Ellen Browning Scripps Herbarium Collection Highlights the Intersection Between Art and Science

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• Karissa Duran- [email protected]

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The seaweed, or marine algae, that you find in the ocean and washed up on the shore is a valuable source of information and innovation that can be important for art, science and sustainable climate solutions.

The Smith Seaweed Ecology Labat UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography is showcasing the scientific diversity and natural beauty of seaweeds through the new Ellen Browning Scripps Herbarium Collection. This resource - a digitized and physical collection of thousands of dried seaweed specimens - is designed to teach and inspire the next generation of scientists, artists and innovators.

The collection is named in honor of institutional founding donor Ellen Browning Scripps, who herself was an avid seaweed collector and historian. The establishment of this new collection was made possible thanks to support from the Beyster Family, the California Institute for Biodiversity and the Ellen Browning Scripps Family Foundation.

Beyond artistic expression, seaweed pressings are important for understanding historical ecology, taxonomy, assessing biodiversity and documenting change across space and time. The seaweed pressings reside in herbarium cabinets in the Ted and Jean Scripps Marine Conservation and Technology Facility, and the scanned pressings are now available as a publicly-accessible digital archive through the UC San Diego Library's Digital Collectionsand the Algae Herbarium Portal, a global biodiversity database.

Led by postdoctoral scholar Adi Khenand Scripps professor and marine ecologist Jennifer Smith, the Ellen Browning Scripps Herbarium Collection is made up of over 5,000 macroalgal herbarium specimens that were collected largely by lab members or students in the Phycology: Marine Plant Biology course (SIO 183) taught by Smith as part of Scripps' rapidly growing marine biology undergraduate major. Since 2023, researchers and volunteers from the Smith Lab have been working together to curate and digitize seaweed pressings representing over 300 different species of native and non-native seaweeds from Southern California that make up the collection.

"This herbarium collection shows how art can be used as a way to document the natural world around us," said Khen. "The seaweed pressings are useful scientifically to learn more about these species and document their change through time, but they are also beautiful pieces of art, easy to create and can last for centuries. They have the power to tell us a lot about the past and the present, which could help us better inform the future."

Each seaweed specimen that has been collected is laid out on mounting paper and sandwiched in a wooden frame between layers of wax paper or mesh, blotting paper and cardboard. Then straps are wrapped around the frame to apply pressure and the seaweed is flattened and dried for about a week to preserve. Each pressing is labeled with its taxonomic name, a catalog number, date and location where it was collected and the collector's name.

At the turn of the 20th century is when Ellen, her half-sister Virginia Scripps and other female friends, such as Mary Snyder, regularly went out on the beaches of La Jolla to collect seaweeds and create their own pressings. To this day, their pressings offer a wealth of scientific information of San Diego's seaweed communities from that time. These pressings and other pressings collected by women hobbyist-turned-scientists were previously held at Scripps, in the original herbarium collection managed by the late Scripps professor and marine biologist Ralph Lewin, but were transferred to the San Diego Natural History Museum, UC San Diego Library's Special Collections & Archives and the University Herbarium at UC Berkeley.

The new and modern Ellen Browning Scripps Herbarium Collection will serve as a teaching resource for students in the study of marine algae, documenting the common species in a certain region through time, and measuring species richness, abundance and distribution. The collection will also be helpful in detecting the introduction of non-native and potentially invasive species, informing genetic and molecular analyses, tracking impacts of global change, and promoting research, education and public outreach.

"We are excited to reinstate the Scripps Herbarium Collection at a time that is more important than ever, as we continue to see climate change threaten our local ecosystems and invasive species threaten our native flora," said Smith. "Rather than just going out and making an observation, we are able to physically document and study these species to better understand changes that are occurring right before our eyes."

During the last few years, the Smith Lab has actively connected with the public by hosting, co-leading and participating in outreach events to raise awareness, knowledge and appreciation for seaweeds, as well as their many potential uses for human health and environmental sustainability. This includes leading free, hands-on seaweed pressings for youth and adults at Walter Munk Day, Barrio Logan Science and Art Expo and the California Seaweed Festival, as well as teaching classes of local elementary to high school students how to identify and press seaweeds.

Early and ongoing support from the Beyster Family was essential to the establishment of the Ellen Browning Scripps Herbarium Collection. If interested in supporting the herbarium and long-term curation of the collection, please contact the Scripps Development Office.

Access the digital seaweeds pressings through UC San Diego's Digital Collectionsor the Algae Herbarium Portal. For more information, visit the Smith Lab websiteor contact Jennifer Smithor Adi Khen.