COMPARISON OF TECHNIQUES FOR THE REMOVAL OF PARTICULATE MATERIAL FROMSEAWEED TISSUE

Eight techniques for cleaning particulate material and epibionts from the tissue of Fucus vesiculosus were tested on seaweed collected from a metal-contaminated estuary in the southwest of England. When assesse d by scanning electron microscopy, only one was found to have efficien tly removed the particulate material on the tissue. This technique con sisted of applying a 1:9 ethanol:seawater mixture to the surface of th e thallus, and scraping with a PTFE spatula. Analysis of Cu, As, Fe, M n, and Zn content in the tissues cleaned by this technique showed that , in this case, only Fe concentrations decreased significantly when co mpared to tissue cleaned by rinsing in seawater only. The study is the first to systematically assess cleaning techniques for marine macroal gae and illustrates the need for standard methods for the sampling and analysis of seaweed tissue. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.