The coastal town of Uto nears the capital city of Kumamoto on Japan’s island of Kyushu. Along this coast is the Sumiyoshi Nature Park, where, on the top of the Sumiyoshi Hill, you will find a bronze inset portrait of a woman named Kathleen Drew Baker alongside a bronze plaque and two sacred trees overlooking the Ariake Sea. The story of how this came to be is quite unusual: a British female scientist who never once visited Japan during her life had a shrine built to commemorate her work as a phycologist. Kathleen Drew Baker, who is referred to as “the mother of the sea,” has a story of persistence and passion that paved the way for future women in science and expanded the ways that seaweed can be used in our society to this day.
Early Life and Education
Kathleen Mary Drew Baker was born on November 6, 1901, in Leigh, Lancashire, a county in North West England. Baker and her three siblings began their education at Bishop Wordworth School in Salisbury, where she stood out as a recipient of prizes and a student at the top of her class. Her interest in botany may have begun here, as the school had specialized courses in the topic, but her choice to continue in this field for the rest of her life is unclear. Drew Baker continued to excel academically, leading to her being awarded a County Major Scholarship that granted her a free education at the University of Manchester beginning in 1919. During her undergraduate education in botanical studies, Drew Baker received the Lily Spence Prize in Botany as a first-year student and graduated in 1922 with first-class honors, followed by a Master’s in Science degree from the Department of Cryptogamic Botany two years later.
Though Drew Baker worked with the green algae within the genus Chara during her undergraduate years, her real research began in 1925 when she was awarded a Commonwealth Fellowship, making her one of the first women to receive this. This led her to spend two years in the United States—the only time in her life when she was outside of the United Kingdom—studying at the University of California Berkeley and doing work with famous American phycologists at two of the most prestigious laboratories in the country: the Marine Biological Laboratories in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the Friday Harbor Laboratories in Washington. Baker’s taxonomic study of 34 species within the Acrochaetium-Rhodochorton complex was her first published piece of scientific literature in the 1928 University of California Publication in Botany. Her first two pressed seaweeds were collected from the California coast in 1925, which would eventually contribute to her lifelong herbarium that included almost 3,000 specimens, which are currently in the Natural History Museum in London.
Two of Drew Baker’s herbarium presses of the species Porphyra umbilicalis collected from the Irish Sea in 1950, which was the 2,109th specimen in her herbarium,and Porphyra purpurea collected from the Irish Sea in 1949, this being number 1862 in her collection.
Continued Education and Adversities
Drew Baker had been a lecturer in the University of Manchester’s cryptogamic botany department since 1922 before she went on her trip to the US for her fellowship. Before her departure, she met Henry Wright Baker, who she became engaged to upon returning back to the UK after two years. The two got married in 1928, and this caused great disruption in Drew Baker’s life. Her family was disapproving of the marriage due to their difference in religion, as he was a Quaker and they were high Anglicans. In addition, the marriage cost Drew Baker her job, as many academic institutions at this time did not offer jobs to married women. Although Drew Baker was quite established in her work already, she was left unemployed despite her husband working at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in a completely different department and campus. However, she did not let this drawback ruin her career; during the time Drew Baker was without a job, she continued to publish at least one scientific paper annually. In the 1930s, she was given an unpaid position as a University Research Fellow that gave her the resources to continue her internationally recognized work, resulting in her attracting students who wanted her as a mentor in algal studies and being awarded the degree of DSc from the University of Manchester along with her husband in 1939. The same year, their son John was born, and their daughter Frances was born the following year.
The Discovery
Through the duration of the Second World War, Drew Baker focused her studies on the complex life histories within the red algae, all while taking care of her family and conducting experiments in their home using aquarium tanks. She had done similar work previously, such as in 1935 when she published an article in the Annals of Botany providing evidence that Chantransia boweri was actually within the same species as the freshwater alga Audouinella violacea through outlining the entire reproductive process. This brought her to her most recognized discovery within the genus Porphyra, a finding that was nine years in the making.
Porphyra umbilicalis is a species commonly recognized as ‘nori’ or ‘laver’ and is classified within the phylum Rhodophyta. The species has leafy red blades, with a thallus, or body, made of one or two cells, and is multicellular. It can be found in the intertidal zone on coastlines, one of the harshest marine environments where organisms are susceptible to greater wave action, desiccation, high UV radiation, and more. With a resilience in its environment, this red alga also has great commercial value, one reason being that Porphyra’s dry weight is 47% protein, making it useful in food and medical industries. As of 2024, Porphyra accounts for 23% of the seaweed being cultivated for direct consumption globally per year, as it is the main item used for wrapping sushi.
Like many other species within the red algae, Porphyra umbilicalis has an especially complex life cycle that can be described as a heteromorphic alternation of generations. Reproduction can occur sexually or asexually, and in the form of the gametophytic phase that is seen in the visible leafy fronds or a thin, microscopic sporophyte stage in the form of a calcium-boring conchocelis phase that can be seen as a pink filament that covers dead bivalve shells, some examples being clams and oysters, since these are composed of calcium carbonate. Prior to Drew Baker’s discovery, it was thought that the conchocelis phase belonged to a separate alga species called Conchocelis rosea. Her studies stemmed from her questioning why nori along England’s coastlines would disappear in the summer and return in the autumn. As it turned out, this seaweedwas present, but did not exist as the recognizable flowy intertidal algae; instead, the growing Porphyra were germinating on shells before once again developing into the sought-after marine snack to harvest.
The Impact from 6,000 miles away
Drew Baker’s first publication on her findings was in the 1949 edition of Nature, and was said by Michanek (1996) to be “100 lines which should change the world”. This first article was brief and only acknowledged her preliminary observations that tied the two stages together; in 1954, her findings were supported by further testing in other genera of Porphyra, which was once again published in Nature. Sadly, just three years later, on September 14, 1957, Drew Baker died of cancer at age 56. At the time of her death, she had become the first president of the British Phycological Society—a group she co-founded—and had around 50 published academic papers to her name.
Upon her original publication in 1949, Drew Baker had been in contact with Japanese scientists and sent her paper for them to further experiment with. Throughout the 1940s and in the early 1950s, the nori harvests were severely impacted for several reasons. The Japanese coasts had been impacted by underwater mines from the war, harsh chemical inputs, industrial pollution, tornadoes, and typhoons. Because no one knew the complete life cycle of Porphyra, the chances of a harvest that would support the livelihood of nori farmers were very unreliable, causing a wavering in economic stability within post-war Japan. However, Drew Baker’s discovery was eventually accepted among Japanese scientists, despite receiving some initial dismissal, and the seeding process yielded successful results for the first time in 1953, as the changes in tidal currents had been preventing the spores from settling onto shells.
Drew Baker’s work on Porphyra throughout her life is still celebrated in Japan to this day, as the methods for harvesting nori have changed very little since the original findings were confirmed. Between the 1940s and the 1990s, nori production from Japan increased by 40 times, with a report from 1986 estimating that the industry is worth between U.S. $200-500 million annually in Japan alone. Drew Baker has since been praised around the country, and to honor her work, local fishermen raised funds for a memorial, which was created and constructed by a committee. At the site, the monument is made of both bronze and polished grey granite, containing a separate inscription plaque made of stainless steel that recognizes her contributions to the nori industry in both English and Japanese. The fishermen also buried her hood and gown from the University of Manchester along with some of the scientific papers she had published over the years beneath her portrait.
On April 14, 1963, a ceremony was held to unveil the monument placed on the top of Sumiyoshi Hill amongst other shrines overlooking the nori farms of the Ariake Sea. This date was chosen because it was a day “…considered propitious by the priest from the local Shinto shrine.” Although Drew Baker was never able to see the monument herself, her children visited on one of the annual ‘Drew Festivals’ that have been occurring ever since and were greeted by locals with TV cameras and photographers as though they were celebrities upon their arrival. At the festival, offerings are left on the monument, Shinto prayers are said, and specific songs have been made for the ceremony. The works of Kathleen Drew Baker have changed the nori industry substantially, so next time you are eating sushi or a seaweed snack, you can thank ‘the mother of the sea.’
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