Nine-year-old names new sponge
Anew species of sea sponge found in Norfolk, England, has been named by a nine-year-old girl after a competition for local schools.
The “unique” purple sponge was found by divers off the north Norfolk coast back in 2011, but it had been without a name for almost a decade. In January this year, the Marine Conservation Society – a charity that works to protect the UK’s seas and coast – asked local schoolchildren to come up with suggestions.
Now the sponge has a name to be proud of: parpal dumplin, as proposed by nine-year-old Sylvie from Langham
Village School. Sylvie said she came up with the name because “the sponge is purple and it looks like a dumpling”. Parpal dumplin is “purple umpling” spoken in a Norfolk accent.
The judges all agreed that Sylvie’s suggestion should be the sponge’s name because “the spelling gives the sponge a strong connection to Norfolk”.
Sponges were once thought to be plants but they are actually simple marine animals. They feed on tiny particles that float in sea water and help to keep the water clean in the process. Sponges have a very static lifestyle, with no means of moving themselves around. They are found on the sea bed or attached to coral, rocks or shells. They come in all sorts of different colours, shapes and sizes.
Parpal dumplin was first spotted in a conservation zone called the Cromer Shoal Chalk Beds as part of a project called Seasearch, which aims to map the UK’s coastal areas. When diver Dawn Watson alerted sponge expert Claire Goodwin to her find, Goodwin confirmed that it was a species unknown to science. Watson’s discovery is an encrusting sponge, which means that it takes the shape of whatever it covers. Parpal dumplin will now become its common name, and will be used until researchers have learned enough about it to suggest an official scientific one.