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Scallops are a type of soft bodied animal that are sometimes called shellfish. They have a hard shell which they can open and close to protect their soft bodies from predators like star fish. Their 100 eyes let them see when a predator is coming and they can open and close their shell quickly to swim away when they need to.

Size: the Queen Scallop is 6 cm across (about the size of your palm)

Anglerfish live at the very bottom of the ocean, and the seas closest to the UK are too shallow for them. The angler fish is known as the fish that fishes. They live in the permanent dark and use a glowing light on the end of a rod that hangs from their head to attract prey. When their prey comes close, they quickly eat them!

Size: 30 cm long (the length of a ruler)

Bottlenose dolphins are mammals, but instead of fur and legs, they have smooth skin, fins and a tail to help them glide through the water. Their stream-lined body helps them catch fish and avoid predators like killer whales. Dolphins are famous for making sounds to find things in the water, which is called echo-location.

Size: 2 m to 4 m long (the height of one to two tall men)

Copepods are tiny crustaceans and are a type of animal plankton. They have hard shells and antennae to sense predators. Some copepods can move very quickly through the water at speeds a hundred times faster than Usain Bolt, relative to their size.

Size: 1 mm - 2 mm (similar to a comma)

Basking sharks are large fish that use filter feeding to eat the tiny plants and animals in the sea called plankton. To do this, they keeps their mouths wide open as they swim and filter the plankton out of the water using their gill rakers. During the winter, Basking sharks move to deeper waters to find plankton.

Size: 10 m long (the length of two cars)

Cuttlefish are related to squid and octopus. They have large heads and tentacles with suckers underneath which they use to catch their prey and they use venom to kill them. To hide from predators, they can change their colour to camouflage themselves and squirt dark ink into the water.

Size: 15 cm - 25 cm long (the size of an adult hand span)

Sea urchins are small round animals that live all the way along the sea floor. They have a hard outer shell and spines to protect them from predators. The spines mean they are sometimes called sea hedgehogs. They use gills to breathe and have lots of small tube feet to move themselves along the bottom of the sea.

Size: 3 cm - 10 cm across (from a golf ball to an adult fist)

Herring are fish, so they have gills to breathe and fins to swim. Millions of herring swim together in large shoals to protect themselves from predators. They also have excellent hearing so they can tell when a predator is coming.

Size: 30 cm long (the length of a ruler)

Eelgrass is a type of sea grass. Its leaves can grow over a metre long so that it can perform photosynthesis and it has long roots to anchor it in place.

Size: 1 m long (about the height of a 3-4 year old)

Barnacles are small animals that spend their lives standing on their heads! They have special glands on their heads which let them cling to rocks and have a hard armoured shell to protect them from predators. Their arms stick out of the top (or bottom, if they are standing on their heads) of the shell, and they use these to grab plankton (tiny plants and animals in the water) for food.

Size: Up to 10 mm (smaller than a 1p or 1c coin)

Egg wrack is a type of large algae that lives on rocky shores. It has long coloured fronds to catch light so they can perform photosynthesis, and air sacs to help them float to reach the light closer to the surface when the tide is in.

Size: Up to 2 m long (as as a tall man)

Hermit crabs are crustaceans that live on the shore. Like other crabs they have ten legs; eight normal legs and two front claws. Unlike other crabs their armour is not very strong so they use empty shells for protection against predators. Hermit crabs can also breathe moist air, which means they can survive out of the water when other crabs would die.

Size: Up to 4 cm (roughly the size of a baseball)

Cockles are really common on UK beaches and you can often buy them to eat in fish and chip shops. They are very small shellfish with soft bodies but they have hard shells which they can open and close to protect them from predators. When the tide is in, cockles float in the water and eat plankton (tiny plants and animals). When the tide is out, cockles use their foot (yes, they have a foot!) to burrow down into the sand to stay wet and cool.

Size: 3 - 5 centimetres (from a golf ball to a tennis ball)

Ever seen a thin coil of sand and the beach and wondered what it is? Well it’s a ‘worm cast’. Worm casts are made by a type of worm called lugworms. When the tide is in, lugworms live in the water and they use a long special tongue to catch bits of dead plants and animals. When the tide is out, they burrow into the sand to stay wet and cool; but this means they have to cope without oxygen for a really long time.

Size: up to 25 centimetres long (from pencil length to ruler length)