Lawrence M. Liao is a seaweed taxonomy specialist from the Department of Biology, University of San Carlos, Cebu City, Philippines. He is here for a fortnight to aid with the identification of some seaweeds in the herbarium, hosted by A/P Hugh Tan.

SThe Philippines archipelago consists of more than 7100 islands with inhabitants belonging to about 110 linguistic groups. Utilization of agricultural resources is determined by land topography/land use, climatic patterns and socio-economic standards. Regions with limited agricultural resources often rely more on available marine resources like marine algae and invertebrates. Such is the case for the Iloko region in the northwestern coast of Luzon Island that utilizes about 20 different marine algal species for various traditional applications such as human and animal food, medicine, fertilizers and insecticides. Outside of the Iloko region, the level of the indigenous use of marine algae is low and involve only about 5 species. In addition, the exploitation of seaweeds in these regions is mainly confined to the industrial usage coupled with very little indigenous applications.

This survey focuses on the indigenous or ethnobotanical uses of marine algae on Mactan Island in central Philippines and in the Zamboanga area in western Mindanao Island. Results show that the local inhabitants possess a high level of ethnobotanical knowledge on seaweeds. Economic seaweeds have local names in the Cebuano and Tausug dialectsversus having only collective names.

On Mactan Island, age-old folk traditions are attributed to the successful mass cultivation of the green seaweed Caulerpa lentillifera. Local folks associate different weedy Caulerpa species as parent plants that provide seedstock for the cultivated species. In Zamboanga, various species of red and green marine algae are harvested and sold in the seafood markets for local consumption. One of them is the red seaweed Solieria robusta. Two pigment variants of the same species are considered by the local fishermen as male and female parents.