Nutritional composition of seaweeds from the Northern Persian Gulf

Abstract

Seaweeds are one of the important marine living resources in the world. These macroalgae have been a source of food, feed and medicine in the east as well as in the west, since ancient times (Chapman and Chapman, 1980; Arasaki and Arasaki, 1983). Marine algae distributed in the Persian Gulf especially around seashore of Busheher and Hormuzgan provinces in the south of Iran. The nutritional properties of the Persian Gulf seaweeds are not completely known yet, and they are usually estimated from their chemical composition alone. Although the seaweed biomass and diversity in the Persian Gulf are rich, they are under-utilized (Sohrabipor et al., 2004). In Asian countries, seaweeds are consumed as marine vegetable. However most of people of Iran are not aware that the seaweeds can be used as human foods. Rarely seaweeds are used as animal feeds or fertilizers by the coastal villagers.