Let's go to the beach

Liliah: I am Liliah.

Jayden: And I'm Jayden.

Liliah: We are at Ogmore Beach in South Wales.

Liliah and Jayden: Hi!

Jayden: We are super excited to meet Lauren, who is a marine biologist. That means she's a scientist who looks at things which live in the sea.

Liliah: We are pleased Lauren is here because we want to find out why the ocean is such an important place for us to look after.

Lauren: The UK is an island, which means we have lots of ocean nearby. And we must protect it because we have some amazing marine wildlife living here. Can you think of any?

Jayden: Octopus, whale, shark.

Liliah: Dolphin, squid.

Jayden: Crab.

Lauren: That's right and if we don't protect them, then we might not be able to see these things in years to come. Come on, let's go.

Jayden: We really want to help look after the sea like Lauren does, so we are off to learn more.

Lauren: Now something that we have in this area is seaweed, and seaweed is very important. You only find it in oceans. Seaweed is a habitat, which means that it's a place where other creatures can live and eat. Also, seaweed is like plants, it takes in carbon dioxide and gives out oxygen. This helps to make the seawater cleaner.

Liliah: We are really excited to hear that seaweed is important, because we have definitely seen seaweed here before.

Lauren: Okay, kids, I have a mission for you.

Jayden: Your mission is to find as many species of seaweed as you can and discover some fun facts about them.

Liliah: Yay, let's go!

Lauren: So kids, when we do our fun seaweed hunting missions, we must stay with our grown-ups so we can be safe near the sea. And we also need to be really careful when we're walking across the rocks. The seaweed can be quite slippery can't it?

Liliah and Jayden: We found some!

Lauren: So this one is called Egg Wrack, you can tell the age of it by looking at how many air bladders it has. One air bladder is one year of growth, so, if you start counting the air bladders, you can tell how old it is. And this is a really good seaweed for other animals to hide in.

Jayden: Lauren, I found some.

Lauren: Wow, guys, this is amazing. So you have just found a type of seaweed here, a green seaweed, because it looks really bright green, doesn't it? And this is called Gut Weed. What you can see is this one is really thin, can you see that?

Jayden: Yeah.

Lauren: It looks a bit like hair, doesn't it?

Liliah: Yeah, maybe some fish could eat it.

Lauren: Yeah, definitely. What have you found? Can you see on the edges here, it looks a bit like a knife, doesn't it?

Liliah and Jayden: Yeah.

Lauren: It's really jagged. And so this one is called Serrated Wrack.

Kids, you did an amazing job! I hope next time that you come to the beach, you'll remember that seaweed is ever so special, and that each different type that you find will be helping lots of different species. Shall we go and find some more?

Liliah: Yeah.

Lauren: Yay, come on, let's go!

Jayden: We have learned so much today and when we know special things about nature, it helps us to look after plants and animals around us.

Liliah: And also that seaweed is super duper awesome!