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ABRAMS BOOKS - Josie Iselin

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152 pages

English

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In her captivating new book, artist and avid beachcomber Josie Iselin returns to the seashore to reveal the unexpected beauty of seaweed. Produced on a flatbed scanner, Iselins vibrant portraits of ocean flora reveal the exquisite color and extraordinary forms of more than 200 specimens gathered from tidal pools along the California and Maine coasts. Her engaging text, which accompanies the images, blends personal observation and philosophical musings with scientific fact. Like her previous books, An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed is a poetic and compelling tribute to the natural world and the wonder it evokes.

Informations

Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	11 mars 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781613125915
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	13 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0746€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

josie iselin
an ocean garden
the secret life of seaweed
abrams, new york
cover :
Delesseria sanguinea Britain c. 1880 Collection: University Herbarium UC Berkeley, CA
page 1 : Ulva linza on Odonthalia floccose Pillar Point, Moss Beach, CA May 2, 1977 Collection: California Academy of Sciences San Francisco, CA
page 2 : Smithora naiadum Outlet Cove, Bodega Head, CA July 5, 2008
page 3 : Bonnemaisonia californica Pacific Grove, CA c. 1880 Collection: University Herbarium UC Berkeley, CA
opposite: Egregia menziesii Stone Beach, San Mateo, CA February 25, 2010
Project Manager: Eric Himmel Editor: Susan Homer Design: Josie Iselin and Darilyn Lowe Carnes Production Manager: Anet Sirna-Bruder
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013945600
ISBN: 978-1-4197-1170-1
Text and photographs copyright 2014 Josie Iselin
Published in 2014 by Abrams, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
115 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011 www.abramsbooks.com
This book is dedicated to kathy ann miller, who finds so much joy among the weeds.
Desmarestia herbacea ACID KELP Santa Cruz, CA c. 1898 Collection: University Herbarium UC Berkeley, CA
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Introduction
april 21, san francisco, ca. I fell in love with seaweed at the kitchen counter. I had returned with a sack full from the windswept beach at Princeton-by-the-Sea, and as I dropped each specimen into a tub of saltwater, its form and color and translucent sensuality awakened. Pale pinks mingled with bright greens and yellow oranges. Rounded fronds, bumpy textures, and slender tendrils unraveled. I focused on one green algal mass. As I teased out the delicate blades, they stuck to my fingers, or to each other- these ocean flora belong in water, not air-but I persevered. The delicate connections between the razor-thin blades were surprisingly strong, and as I unfolded them, one by one, I could see their
Desmarestia herbacea ACID KELP Princeton-by-the-Sea, Half Moon Bay, CA April 21, 2010
tiny serrated edges. I felt like I was discovering a secret that few have seen, the secret of Desmarestia herbacea , or acid kelp.
In 1955 Rachel Carson published The Edge of the Sea , a lyrical and intimate prose portrait of the intertidal world-that universe of life that resides just below and between the tides. In describing the complexities of existence wherein the basic fabric of life, the ocean itself, is wrenched away and comes flooding back twice a day, her intense love and care for the seashore is palpable in every word. The rockweeds and kelps are an integral part of her explanations of the rocky intertidal zone; her home base was the seaweed-strewn rocks and beaches of southern Maine, and so how could it be otherwise? Yet it is astonishing how often the seaweeds are overlooked when describing life in the sea. In John Steinbeck s famous The Log from the Sea of Cortez and in the first edition of Ed Ricketts Between Pacific Tides , seaweeds are ignored. Carson, however, saw the integral nature of all organisms living at the seashore. Her ecological view (rare at that time, when most scientists were nose down in the study of specific species) is as contemporary today as when she wrote it, and she celebrates seaweed as one of the great ecosystem engineers of our planet. It fixes carbon, generating the base of the food chain, and creates habitat; it is fundamental not only to life in the sea but to all life on earth.
What if Rachel Carson had been able to observe firsthand the intense diversity of the tide pools of the wild California coast? Marine algae alone number more than seven hundred species on the Pacific coast. Compared to the monochrome presence of knotweed ( Ascophyllum ) and bladderwrack ( Fucus ) on the Maine coast, a California shoreline can seem like a wonderland. The
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wrack line of its beaches is full of washed-up kelps, including the feather boa, the bull kelp, and the giant kelp. The tide pools of the Pacific reefs are crowded with smaller and more delicate seaweeds (and yet they can withstand the punishing surf!) that range in color from reds and magentas to iridescent blues.
I am lucky to have a foot on both the East and West Coasts, and the littoral worlds of Ricketts and Carson are deep in my bones. Childhood summers were spent traipsing around islands swathed in the knotweed of Penobscot Bay, Maine, and the beaches there are where my own children have grown attached to the sea. My adult life in California includes a close kinship to the beaches I walk regularly: Fort Funston, with its wild drifts of massive kelp, and Duxbury Reef, where years ago my journey began. It was there that I held an innocuous scrap of seaweed up to the sky and, with a gasp of wonder at the intensity of color and the fabulousness of form, decided to bring it back to my studio and place it on my scanner. Among the many treasures the beach has shared with me, seaweed is perhaps the greatest discovery of all.
Sargassum muticum Crissy Field, San Francisco, CA April 26, 2012
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And what a secret treasure it is. Scuba divers and snorkelers know this; they experience, in situ, the underwater kelp forests and ocean prairies of algae that gracefully ride the currents and provide shelter and sustenance to all manner of fish and other species. They know its amazing resilience and beauty underwater in the face of strong physical forces. The Victorian amateur naturalists knew this, as they assiduously collected ocean flowers from the rugged coastlines of Britain and documented each one s location and name, creating a first database of algae. But how do we present-day shore huggers know this? While the tide pools offer fascinating anemones and crabs and the occasional nudibranch, the seaweeds there most often drape unceremoniously over the rocks, sticky and dark. They do not present themselves like the flowers in a garden. But by looking with focused intent and with a scrupulous eye-and using the scanner in the tradition of the photograms, sun prints, and pressings of artists and naturalists past-I hope to reveal the largely unseen forms of ocean flora as a nexus where art and science converge. For the shore lovers and inveterate beachcombers among us, this book will be our seaweed garden.
Bonnemaisonia californica Mar Vista, San Juan Island, WA April 17, 1983 Collection: University Herbarium UC Berkeley, CA

Laminaria setchellii KOMBU Cambria, CA May 13, 2012
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Polyneura latissima Bodega Head, CA May 29, 2010
Some Initial Basics
The common name seaweed implies a kinship to plants that is misleading. Algae of all sorts were established in the oceans well before the arrival of vascular plants on land, which resulted from the migration of a few ancestral green algae from the top of the surf zone up onto terra firma. Vascular plants inherit their chlorophyll (and thus their green color) from these ancient algal migrants, but the relationship ends there.
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The term algae covers the domains of microalgae as well as marine algae , multicellular algae , or macroalgae , all three of which are synonyms for seaweed. Microalgae are the invisible, single-celled organisms that populate our oceans and waterways, and produce more than half the oxygen in our atmosphere. Macroalgae , or seaweed, produce another 20 percent. All of this oxygen is generated as a by-product of photosynthesis, and seaweeds and kelps are astoundingly good at this life-giving process. Both land-based plants and oceanic flora use the energy of sunlight to split water molecules and transform (or fix) carbon dioxide into organic matter. But seaweeds do not expend precious resources fighting gravity-the buoyancy of the ocean pulls them upward-and, as a result, they are masters of efficiency when it comes to converting light energy into chemical energy, and from there, into metabolic energy, or growth. Giant kelp can fix from 1 to 4.8 kilograms of carbon per square meter of plant per year, growing almost 2 feet a day. Other species display even higher productivities. The kelp forests of the oceans rival the rainforests of the continents in terms of oxygen production.
Macrocystis pyrifera GIANT KELP (sporophyll blades) Cambria, CA May 12, 2012
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