This abstract expression was not created by Jackson Pollock in a red mood; it was created by the sea in a bad mood. It’s an image of seaweeds in the low sunlight of a February afternoon. They were ripped from their rock holdfasts by a recent turbulent tide and stranded on Great Cove’s shoreline.
The species here appear to be mostly Dulse (Palmaria palmata) and Knotted Wrack (Ascophyllum nodosum), which is our principal “Rockweed” that attaches itself to rocks and other hard underwater surfaces.
Seaweeds such as these often are considered to be in the plant kingdom, but they’re not true plants. They’re rootless algae that seek external food like animals, but they also create internal energy (photosynthesis) like plants. They’ve been used by mankind for thousands of years as human and other animal food, fertilizer, medicine, and cosmetics, among other things.
Today, attention has focused on these marine algae to see if they might be mankind’s next major commercial harvest from the sea. Let’s hope that any such wild-cut sea harvest is more sensitive to the environment than prior major commercial harvests that lacked forethought, such as the over-harvesting of the smaller fish (alewives, etc.) on which local cod preyed, which apparently has almost extirpated our once numerous cod. (Brooklin, Maine)