Marine extracts and marine margin plants

But as the technology to explore the oceans in detail improved, gradually our understanding of its potential wealth increased. To this day, there is still much that has yet to be explored or explained, but more importantly, we have to a great extent broken down the psychological barrier between our land-based existence and the deep oceans. We now have at least developed a basic understanding of the sea as an ecosystem to be admired, explored and, of course, protected. The fact that the sea represents an alien world to us is at odds with the belief of most scientists that this is where life on Earth began. It is, at least distantly, our original home. And as humans evolved, communities developed into civilisations in coastal areas or along major rivers, but apart from sea salt, fish and whale meat, we have done little to harness the sea’s nutrients. Perhaps only seaweed has come close to mirroring the way we cultivate crops on land. Seaweed has in fact been an incredibly useful crop, providing food as well as being a natural source of fertiliser, gelling agents, emulsifiers, iodine and cold and ‘flu medicines. It was also the source of the modern food additive, monosodium glutamate (MSG); a discovery which launched the Japanese chemical company, Ajinomoto. Seaweed is still the most heavily used marine ingredient in cosmetics, but the word “seaweed” encompasses a huge array of life-forms. As an example, there are 6,000 species of red seaweed, as well as thousands of the brown and green varieties. Seaweeds are easily farmed and foraged and have been used by humans in various ways for thousands of years, but its multitude of uses must pose the question of what else might be out there. Scientists continue to study marine flora for a range of applications and their use as ingredients in cosmetics has grown in significance over the last few years. They are proving to be increasingly popular with consumers, who perhaps make a connection between the pure, rich, mineral soup that is the ocean and their skin’s wellbeing, which is under daily attack from airborne pollution, moisture-sapping wind and the sun’s rays. A product of the sea immediately conjures soothing and cleansing connotations. We thought that due to the growth of sea and marine plants and coastal margin plants on offer it would be helpful to see how this sector of botanicals was growing. Once we started the review we were amazed by the huge number of extracts now on offer.

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Acanthophora nayadiformis (red alga) – supplied by Natlantis.