Have you ever needed help from your friends when confronted with a brown algae bully?  The Monterey Bay Aquarium has, they needed divers to help rescue algae in one of their tanks.  Moss Landing Marine Labs MS 105 Marine Science Diving class had the opportunity to dive in the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s kelp forest habitat tank (their kelp tank site is here).  This tank receives water from just offshore of the aquarium and gets all kinds of baby critters from the water that normally settle and grow just outside the aquarium.  Some of these baby drifters are the spores of an alga (singular of algae) named Dictyopteris undulata.  This alga has been bullying the other algae in the tank and outcompeting them for space.  The dive class was tasked with helping remove the algae and you can see from the photo above we were not happy with this little brown bully!