Laminaria hyperborea records in Ireland
In November 2019, the written records of phycologists and old texts were
accessed in the Linnaean Society of London to investigate the study ofL. hyperborea from 1700 to present day. National herbaria were
visited to examine kelp voucher specimens from Ireland over the same
time period, though we must note that there are, in general, very few
records of large brown algae in these herbaria: National University of
Ireland Galway (M. Guiry, 1 record, Finavarra County Clare), The
National Botanic Gardens of Ireland (2 records, Clifden County Galway),
Trinity College (0 records), and Natural History Museum of London (3
records, Clare Island). The lack of voucher specimens is likely due to
the difficulty in preserving thick thalli on paper and many specimens
were likely jellied rather than pressed for preservation (Tsuda &
Abbott, 1985). Precise collection details were not noted on many
herbarium sheets making it difficult to ascertain the location of
collection, therefore herbarium data were not included when mapping kelp
records along the coastline through time. Site records for L.
hyperborea were downloaded or donated from the Global Biodiversity
Information Facility (January10th, 2020, gbif.org), Ocean Biogeographic
Information System (January 10th, 2020, obis.org),
National Biodiversity Data Centre (September 19th,
2019, biodiversityireland.ie), and the Environmental Protection Agency
(September 17th, 2019). All data were concatenated,
and quality filtered for duplicate records (i.e., same coordinates, same
date) and correct geographical location (i.e., points on land were
removed). Data were then sorted by year of recording and number of years
recorded to highlight sites accessed earliest within the country
(‘period of first record’; Figure 1) and of great interest (‘number of
years recorded’; Figure 2). Overall, recording effort increased as we
approach the present day, with a boom in the 1990s, however few sites
were recorded multiple times (Table 2).
Records for kelp forests were provided through recreational Comhairle
Fo-Thuinn (CFT) dive clubs throughout the country, the BIOMAR data set
(Picton & Morrow, 2006), and recent Irish Research Council and
Environmental Protection Agency projects (K. Schoenrock, personal
communication), and these were analysed separately as the distribution
of kelp ecosystems (not just individual kelp sightings or drift algae).
Kelp ecosystems (including survey data) have significantly fewer records
(Figure 3) in comparison to kelp records (Figure 1), however there is
some overlap. We hope that future observations of L. hyperboreawill include more metadata, such as whether the kelp was found in
situ, and whether it was in a kelp forest, park, or other habitat, or
on a strandline (as beach wrack). The difference between a kelp forest
or park is generally described as a reduced density of large kelp
individuals, generally adjacent to a kelp forest, although there is no
ecological distinction to date (Parr, 2020).