Underpinning sustainable ecosystem management of seaweed resources in africa: expanding the seaweed database

AlgaeBase (http://www.algaebase.org) is a web-enabled, world database of algae (terrestrial, freshwater and marine protists that includes seaweeds) and has been converted from a Filemaker Pro flat-file database to a MySQL database providing increased stability, reliability, flexibility, and expandability. AlgaeBase contains over 63,000 names of species, subspecies, varieties and forms of algae, with information on types and distribution (nearly 120,000 records from 14 geographical areas and over 200 countries), of which 35,000 are currently used species names. It is now estimated that the vast majority of species recorded for Africa have been entered since comprehensive catalogues for areas that span the whole African coast have been entered. The bibliography module has some 36,000 references on algae including all the papers published in the major algal journals since they started publishing. Other modules include common names (2314), etymology (17,657), and images (3500). Counters placed on the site from 21st October 2005 indicate that 5000 page searches take place each day on average. Nearly 1.76 million pages have been downloaded since 21st October 2004. The main users are developed countries: principally the USA and members of the EU, but usage worldwide is increasing every month. The situation with country accesses shows the top country, by far, for searches is the USA, followed by the UK, Spain, France, Italy and Australia. Ireland, despite our extensive use of the database has less usage than Turkey, Taiwan and Portugal. Most interest worldwide is in taxonomic and distributional information but images from the site are widely used in lectures, seminars and teaching programmes everywhere.

A new database was created namely SeaweedAfrica (http://www.seaweedafrica.org ), an MS SQL database, which runs on two servers. This comprehensive design allows for ease of access of encoders and a search system is in place which allows the database to be interrogated via species names; countries; common names; uses; ecology; aquaculture and harvesting records. SeaweedAfrica now contains information on: the life histories of seaweeds; their ecology, particularly their habitat and morphology; harvesting methods and harvesting data; aquaculture data and methods together with conditions for growth. There are 216 use categories with 1114 different seaweed uses recorded and some 230 compounds. The database also includes data on: legislation and regulation; biological interactions by species e.g. epiphytes, grazers and associated fauna; invasiveness and nuisance potential of seaweeds. It should be noted, however that there is considerable traffic to this site with some 1,500 users recorded in one 24hour period. There is a relative paucity of local knowledge of seaweeds in Africa despite the incredible biodiversity on the east coast. The database has sought to resolve this by including a full range of validated information on potential algae under the headings of ecological, commercial, technological data and management techniques for mariculture. The Seaweed database will help to satisfy the needs of policy makers wishing to initiate sustainable seaweed production or effectively regulate already existing seaweed production; whether that production is by harvesting or aquaculture. Other groups that will benefit from the information in the databases include universities, industry, government agencies, multidisciplinary research institutions, libraries, museums, non-governmental organisations and interested individuals.

Check-Lists for the seaweeds found in Namibia, Kenya and South Africa have been produced. The latter two of which have never created and the former has been updated. This information required for this work is the result of years of data encoding into AlgaeBase where numerous floras and papers have been entered. Along with a list of species the Check-Lists provide a background to the country and its coastal environment. These Check-Lists are very useful to the scientific community and of paramount importance to potential seaweed research in these countries and beyond.

The information pack is in a CD format with a great deal of data included: A Power Point presentation on SeaweedAfrica, its background and an introduction to the website; Check-Lists from South Africa, Namibia, and Kenya; List of the current and potential economic seaweeds in Africa; Pictures: country/ commercial species; Legislation data for African countries; Reference list of all papers; Extracts from SeaweedAfrica to include an extract for species and their uses; A list of the uses and potential uses of seaweeds throughout the world at the present time including possible pharmaceutical and biochemical uses; Questions addressed by the database. A comprehensive list of target end users was collected for dissemination of information packs.

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