More than Slime

 “There are more algae in the oceans than stars in all the galaxies” (Kassinger xi) 

    In school, I remember learning that there are trillions of stars, more numerous than all the grains of sand on Earth. In Slime, Ruth Kassinger shows countless ways in which algae are greater (in number and significance) than I could ever imagine. I find it remarkable how something that exists all around us goes unnoticed. We tend to think of algae as something gross and slimy (like the title of this book references) on the surface of a pond, or boring and insignificant. Slime obliterates these ideas. This book covers many different strange and intriguing aspects of algae, including how some evolved into plants, the roles they play in ecosystems, and all the ways we use them without knowing. 

    In the first section, the author personifies algae in a story about how they came to be and how they reached land (transforming into plants). It presents the evolutionary obstacles on their way to domination and how they overcame them (with some help of course). For example, the author states that while a period called the Boring Billion “was an era of perpetual summertime, the living wasn’t easy for microalgae” (Kassinger 20). It was only after some tectonic movement broke up a supercontinent that algae could thrive. Still, they had challenges ahead of them, like adapting to a land environment. This personification of algae makes the book more engaging and makes the scientific concepts easier to understand. 

    Furthermore, Kassinger surprises me with the fascinating connections she points out between algae and human life. I was intrigued by how prevalent algae are in our home products. Algae are “in ice cream to prevent ice crystals from forming, in chocolate milk to keep the cocoa suspended, in salad dressings to keep the components mixed, and in many other foods” (Kassinger xiv). The author also points out the importance of seaweed (macroalgae) as a food in its own right and explains how it may have been crucial to the evolution of bigger brains in humans. Kassinger explains that algae contain “brain-selective nutrients-that are indispensable in building brain cells and neuronal networks” (Kassinger 47). Without a source of algae, we may have never developed the brains that made us so successful on this planet. Algae were incredibly vital to the evolution of the human race, and we continue to rely on algae today. By making these startling connections between algae and humans, Slime tells our story as well as algae's. As humans, there is nothing we love more than hearing about ourselves, and Kassinger utilizes this fact throughout her book. 

    I admire how Slime takes a topic that many initially find undesirable and relates it to our daily lives, our meals, and the fate of this planet. Slime shows its readers that algae are connected to anything they can think of. Through fascinating connections and personification, Kassinger writes a book with the power to change the perspective of readers on the world around them. As the author says, “The story of algae is like a woody vine deeply rooted in the past, reaching out in many directions in the present, and sending out new tendrils to find new purchase in the future” (Kassinger xv). Less than a quarter-way through, the book has led me to an important conclusion: algae are so much more than slime. 

Work Cited

Kassinger, Ruth. Slime: How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us. New York, New York, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019.