amoebae and algae are two natural objects that can be associated to a projective algebraic variety $v$. the amoeba is the logarithmic projection of $v$ to ${\bf r}^n$ while the alga is the complementary projection to the argument torus $(s^1)^n$. it turns out that that the topology of a plane real algebraic curve is intrinsically related to the geometry of its amoeba and alga. the talk will survey known instances of this relation.