Seaweeds are an extremely common and widespread assemblage of algal plants in the central and western tropical Pacific Ocean, yet our knowledge of this important marine resource is very limited. Despite their ecological importance, the tropical seaweeds have been largely ignored in scientific and educational studies because of difficulties identifying them to the level of species. Drs. William Magruder and Isabella Abbott will write and illustrate a text for a scholarly book that will provide a taxonomic analysis and permit easy identification of the seaweeds of the Hawaiian Islands. The text will be written using accurate, well-defined terms, and importantly, each of the estimated 480 species will be illustrated with half-tone photographs or line drawings of an entire plant and its distinguishing characteristics. As the first comprehensive systematic study of the brown, green, and red seaweeds of a tropical Pacific Ocean Island group, this work will be an important contribution to scientific knowledge and should prove widely useful. Because systematics provides the foundation and framework of almost all biological research, the work will be a major step in increasing our knowledge of marine algae and should serve to stimulate and expedite their use in a variety of ecological and evolutionary studies. Although dealing specifically with the seaweeds of the Hawaiian Islands, this work will have broader application because many of the species found in Hawaii are also considered to be present in the tens of thousands of other islands in the central and western tropical Pacific Ocean.
