Is seaweed a form of algae?
Seaweed
Seaweed or macroalgae refers to several species of macroscopic, multicellular, marine algae.[1] 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.
Sea foam
The composition of sea foam is generally a mixture of decomposed organic materials, including zooplankton, phytoplankton, algae (including diatoms), bacteria, fungi, protozoans, and vascular plant detritus, though each occurrence of sea foam varies in its specific contents. In some areas, sea foam is found to be made up of primarily protein, dominant in both fresh and old foam, as well as lipids and carbohydrates. The high protein and low carbohydrate concentration suggest that sugars originally present in the surrounding mucilage created by algae or plant matter has been quickly consumed by bacteria. Additional research has shown that a small fraction of the dry weight in sea foam is organic carbon, which contains phenolics, sugars, amino sugars, and amino acids. In the Bay of Fundy, high mortality rates of an abundant tube-dwelling amphipod ("Corophium volutator)" by natural die-offs as well as predation by migrating seabirds contributed to amino sugars released in the surrounding environment and thus, in sea foam.