Expansion of marine pollution along the coast: Negative effects on kelps and contamination transference to benthic herbivores?

Heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous contaminants that frequently co-occur in coastal environments. These contaminants can have negative impacts on the health and stability of marine and coastal ecosystems, affecting both the organisms themselves and the humans who consume them. A coastal industrial park in central Chile, housing a coal thermal power plant and other industrial activities, contributes to such pollution of coastal waters; however, neither the spatial alongshore distribution of heavy metals and PAHs, nor an assessment of their ecological effects on the biota have been systematically documented to date.

Indoor and Outdoor Cultures of : Determination of Biomass Growth and Molecular Markers for Biomass Quality Evaluation.

Taking into consideration climate change scenarios, marine contamination, and a constantly expanding world population, seaweed aquaculture has become an important option for the large-scale production of high-quality biomass. Due to existing biological knowledge of , several cultivation strategies have been established for obtaining diverse biomolecules (lipids, fatty acids, pigments, among others) with nutraceutical properties. In this research, indoor and outdoor cultivation methodologies were applied to generate high biomass of with positive quality for productive purposes, where the quality was determined according to the concentrations of lipoperoxides and phenolic compounds and the total antioxidant capacity (TAC).