WALK ALONG THE SANDY BEACHES of Pasir Ris, Singapore at dawn, and a curious salad appears to wash up on the sands.
A peculiar mix of red, green, brown, and black seaweeds, these native species of entangled fronds arouse the curiosity of humans and animals alike. Mathilda D’silva, a Pasir Ris resident, was captivated by these seaweeds washing ashore and also seemingly thriving on the underside of the line of blue barrels, a coastal protection initiative in place by the Singapore national coast guard. She also noticed that they appeared to grow floating in the shallow pools by the shore, while some rooted themselves to the shallow sandbanks. These curious characteristics make this trending aquaculture crop notoriously difficult to understand, cultivate, propagate and quantify.
The term seaweed adds to the confusion, as seaweeds can be as tiny as microscopic phytoplankton that permeate the water column, powering the marine food chain. They can form massive, lush underwater forests, anchoring themselves with holdfasts instead of claw-like root anchors that attach to smooth, hard surfaces. D’Silva realised that many seaweeds were also attaching themselves to plastic trash that
