Seaweed Products in Australia

Abstract

PRIOR to 1940, little had been done in Australia to develop any industries using seaweeds as the raw material. In the last century, a company was formed to make agar from the red alga, Eucheuma speciosum (Sond), J.Ag. at Dongarra in Western Australia; potash was produced from Macrocystis and Ecklonia in Tasmania during the War of 1914–18, and several attempts were made at different times to utilize the fibres of Posidonia australia Hook. F., which is prolific in South Australian waters and elsewhere. With the death of each of these schemes, seaweed research for industrial purposes languished, and even taxonomy was so neglected that for some years prior to his death, A. H. S. Lucas was the only person in Australia working with the marine algæ of the Continent.