Saturday, September 08, 2007

Organism appears on Top Prom!

A sculpture based on one of the world’s most vital sea organisms has arrived at Saltburn.
Organism, a sculpture by Teesside artist Andrew McKeown, has been installed on Saltburn’s Top Prom. It was inspired by microscopic sea organisms called diatoms - a single-cell algae which inhabits virtually all of the world’s aquatic environments. They are considered the most important of all plankton, as they form the basis of nearly all food chains in the oceans. As such, they are considered one of the most important organisms on the planet. Diatoms remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce approximately up to 50% of the world’s oxygen.
Individually, they are invisible to the naked eye but in large concentrations they are seen as brown or golden brown patches in the ocean. The sculpture is part of the Saltburn Top Prom Improvement Project and complements a fossil garden - with work also by Andrew McKeown - which was opened last year by Dr John Frood, chairman of Saltburn Forward.

No comments: