This algae is harvested along the western coast of the United States and in parts of Asia. To extract the agar the Algae is boiled, cooled, purified and then dried. The agar is then make into blocks, flakes, or granules.
As the English, French, and Spanish explorers came to North America, they brought tremendous changes to American Indian tribes. Europeans carried a hidden enemy to the Indians: new diseases. Native peoples of America had no immunity to the diseases that European explorers and colonists brought with them. Diseases such as smallpox, influenza, measles, and even chicken pox proved deadly to American Indians. Europeans were used to these diseases, but Indian people had no resistance to them. Sometimes the illnesses spread through direct contact with colonists.
The second reason Native Americans were historically so vulnerable to European diseases is that the Europeans had gone through plague after plague, which wiped out large portions of the European population again and again. This was natural selection at work.