2006), including
Saccharina japonica, one of the most cultured seaweeds. As the FAO and others still use the old genus for reporting landings, we have grouped
Saccharina with the
Laminaria genus for
Table 2.3 and
Figure 2.2. For the remainder of this chapter, all data are reported in wet weight of seaweeds unless otherwise stated.
2. Which species and where from?
In total at least 291 species are used worldwide from 43 countries (
Table 2.2). This is an increase of 50 species since 1995 and comprises 33 chlorophytes (up from 32 in 1995), 75 phaeophytes (up from 64 in 1995), and 163 rhodophytes (up from 125 in 1995).
Table 2.2
Seaweed Species Used Worldwide
| Acetabularia major | M | Philippines |
| Capsosiphon fulvescens | F | Korea |
| Caulerpa bartlettii | F | Philippines |
| Caulerpa intricatum | F | Philippines |
| Caulerpa lentillifera | F, M | Philippines |
| Caulerpa peltata | F, M | Philippines |
| Caulerpa racemosa | F | Bangladesh, Fiji, Philippines, Vietnam |
| Caulerpa sertularioides | F, M | Bangladesh, Philippines |
| Caulerpa taxifolia | F, M | Philippines |
