Mark Denny has spent most of his research career puzzling over life on the seashore. And when he describes the pounding that these organisms get almost every moment of their lives, you begin to understand why. If you were constantly battered by hurricane force winds, you'd want armour too, just like the limpets that cling to rocky shorelines. But some organisms have developed a more flexible approach for surviving one of the planet's harshest environments. In their review: The mechanics of wave-swept algae(p. 1355), Denny and his colleague Brian Gaylord, describe the successful pact that the algae have made with their turbulent environment to ensure their survival.
All sea algae grow along the same body plan. Each has a pad-like-anchor that tethers them to the rock with thousands of tiny finger like projections that grip on to tiny fissures in the rock's surface. A slender flexible stem,called a...
