Fucoxanthin: history and controversy

The calcium alginate within the organism has been the fundamental commercially viable product of seaweed. The extracts thicken water-based items for consumption, make them creamier, and add stability over temperature extremes. Its what keeps your ice cream from forming crystals in the freezer. It can be found in frozen foods, desserts, brownie mix, salad dressing, gravies, relishes, sauces and that foamy head to beer. Few consumers know they are ingesting fucoxanthin from algae.

Problems growing brown seaweed are not limited to the severity of pollution, turbulence, and seasonal temperatures. They are less tolerant of salinity and more prone to deccation stress. They occur, for the most part, lower on the shore than seaweeds that are green.

Fucoxanthin is bound tightly to seaweed proteins, and humans do not readily absorb whole seaweed.

But, harvesting is not controversy-free. Despite assurances from marine biologists for the State of California, in response to environmentalists, Abalone farmers, and politicians, the entire canopy could be removed and the kelp beds would remain unharmed. He likened it to mowing grass: it just grows back. Current accepted practice and the rules governing California harvesters limit the depth of cutting to four feet or less beneath the water's surface and only half the canopy. Any over-harvesting is cited as a problem when companies don't communicate. The industry is still growing and self-regulation is being attempted.

California, for example leases 55 percent of the kelp beds to qualified bidders. Fucoxanthin-rich harvests are open to licensed harvesters in 38 percent of the area for a license fee of $100. The remaining 7 percent of the California beds are off limits to harvesting due to harm arising out of disruption to the environment.

There are some environmentalists that argue harvesting of the underwater forests of the source of fucoxanthin may be detrimental to the Sea Otter; whose population have dropped. No one actually knows why and the harvesting does not appear to be widespread enough to have had any impact on that population. It should also be reminded that only the top four feet of the kelp are gathered. Kelp industry analysts point to the practice going on since the 1920s when algin first was discovered to have commercial applications. Abalone farmers are demanding greater protection fo their crop which also depend on the brown algae. Wild abalone, however, have been near extinction for a number of years secondary to over-hunting. Marine biologists, for the most part, just aren't sure there are any negative effects to either since there are no extensive studies into the question.

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