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- Herausgeber: Little Tiger Press
- Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
- Serie: Mermaids Rock
- Sprache: Englisch
Welcome to Mermaids Rock! The entrance to the mermaid realm in the deep, blue ocean…On a trip to the Red Sea, Kai and his friends explore an impressive shipwreck. Kai is intrigued by the human artefacts they find there but Coralie is worried about being discovered. Her fears become reality when a group of divers arrive. Will the friends be able to get back to Mermaids Rock without getting caught?The sixth book in an exciting series about the wonders of the ocean, perfect for fans of RAINBOW MAGIC, UNICORN ACADEMY and Holly Webb.
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Seitenzahl: 77
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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To everyone who loves magical underwater worlds – LC
Contents
Chapter One
“Come over here, everyone!” said Coralie, clapping her hands and swishing her glittering purple tail. “We need to get on with our play.”
It was the school holidays and Coralie had decided that it would be fun if she and the rest of the Save the Sea Creatures gang – Marina, Naya, Kai and Luna – put on a play for their parents at the end of the week. To her delight, her friends had agreed but, since they had arrived near the anemone field that morning, all they’d done was mess around and ignore her calls to get started.
“We don’t want to start on the play yet, Coralie!” shouted Marina.
She and Kai were having a competition to see who could turn the most somersaults in the clear turquoise water of the reef.
“We’re having fun!” Marina whooped.
Kai turned four somersaults in a row and Marina promptly turned five.
Coralie felt torn. She loved playing games with her friends, and part of her wanted to swim over and join in with the somersault competition, but if they didn’t start to rehearse soon the play wasn’t going to be ready. She glanced at the others. Naya was engrossed in taking notes as she studied an unusual yellow sea dragon peeping out of a patch of long seagrass. Luna, Coralie’s cousin who was a couple of years younger than the rest of them, was making friends with a large blue parrotfish. It was swimming round her, blowing bubbles out of its big mouth. Luna had a magical way with all animals. She only had to start humming and even the largest sea creature would swim over, wanting to be her friend. It was a useful talent to have!
Coralie frowned. It wasn’t just her friends – even the pets weren’t listening to her! Dash, Coralie’s young bottlenose dolphin, was playing tag with Tommy, Kai’s hawksbill turtle. The two of them were swerving through the large branching yellow-and-red sea fans and swooping over the beds of anemones, making shoals of tiny fish scatter out of their way. Octavia, Naya’s octopus, was teasing Melly, Luna’s gentle manatee, by creeping up behind her and tickling her with her long arms before shooting away in a stream of cheeky bubbles. Marina’s little golden seahorse, Sami, bobbed up and down nearby, shaking with laughter as he watched.
Coralie decided enough was enough. “Right, stop it now!” she called, grabbing handfuls of green seaweed and throwing it at her friends. “You need to come here and listen to me or our play is never going to be ready on time!”
The others yelled as the seaweed splatted against them, but they did stop what they were doing and swam over.
“We really should get started,” Coralie pleaded. “I know it’s the holidays, but doing the play will be fun! We’ve got to decide what it’s going to be about and what everyone’s part will be. All we’ve agreed so far is that I’m directing it,” she added with a quick look at Marina.
Marina was usually in charge of anything the gang did. She always came up with great ideas for adventures they could have. But this play is my idea, thought Coralie. It’s my turn to organize things. The thought made her feel both excited and nervous. It would be fun to be the boss, but if it went wrong then she would feel that it was her fault. She really wanted this play to be good!
“Can the play be about an animal?” asked Luna eagerly.
“Maybe,” said Coralie. “But it has to be an interesting one.”
“Ooh, sea slugs are fascinating,” Naya said quickly. “Did you know that a sea slug can be both male and female at the same time, and some are as small as grains of sand while others are as big as—”
“Naya!” Coralie interrupted. “Our play is not going to be about sea slugs.” She caught Kai’s eye and grinned suddenly as she thought of a joke. “Not this SLIME anyway!”
Kai high-fived her while the others groaned and Marina splashed her with her tail.
“How about doing a play about famous scientists and their discoveries then?” Naya suggested hopefully.
“Boring!” exclaimed Kai, pushing a hand through his short black hair. “I think we should do a play about something scary like the time we went to the Midnight Zone and that giant squid almost ate Luna.”
“That was super exciting,” Coralie agreed.
Luna shivered at the memory. “No, let’s not do it about that. I don’t want to think about it!” She hugged Melly who nuzzled against her. Melly was the largest of the pets, but she was also the gentlest. She had a round grey body, a large nose and tiny, kindly dark eyes.
“I also think the play should be about something exciting,” said Marina. Sami nodded as he bobbed round her head. He always agreed with Marina. “How about we do a play where we race to the Atlantic Ocean to rescue sea birds after an oil spill?” she suggested. “Or one about going to the Great Barrier Reef to stop a shoal of crown-of-thorns starfish destroying the coral there or—”
“Yes, yes, we could do something like that,” Coralie interrupted. She actually liked both those ideas, but she didn’t want to do something Marina had thought up. This was her play. “It should definitely be an exciting play with lots of danger in it.” She gasped. “I know! Why don’t we do a play about humans?”
“Humans aren’t dangerous,” said Marina, frowning.
“Yes they are,” said Coralie. “They catch sea creatures, they destroy coral reefs with their fishing boats and spill oil into the sea…”
“And they hurt sea creatures like whales,” said Luna, her eyes wide. “When my mum had just started working at the Marine Sanctuary, she helped a young humpback whale that had been injured by humans. She met him in the Red Sea near a shipwreck. He had a wound from a harpoon gun so Mum brought him back to our sanctuary. I called him Wally and he was so friendly! It took Mum ages to heal him but, when he was better, she made sure he got safely back to his home.”
“See,” Coralie said triumphantly to Marina. “If it wasn’t for Auntie Erin, Wally could have been in real trouble.”
“Not all humans are dangerous though,” Marina argued. “Some of them really care about the oceans.”
“No they don’t,” said Coralie.
“Yes they do!” Marina insisted. “I’ve been to lots of places with my dad where I’ve seen humans helping sea creatures.”
Marina’s dad was a marine scientist and before she had come to live at Mermaids Rock she had travelled all round the world with him while he did his research. “There are human organizations that protect the oceans and look after sea creatures, and I’ve seen them helping to clear up after disasters just like we do.”
Coralie gave a disbelieving sniff. “Well, maybe there are a few humans like that, but most of them are dangerous.”
“No they’re not!” Marina said, swishing her tail at Coralie in frustration. “Naya, you agree with me, don’t you? You know humans aren’t all bad.”
“Um… Well…” Naya looked from one to the other, clearly not wanting to take sides.
“I don’t like humans because they hurt Wally the whale,” declared Luna.
“I think they are pretty dangerous, Marina,” said Kai.
“You’re all being totally squid-iculous! Marina exclaimed.
Their voices rose as they argued.
“Quiet!” Coralie shouted. They all looked at her. “OK, I’ve made my decision. We will do an exciting and scary play about humans.” She saw Marina open her mouth and hurried on before she could be interrupted. “We’ll use today to do some research. We’ll find out more about humans and then tomorrow we can decide exactly what the play will be about.”
“Ooh, research – yay!” Naya said happily. “I’ve got some books about humans at home. We could use those and we could borrow some of Marina’s dad’s books too.”
Coralie hesitated. Doing research by reading books sounded far too much like a school project for her liking. “Or we could also speak to merpeople who know about humans,” she said. “Glenda’s mum used to study them, didn’t she?”
Glenda Seaglass was in their class at school. Her strict father, Razeem, was Chief of the Merguards, the group of merpeople who protected their remote coral reef. “Why don’t we go and talk to her?”
“We can’t. Glenda’s family have gone away on holiday this week,” said Kai. “Chief Razeem put my mum in charge of the merguards until he gets back.”
Marina gasped. “If Chief Razeem is away, maybe your mum would let us use the whirlpool to travel somewhere to do some real research on humans, Kai!”
Kai’s face lit up. “You mean go on another adventure? That would be clam-tastic!”
“But we’re not allowed to go near humans, remember,” Naya said.
