Sir David Attenborough is supporting a campaign to save a huge seaweed forest off the Sussex coast, in the south-east of England. Kelp, a type of brown seaweed, anchors itself on the seabed and grows up towards the surface, forming leafy columns that float upright in the water. These “magical underwater forests”, as Attenborough calls them, are important for two reasons.
Firstly, they provide a home to all sorts of marine life, including fish, cuttlefish, rare seahorses and plants. Secondly, kelp can help fight climate change – long-term shifts in the world’s weather patterns, including rising temperatures, linked to human activities, such as burning coal and oil and cutting down forests. With the help of sunlight, kelp takes carbon dioxide (a gas that contributes to climate change) out of the…
