Sea Lettuce - Ulva

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Sea Lettuce - Ulva
By Pat Nash, Beach Watcher, Class of 1994
Photo Copyright © 2006 Jan Holmes
Beach Watchers
Washington State University

Roaming beaches, one often notes a bright green, translucent alga with a most appropriate common name: Sea Lettuce - known to those more scientifically inclined by its genus names Ulva and Ulvaria.

Found on rocks, shells, pieces of wood and such at lower tide levels, the often torn from same and the substratum and then pushed up the beach slope by inclining waves, Sea Lettuce leaves (called blades technically), and other adrift seaweeds, are deposited on the beach as the seawater retreats. The left-behind fresh Sea Lettuce indeed do somewhat resemble store purchased or home-grown lettuce, but seem thinner, more fragile, more see-throughish. On the beach it’s more like over-ripe, discardable, still fairly green, table lettuce that can be overlooked and begin breaking down in the vegetable drawers of our refrigerators.

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