What is Red Algae?
Red algae is one of the largest phyla of algae, with more than five thousand distinct species. They are almost exclusively multicellular marine algae, and many of the common seaweed varieties people eat are red algae. They can be contrasted primarily with brown and green algae, and should not be mistaken with the phylum Dinoflagellata, which are algae that cause the so-called red tide, but are not actually red algae. People may also talk about red algae when what they are referring to is red slime algae. This is actually a type of cyanobacteria, and not a true algae at all. Often red slime algae is looked at as being a link between bacteria and the true algae, and it is more than three billion years old. Although red slime algae is not particularly attractive physically, it is one of the most important things on the planet. It is responsible for an enormous amount of oxygen creation, and it is thought that if red slime algae didn’t exist, the skies of earth would not be blue. True red
