Hawaiʻi's waters contain more than 600 native limu species. Karla McDermid guesses she can identify 40 of them by touch alone.
"And then if you let me taste them, we can add on to that," she said.
McDermid has been a marine science professor at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo for three decades. In that time, she's taught generations of students to love limu.
She herself was trained by Isabella Aiona Abbott, aka the First Lady of Limu.
Abbott was a foremost expert in marine algae and the first Native Hawaiian woman to earn a Ph.D. in science.
McDermid still incorporates many of Abbott's teachings into her curriculum, including how to cook with seaweed.
Each spring semester, McDermid's marine plants biology class puts on a "Limu Luncheon" as their final lab project.
Her students are tasked to prepare different seaweed recipes, including an adapted version of Abbott’s kelp cupcakes.
"We make everything from the drinks to the dessert," McDermid said.
Abbott is credited with discovering and naming more than 200 seaweed species, including many native limu.
Last year, McDermid launched a project to help preserve the body of knowledge Abbott built about Hawaiʻi's seaweeds.
Alongside fellow UH Hilo professor Maria Haws and marine science students Emma Poland, Lauren Runnels and Abigail Nason, McDermid created the Limu Ark, a living library of about 70 limu species.
It's a grand idea with a modest presentation. The collection is housed in a Matson container at the Pacific Aquaculture and Coastal Resources Center in Hilo.
"I'm not too good with the weed whacker," McDermid said, brushing away overgrown cane grass in order to get to the ark's front door.
Inside, clumps of seaweed in a spectrum of reds, greens and browns float in tubes and flasks. McDermid picks up a specimen that's so deeply colored it almost looks black.
It's Chondrus retortus, found only in Japan, Korea and Hawaiʻi.
McDermid and her colleagues have puzzled over how this species made its way across the Pacific.
One theory is that Japanese immigrants brought it with them to Hawaiʻi in the 19th century, but McDermid is skeptical.
"If I were traveling, I think I would bring nori, not this. Something more valuable," she said.
It’s also possible that the species arrived on debris from a tsunami. McDermid said that the giant waves generated by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake in Japan carried seaweeds all the way to the Oregon coast.
The Limu Ark can help solve these types of mysteries by preserving samples of seaweed biodiversity. McDermid hopes the collection can assist people in identifying limu specimens from the wild or those who are trying to cultivate a particular species as a food source.
Scientists are regularly identifying and formally recording limu species for the first time. But McDermid said some populations of native limu seem to be in decline.
"I've been here on this side of the island since 1994 working at UH Hilo," she said. "There are some species I can't find when I go on field trips with my students anymore."
Pollution or rising water temperatures due to climate change could be factors, although McDermid can't say for sure.
Her struggle to find limu species in the wild encouraged her to create the ark. She said it gives her pride to think that she's continuing Abbott’s legacy, and hopes the ark will allow a new generation of students to study Hawaiʻi's seaweeds.
But McDermid admits that most of the time, these noble aspirations come second to day-to-day concerns.
"I'm learning about how to keep them alive," she said.
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