On Day 14 in the final blog, we finish the series with plankton, or “Ocean Drifters” as Richard Kirby’s book of the same name describes them.

On Day 13 we will discover that we are not the only mammals to frequent marinas.

On Day 12 we look at birds – you are likely to see more birds while out sailing, than in the marina, but you will see some.

On Day 11 we are bringing you fishes, the more familiar members of the chordate phylum – vertebrates.

On Day 10 we are covering sea squirts; salps we might find in the plankton. Sea squirts are quite high up the taxonomic tree.

On Day 9 its starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers, because they all have spiny skins are known as Echinoderms.

On Day 8 we study Bryozoans, colonial animals often mistaken for other things. They take many different forms.

On Day 7 we look at molluscs – slugs and snails and things like that. Surprisingly, that includes squid, cuttlefish and octopus.

On Day 6 its the turn of the Crustaceans – related to insects, are mostly marine, and there are lots of different species.

On Day 5 we look at sea spiders. They are difficult to spot as they fold their legs into a ball, only a few mm across.

On Day 4 we look at the worms we find on and around our ships and boats, in the marina and on the sea bed.

On Day 3 we look at Cnidarians, pronounced, “ny-darians.” They have stinging cells used to capture prey and for protection.

On Day 2 we turn to the kingdom of animals, the least complex of which, with no nerve nor muscle cells nor sensory organs are the sponges.

On Day 1 we look at seaweeds – macroscopic algae which are big enough to be seen with the naked eye, and they come in three colour groups; green, brown and red.