California wrack categories Deer Creek
Channel: Sean Anderson
Date: 08/06/2016

Here is a brief overview of the categories of organisms that comprise our sandy beach wrack.  Most of these are algal categories, but we also commonly encounter seagrass (technically this is an angiosperm and not a protist).  Here we see "kelp" (brown algae within the order Laminariales), "other brown" (brown algae that are not a species of kelp), "fleshy red" (algae within the division Rhodophyta), "coralline red" (reds within the oder Corallinales), and seagrass (angiosperms of the family Zosteracea).  In southern California all of our seagrasses are either Phyllospadix or Zostera and our most common kep is giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera).  In this video, the kelp is Macrocystis pyrifera and the seagrass is Zostera marina.