Juvenile
Ecklonia cavasporophytes were cultured in indoor tanks with flowing deep-sea water(DSW, known as clean, cold and nutrient-rich)pipelined from a depth of 397 m in Suruga Bay, central Pacific Coast of Japan, in 2004 to determine the best growth condition for its seed production. In the experiment I(April 26
thto June 6
th), growth was compared be-tween the deep-sea water and surface seawater(SSW)pipelined from a depth of 24 m at a temperature around 18°C. As a result, blade elongation in DSW was 2.9±0.4 mm day
-1, which was 1.2 times higher than that in SSW(2.4±0.5 mm day
-1). Therefore, the latter two experiments were merely conducted in DSW. In experiment II(May 10
thto June 6
th), in which growth was compared between two levels of irradiance(0.3 and 1.0 Em
-2day
-1)conditioned with and without a cover above the tanks, blade elongation in high irradiance(3.0±0.6 mm day
-1)was 3 times higher than that in low irradiance(1.0±0.1 mm day
-1). In Experiment III(June 29
thto July 26
th), growth was compared among three levels of water temperature(13, 16 and 20°C)conditioned by changing the mixing rate of ambient and heated DSW. Blade elongation at low and mid water temperatures(1.8±0.3 mm day
-1)was 1.2 times higher than that at high water temperature(1.5±0.5 mm day
-1). In stipe elongation, higher growth rates were obtained in high irradiance in Exp. II and low and mid water temperatures in Exp. III, while no difference was found between DSW and SSW in Exp. I. These results indicate that Suruga Bay deep-sea water is useful as a medium for culturing juvenile
E. cavaand that optimal culture conditions were 1 E m
-2day
-1and 13-16°C.
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