Pacific Seaweeds: A Guide to Common Seaweeds of the West Coast, Updated and Expanded Edition, a book co-written by Comox author Bridgette Clarkston and Bamfield author Louis Druehl, has received an honorable mention in the Nature Guidebooks category of the 2016 National Outdoor Book Awards.
Their book is the authoritative guide to over 200 common species of seaweeds from southeast Alaska to central California. The National Outdoor Book Awards is an annual awards program that recognizes the best in outdoor writing and publishing in 10 categories.
The National Outdoor Book Awards had this to say about Pacific Seaweeds: “If you’ve ever wondered about the names of seaweeds that have washed up on shore, this is the guide to reach for. Of the several methods employed by the authors to aid your identification efforts, one of the most clever is the way seaweeds are photographed... What plainly comes through in this book is that the authors are enthusiastic and passionate about these plants of the sea.”
Since the first edition came out 15 years ago, Pacific Seaweeds has sold over 10,000 copies. This updated and expanded guide thoroughly documents every aspect of seaweed life, from species identification and seaweed biology to the essential - and often surprising - roles seaweeds play in the marine ecosystem and our everyday lives. Seaweeds are used in everything from cosmetics to sustainable biofuels, and some species, like kelp, contribute to the remediation of coastal ecosystems.
Bridgette E. Clarkston is a seaweed biologist, science educator and avid photographer with over a decade of teaching experience at the University of New Brunswick, University of British Columbia, and California State University, Monterey Bay. She has discovered several new species of red seaweed, and is the author of A Field Guide to Seaweeds of the Pacific Northwest.
Born and raised in Comox, she now makes her home in Monterey, California.