The Brown Alga Durvillea antarctica in Australian Waters

Abstract

THE massive brown alga Durvillea antarctica (Cham.) Hariot has recently been found washed up in three different places on the Australian coast. Miss Alison Baird, of the University of Western Australia, has informed us that a piece, 8–9 cm. long, of an almost cylindrical thong-like segment was found in drift at Nornalup on the south coast, about seventy miles west of Albany, in December 1947. A similar piece was included in a display of New Zealand seaweeds at the Hobart meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of Science in January 1949; on that occasion one of us (L. B. M.), in company with Miss Baird, collected from drift at Taroona, on the west side of the Derwent Estuary below Hobart, a partly decomposed fragment of about the same dimensions. In February 1950, the other (A. B. C.) found a plant 2 m. long and only lacking the holdfast at Port Arthur on the east coast of Tasmania; most of it was in good condition, though it bore a heavy growth of barnacles (Lepas sp.), which may indicate that it had been floating for some time. A portion of it has been compared with New Zealand D. antarctica, which it matches well.