Historical Background on the Eucheuma Seaweed

(7) The occurrence of Eucheuma in the western Indian Ocean region was first documented by Harvey (1834), who described a new species from Mauritius, which he named Gigartina horrida. This was subsequently found by J. Agardh (1852) to belong to Eucheuma. Other early records of the genus are those by Dickie (1875) who confirmed the occurrence of the genus in Mauritius; Sonder (1879), who, was the first to report the occurrence of Eucheuma in Zanzibar; and Schmitz (1895), who was first to document the occurrence of the seaweed on the Tanzania mainland shoreline, and to describe a few species (e.g., E. inerme and E. platycladum) which were new to science.

(8) In the more recent times, Boergeson (1943), Jaasund (1976), Mshigeni (1973); 1987), Mollion et al. (1990), Rabesandratana & Rabesandratana (1992), Maite-Santos & Mshigeni (1992), Mshigeni and Jahn (1994), have shown that Eucheuma is most abundantly represented in Tanzania, but also occurs on the shores of Kenya, Mozambique, Mauritius, and Madagascar.

(9) To-date the following species of Eucheuma have been confirmed in the Western Indian Ocean region:

· E. cottonii Weber-van Bosse,
· E. denticulatum (Burman) collins et Hervey,
· E. horridum (Harvey) J. Agardh,
· E. inerme Schmitz,
· E. odontophorum Boergesen, and
· E. platycladum Schmitz

Of these E. denticulatum (more commonly referred to as E. spinosum) and E. inerme (more commonly referred to as E. striatum) are the most abundantly represented (Mshigeni, 1987).