The report provides a historical sketch of littoral macrophyte investigations in the seas of the Far East of Russia. The aim of the work was to analyze he results of algological studies on the littoral of southern Kuril Islands. Greater impetus for the study of Russian scientists algal communities of the Kuril Islands were the work of Japanese research-ers: M. Nagai, S. Ueda, T. Kinoshita et al. A new stage in the study of littoral communities of the Far East was marked by the Kurile-Sakhalin Marine Complex Expedition in 1947-1949 y. It was found that the coast of the southern Kuril Islands grows 194 species of macrophytes, of which 26 species were mentioned for the first time. In the future, the focus of the researchers devoted study of the taxo-nomic composition of marine plants littoral Kuril Islands and the assessment of their fishing stocks. At the end of the 1990-y data were available about the flora 19 Kuril Islands, and in 2010 had created a list of species of algae intertidal and upper subtidal zone of the southern Kuril Islands, which included 293 species: 174 - Rhodophyta, 78 - Ochrophyta, Phaeophyceae and 41 - Chlorophyta. The final stage in the modern history algological was the expedition of the Institute of Marine Biolo-gy. AV Zhirmunsky FEB RAS in the South Kuril Islands in 2013. The author, together with the litto-ral group completed 9 standard hydrobiological sections: in Pervukhina bay - 1 on Kunashir island, in Krabovaya bay - 6 on Shikotan island, in Otradnaya bay and Gorobetc bay - 1 section. It was also carried out a quality collection of macrophytes in the littoral of Yuri and Zelenyi islands of the Lesser Kuril Ridge. As a result of the systematic treatment of the material for the first time estab-lished the taxonomic composition of the intertidal flora islands of the LKR, which includes at least 95 species of macroalgae, of which 44 - red, 30 - brown and 19 - green.
macrophytes, harvesting seaweed, the southern Kuril Islands, Lesser Kuril Ridge
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