The soggy seaweed that carpets Ireland's coasts finds many ways into our mouths and on to our faces. Millions unwittingly eat it in their ice cream or apply it as make-up each day.
Seaweed provided Ireland with its very first chemical industry, employing countless men from Clare to Donegal 300 years ago, said Dr Peter Childs, an environmental chemistry professor at the University of Limerick. Last night he sang the praises of seaweed to a large audience at the university as part of Science Week Ireland.
Once hundreds of thousands of tonnes of seaweed was harvested all along the northern and western coasts. But these days the trade is small in comparison with other European countries. It exists mainly in Connemara and employs about 100 people, he said.
Kelp is collected just as in the old days, by hand. But the industry still earns £6 million a year. Seaweed is used in everything from cattle feed and fertiliser to herbal baths.
"Every new era thinks of new ways to utilise seaweed," Dr Childs said. "In the 18th century it was used to make soap. Then much later it was revived as a vital source of iodine. But now that we are becoming more environmentally friendly and into alternative foods, it has opened up another new world for seaweed."
Seaweed, or the alginate extracted from it, acts as a thickener in ice cream and make-up. It even serves as a healing balm in bandages for burn patients. Many types act as polymers which trap water and cling to surfaces.
"That's why make-up doesn't fall off your face," he said.
Recently the prospect of seaweed farms off the west coast of Ireland has come closer to reality. Last year companies completed growth trials on an edible brown seaweed species, Alaria esculenta.
The systematic cultivation of seaweed, rather than just harvesting it where it grows naturally, is new to Ireland, but marine scientists say the climate is ideal for such activity.