36 Nutrients and harmful algal blooms: general issues and examples from the northern gulf of mexico

Rocky intertidal communities in cold waters on open shores tend to have a stable, predictable makeup worldwide. The structure of the environment, the morphology and life history of species, the economics of species behavior and the dynamics of population changes all contribute to the distribution of species in a given habitat. South East Farallon Island, in the Pacific Ocean off the northern California coast, hosts an intertidal community typical in many ways of other rocky intertidal communities. However, two orders of marine algae one might expect to be there, the Fucales and Laminariales, are unexpectedly uncommon on this island. In this paper some of the possible environmental, morphological and life history factors contributing to and restricting the distribution of marine algae in the intertidal zone on South East Farallon Island are considered.