Bridgette Clarkston, a University of New Brunswick researcher, has named a new species of seaweed after film director Tim Burton. (CBC)

A University of New Brunswick researcher has named a new strange-looking seaweed after quirky film director and writer Tim Burton.

Bridgette Clarkston, a UNB doctoral student, works at one of the world's top seaweed science laboratories and travels across North America collecting and identifying "new" species of the underwater weed.

Clarkston was running DNA samples of collections of seaweed into the lab's database when she found a previously unidentified species. When picking a name, the researcher decided to honour one of the people who inspire her.

The odd-looking plant species has been registered as Euthora timburtoni.

Tim Burton, known for his quirky films, was the inspiration in the naming of a newly identified species of seaweed. (Francois Mori/Associated Press)

"I decided to name this new species in honour of film director Tim Burton because I grew up watching and loving his films, and I think they had an influence on my imagination," Clarkston said.

"And so when I'm scuba diving in British Columbia and I see this new species and I was collecting it, to me it looked like some kind of strange underwater flower and it always makes me think of Nightmare Before Christmas when I see it, so I thought, why not?"

Burton is a wildly imaginative director whose films often include dark flights of fancy. He is best known for directing films such as Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands.He also produced and wrote the story behind The Nightmare Before Christmas, which was directed by Henry Selick.

The UNB researcher has written to tell Burton that he can now add the fact a new underwater flora has been named after him to his resumé, which already includes a Golden Globe award. And the next time Clarkston is in British Columbia, she'll grab a piece of Burton's namesake seaweed to give to him.

"The seaweeds themselves kind of look like petals from a flower, so it's kind of a twisted vision. But to me, underwater it looks like a bunch of undersea flowers that we go along and pick," she said.

Many discoveries

Gary Saunders operates the laboratory at the University of New Brunswick where Clarkston identified the Tim Burton seaweed.

The researchers bring back specimens to the lab for identification. There they grind, test, extract DNA and then run the sequences into the database to see if they match already identified species.

This method has allowed Saunders' laboratory to find many new species of marine flora.

Discovering new species is more common in the world of seaweed than in the well-documented animal kingdom.

"Since our lab began using the DNA barcode for species identification, we have uncovered dozens of new species and new records of species for the Canadian marine flora and many are from Atlantic Canada," Saunders said.

"These discoveries are even more incredible because the diversity of the marine flora in Canadian waters was considered to be very well known prior to our survey."