Luckily I brought some home just in case. Its been in the boat for a week but still seems to be ok. Hearty stuff evidently. The white side is definitely the root system. As you can see from the attached pic, it is almost like a mat with all of the roots attached like a web. It is really hard to seperate the strands without them breaking - very thin and fragile.
The other plant was only found in a few places and was individual clusters in less and 3' of water. It was completely submerged. The pic above was of the biggest sample, most where much smaller. Ive attached a few pics of the smaller version.
