Creature Feature: Brown ear seaweed

Padina on deep reef at Kure Atoll. Photo Credit: Greg McFall

Padina is a common brown algae (limu in Hawaiian) in Hawaiian intertidal and shallow reef habitats. It is also found on deep reefs. It is easily recognized by its curved, fan shaped blade, and it grows in low mats. I like to think that it looks like a tan colored record album that sat in the sun too long and became warped, the lines on the blades look like the grooves on an album. When the blades break off, or the plant dies, the calcified blades break down to form sand. There are seven species of Padina in Hawaiʻi, and two of them are endemic to the archipelago.