buoyant raft at a constant depth of 1 m. When the nets
needed to be dried to reduce diatoms, the raft was untied
at one end, folded and hauled into a skiff, and hung from
a nearby pier to dry in the shade for 2 h. The nets were
dried 3 times over 4 weeks.
2.7. Harvesting and assessment
Factors that were analyzed to determine differences
between sites included: blade morphometrics, C and N
analyses of thalli, and environmental and nutrient
analyses of seawater samples from Cobscook Bay.
2.7.1. Blade morphometrics
Eighteen randomly selected, 10 cm long pieces of net
line were collected from each raft. All thalli were
removed with forceps under a dissecting microscope
and the surface area of each thallus was determined with
Image J® freeware (www.nih.gov). The total surface
area was calculated for blade morphometrics, rather than
mean frond length as reported in previous investigations
(Holmes and Brodie, (2004; West et al., 2005) because
of morphological plasticity.