When Seaweed Averted Christmas Beer Famine In Auckland

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 199, 23 August 1945, Page 4

When Seaweed Averted Christmas Beer Famine In Auckland

Survival Of Frothblowers' Club Assured

A UCKLAND, in one of the " years of the war, was threatened with a Christmas beer famine. Importations from Great Britain of carrageen seaweeds of French and Irish origin, used to clarify beer from the "muddy" stage, had run out at a certain brewery—and the peak of the festive season was only three weeks off. It was a case of no carrageen, no beer. The survival of the Frothblowers' Club was at stake. Such was the emergency when the services of a botanist—a woman— were enlisted. The expert who came to the rescue of the brewery was Miss Lucy Moore, M.Sc., a graduate of Auckland University, who joined the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1938. She is attached to the Botany Division, Plant Research Bureau, and was recently elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society, of London. When told of the brewery's predicament Miss Moore went out, collected a sackful of carrageen from Cook Strait, sent it to Auckland and saved the day. Beer-lovers of this city might well take off their hats to her. There has since been no shortage of carrageen. It is believed that the brewery got such* a fright that it laid in stocks sufficient for years. Carrageen, which is the Irish moss of commerce, is a blackish, rather fleshy seaweed with much branched strap fronds 3 to 10 inches long. Many Kinds of Seaweed Seaweed is a comprehensive term covering a New Zealand ocean garden of 500 different kinds of plants, which, like those of the land, have geographical preferences. Bull kelp, good fronds of which command a market price in the autumn in Southland, has been used for mut-ton-bird bags for years. It grows also on the Auckland west coast at Piha. Two hundred tons of drift seaweed collected at Oreti Beach are used yearly by Invercargill as a fertiliser on its parks and reserves. Seaweed has a high reputation as a garden manure and few plants contain more potash and iodine than the long bladder—kelp which floats in extensive surface fields on the sea near Stewart Island. One third of its dry weight may be pure muriate of potash. The best variety of seaweed fertiliser for Auckland gardens is the long-stalked kelp found and extensively used at Takapuna. Auckland is the collecting centre for the agar weed, bales of which are piled high in the end of the Internal

11 Marketing Division's store. It comes j f'from north of Hokianga, on the west" 1 coast, and from the Bay of Plenty and east coast from Gisborne up- • ward, principally round Ruatoria. l Water temperatures appear to be particularly favourable for its growth in these localities, as its most southern fringes are along the northern shores of the South Island in the vicinity of Kaikoura. There is plenty along the coast from North Taranaki to Kawhia, but it is not being collected there. Collecting agar brings in more ready money than milking cows, and it is gathered mainly in the autumn by Maoris, who receive 1/ per lb for the dried weed delivered into the Internal Marketing Division's store. Monthly cheques of £60 are not unknown. Fernlike Leaves The natural colour of the weed is wine-red in the water, and it has . fernlike leaves. It bleaches out, with . exposure, to parchment colour. t Simple drying may take little more [ than a day, after the weed has been . rinsed in fresh water. It then feels ! like a crisp wood-wool. From | Maketu, in the Bay of Plenty, it i comes in well-packed corn sacks, . each clearing for the Maoris about ; £3 after freight has been paid. The weed flourishes on the open coastline, and after a storm may be found ' banked 2ft deep in patches. It is 1 dried on a fence, or, by operators in ' a big way, on a wire netting frame. Pterocladia lucida, the coarse species, is a prolific grower, and attains a length of 2ft. Pterocladia capillacea, as its name implies, is • more hairlike. Sent direct to the Marketing Division, the weed is 1 checked and graded according; to quality, and baled or "dumped" for ' shipment from Auckland to Christchurch. It is processed there under ' the direction of a qualified chemist, 1 and is cooked up under pressure in ' fresh water in big digesters for the ' extraction of the agar, which is filtered off and set in a jelly. It is. then frozen into blocks and thawed out again. Separation from the water ; takes most of the soluble impurities away, leaving the agar a shrivelled skeleton. Well Known in Japan Agar is a complex carbohydrate. | It is an essential material for the study of diseases in man, his crops, I his animals and his timbers. Japan j was the pre-war source of supplv. | Importations for meat canning cost New Zealand £4500 a year, j Now 75 tons of agar weed are col- \ lected annually from New Zealand's ! coastline, and it is worth over £100 i a ton to those who comb the drift 1

rof every tide. Agar is being exported " r to Australia and England. It is still so scarce in Britain that it is distributed only in 2oz samples to manufacturers, is not available for general industrial use, and is reserved solely for bacteriological purposes. It is on little plates of agar jelly that the effectiveness of the drug penicillin is tested. Agar jelly, too, is used in making the inoculating preparation without which lucerne seed does not establish satisfactorily Meat canning absorbs the bulk of the agar used in New Zealand. Agar weed takes more than a year to reach maturity. It is not inexhaustible in supply, and, if it is picked too closely, next year s crop will be spoiled. It just follows the processes of Nature. This agar weed is found in Australia, but it is not as common there, and a different one is used for making agar. The New Zealand product is better, and yields up to 25 per cent of agar. Carrageen, another seaweed of commercial value, is collected by private arrangement on Stewart and South Island shores, but is also very abundant on the west coast of Auckland. For years it has found a.common; household use in the South for setting puddings—probably a heritage of Scottish or Irish ancestry. Cosmetics and Toothpaste Bringing 1/ to 1/4 per lb dry, according to quality, carrageen is also used in the manufacture of cosmetics and toothpaste. It makes a soft and fine quality jelly for face creams, and gives a good body to toothpaste. It has its value, too, in cough mixtures and sea-meal. Karengo, which the Maoris eat as a traditional relish, is a seaweed which is used as the pakeha might use pickles with potatoes. It was sent overseas during this war in considerable quantities to the Maori Battalion, which also used it in the desert as a substitute for chewing gum. It is a tough little greenish red sheet common on high-water rocks at Piha. Alginates, also extracts, have been used to make transparent paper like ; cellophane, and fine, silky yarn, i Heavy fire-resistant materials have Jbeen made from this "juice" of seaj weeds, but these projects are not I beyond the experimental stages in England. , | Even the common olive-coloured i necklace seaweed has its money value jin the Auckland district, though in a negative sense. The nobby fronds j rub baby rock oysters off their growiing places. The Marine Department, to save the oysters, spends quite a , lot each year dealing with these true weeds of the sea.