Open Water Aquaculture Cultivation of Seaweed in the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia - Nutrients Uptake Rate and Removal Efficiency and Growth of Selected Seaweed Species

Seaweeds can be classified as marine macroalgae which act as precursor to the evolution of land plants. The seaweeds comprised of three different groups known as Chlorophyceae (green algae), Rhodophyceae (red algae), and Phaeophyceae (brown algae) according to the color pigments. These macroalgae grow by attaching to rock or any substrata in the ocean. The seaweeds are originated from two different evolutionary processes which are primary endosymbiosis for brown and red algae whereas the green algae evolved from secondary endosymbiosis. Thus, they are classified into different Kingdoms, Kingdom Plantae for red and green algae and Kingdom Chromista for brown algae. The common structure of seaweed is holdfast which is a basal structure function to hold the macroalgae to rock. There are approximately 72,500 algae species as reported by Guiry (The seaweed site: information on marine algae. Available from: http://www.seaweed.ie/algae/seaweeds.php . Accessed 20 Nov 2015, 2000). The seaweeds are useful to human as food, fertilizer, medicine, and phycocolloid extracts consisted of agar, alginates, and carrageenan (Buchholz et al., Seaweed and men. In: Wiencke C, Bischof K (eds) Seaweed ecophysiology & ecology. Ecological studies. Springer, 2012). Due to the growing worldwide population, the demand for seaweed and seaweed ingredients is continuously increasing (Redmond et al., New England seaweed culture handbook-nursery systems. Available from: http://seagrant.uconn.edu/publications/aquaculture/handbook.pdf . Accessed on: 8 Nov 2015, 2014).