Under a microscope, a kelp gametophyte looks like a tangle of fine brown thread. It is hard to believe that, given time and the North Sea, those threads become kelp you can measure by the metre. Watching pupils make that connection was the highlight of our week.
This October we took a stand at Scarborough STEM Week, held at The Spa from 6 to 8 October. Now in its 17th year, the event brings more than 3,500 young people aged seven to nineteen, from schools across the coast and beyond, together with around 40 employers and training organisations. We were very glad to be one of them.
From the flask to the microscope
Imogen, one of our science technicians, brought a flask straight from the lab. To the naked eye it holds cloudy, amber-brown water with a few darker flecks settling at the bottom. Those flecks are gametophytes, an early, microscopic stage in the life of kelp, and the place where all our growing begins.
Under the microscope the same water turns into a dense mesh of fine threads. In the lab, our science team nurtures these before they are used to seed the ropes on the Kelpedo™ Marine Recovery System, the patented system we use to grow seaweed offshore. Out at sea, those ropes carry young kelp through the winter and into a summer harvest. Pupils saw both ends of that story within a couple of feet of each other: the flask in Imogen's hand, and the threads under the eyepiece.
Building a food web
Our second activity was a food web board, with rows running from the energy that comes in (sunlight and carbon dioxide) through producers to the animals at the top. Pupils worked out where each card belonged: oarweed and sea lettuce, blue mussels, dog whelks, edible crabs, common starfish, sand eels, black-backed gulls, bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoise.
Several of those animals are familiar to us. Blue mussels settle on our Kelpedo units, and harbour porpoise and bottlenose dolphins visit the water around them. In our Scarborough Marine Recovery Zone, more than 100 species have now been recorded, and the food web on the table was a good way to show how each of them depends on the one below.
Sea lettuce from our own coast
We also brought a bowl of sea lettuce, a bright green seaweed that grows along the Scarborough shoreline. Held up to the light it glows a vivid green, and it made the point that seaweed lives close to home. Plenty of pupils will have walked past it on the beach without a second look.
The people behind the stand
Across the three days, our stand was run by Jo, Ana, Jamie, Becca and Imogen. STEM Week is a careers event at heart, and between them they cover a good share of what it takes to grow seaweed in the North Sea. That work needs scientists in the lab, engineers who design equipment to come through storms with waves over 10 metres, crew who handle a workboat offshore, and people who keep all of it safe, organised and connected to the shops where our products end up. Even counting seabirds at sea comes down to careful maths.
Thank you to the Scarborough STEM Week team for another brilliant event, and to every pupil and teacher who stopped by. If one of you is looking down a microscope in our lab a few years from now, we will be delighted.
