The Secret Mission Of The Octonauts

A hit cartoon about a team of underwater ecowarriors has been teaching pre-schoolers about the wonders of the deep. If you haven’t encountered them before – meet the Octonauts!

- Paul McGuinness

A round 6 o’clock in the evening a shout of “Bath time!” eventually brings my four-year-old son running. While he’s getting washed we play a number of games, most of which involve me getting drenched. The most popular is when we fill the bath with Octonauts toys, and various models of sea creatures, and have an aquatic adventure with them. Dried and dressed, he snuggles up on the sofa with me and his mum to watch an episode of his favourite TV show.

Octonauts, a smash-hit on the BBC’s preschool channel, CBeebies, consumes our household. We’ve got roughly 130 episodes recorded now and there isn’t a duffer among them. It’s not only my boy’s favourite show; his mum and I love it, too. If we’d had Octonauts when I was young I’d be a marine biologist by now, which is what my son wants to be when he grows up.

For the uninitiated, the Octonauts are a crew of seven animals and one ‘vegimal’ (part vegetable, part animal, and the only fictitious species in the show), who dedicate themselves to exploring and protecting the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes, and the creatures living in them. Led by the fearless Captain Barnacles (a stout-hearted polar bear), the Octonauts sail their ‘Octopod’ craft to every aquatic environment on Earth. Each episode focuses on a different sea creature, whose particular adaptations determine the plot. So, for example, when the Octopod’s batteries run flat, the crew enlists the help of some friendly electric torpedo rays, to jolt it back to life.