Seaweed
Seaweed or macroalgae refers to several species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae. The term includes some types of red, brown, and green macroalgae. Marine algae species such as kelps provide essential nursery habitat for fisheries and other marine species and thus protect food sources; ocean algae species from seaweeds to planktons play a vital role in carbon capture, producing up to 90 percent of the planet's oxygen. Understanding these roles provides guiding principles for conservation and sustainable use of seaweeds to take precedence over industrial exploitation. Mechanical dredging of kelp, for instance, destroys the resource and dependent fisheries. Certain species of seaweed are valuable for nutrition, biomedicine, bioremediation, and other uses.
Caulerpa taxifolia
It is thought that the seaweed was accidentally released into coastal waters of the Mediterranean Sea (just below Jacques Cousteau's) Oceanographic Museum of Monaco in 1984. Ten years later, the claim was made that "Caulerpa" had grown to cover , and was preventing native plants from growing. This concern earned the algae the dubious nickname "Killer Algae" after the title of a book written on the subject. Its author, Marine biologist Alexandre Meinesz first discovered the alga in the 1980s, and requested the help of the Monaco Oceanographic Museum, which sat right next to the first known "C. taxifolia" patch. The director of the museum argued that this invasion probably happened naturally, the result of ocean currents carrying a tropical species into the area. The parties bickered publicly for years over whether the species was natural or invasive, and whether the museum had released it or not, at the expense of sound scientific research on the species and its ecological significance.