The Deep, Hull: 'The world's first submarium'

I love aquariums, but then what budding Marine Biologist doesn't? To be completely honest I haven't been to as many aquariums as I would have liked to, some I have visited as a child and only distant memories remain. In the past three years I have only visited three; the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth (since I spent my undergraduate years in that city I had to visit the NMA. Well worth a visit if you're down that end of the country), the Oceanário de Lisboa (or Lisbon's Oceanarium), and more recently The Deep in Hull. The latter educational visit formed part of one of the modules I am taking (Biodiversity and Conservation) at York.

About 50 of us (there are a lot of us taking the module this year, it's popular!) piled on the coach and we all made our way to the wonderful city of Hull. I saw wonderful, I've never actually been into the city. I did apply to Hull University for my undergrad degree (it was my second choice) but I knew all I wanted to do was go to Plymouth, anyway, I digress. Upon arriving at the aquarium we were greeted by Graham, one of the aquarists working there who took us through their conservation objectives and how they put this message across to the public - appealing to both young and old alike. I really did enjoy his talk, I found it engaging and interesting and I'm impressed at how The Deep has come along since it was built about 10 years ago (off the top of my head, it could be wrong).

Debris art, from marine litter.

After a bit of a briefing as to what we needed to do (after all, the primary reason for visiting was not for fun) we all climbed up to the third and top floor and began our little journey into the deep (excuse the minor pun there). I've got to hand it to them, they are by far one of the best aquariums that I have visited for visual material - it was all so very dramatic and well executed; kids are bound to love it (and face it, you draw a kid in and you'll be surprised how much more they take in).

One of the first rooms you enter...

Two skeletons on the walls as you walk down the first ramp to the first sign of life - it is a walk through time, highlighting the main processes that have occurred since Earth began.

I do think that this first walkway was excellent - there were plenty of things to do with various interactive activities available. We had noted as a class that a lot of time was spent at the start of this 'ramp' through time, and that as soon as you reached the bottom you were rushing through it a little because you could see that there was a fish-exhibition in the next room. Still, very educational!

So here we were, we'd all had a go on one of the interactive activities available (fish racing, trout won every time but no surprise there) and were eager to move on. This was lovely - I think 90% of the group sat on the floor and just watched the fish swim by (typical Marine Biologists eh?) and it really was beautiful. Here are just a few photos that were taken (excuse the quality - my point&shoot didn't want to behave and the iPhone took much better photos (surprisingly) - I wish I had the DSLR)

Blue spotted ray, Taeniura lymma

Lyretail Anthias, Pseudanthias squamipinnis

Lyretail Anthias, Pseudanthias squamipinnis (and some brain coral?)

 

 

Yellow tang, Zebrasoma flavescens

We then moved round to the main tank. This is (according to Wiki so don't shoot me if I get it wrong!) a 10m deep pool with approximately 2,500,000 litres of water (pretty impressive - that's the equivalent of about 10 million cups of tea). I love feature tanks, I really do think they steal the show for any aquarium, and this was no different.

The sawfish, a particular favourite of the group and most of The Deep's visitors it seems...

Extremely bad quality but the two divers in the main tank...

 This tank housed a pretty decent number of sharks - my favourite being the zebra shark (and has been since my visit to Lisbon's aquarium at the end of 2011). At about 2pm they do a shark feeding session where two of the divers go in and (surprise surprise) feed the sharks. Naturally, we all went and watched. It was interesting to hear the talker of the 'show' at least - she was extremely knowledgeable and made everything easy to understand which is prime since there were a lot of younger children about. She mentioned about the issue surrounding shark finning which is great (obviously the practice isn't great, but it was nice to hear someone talk about it in an educational yet passionate way).

I'm afraid I can't remember every room we went in specifically, although they were all excellently presented. Unfortunately we did all believe that the cold-water/deep room seemed a little abandoned. There was a lot of information surrounding the issues of anthropogenic activity in our seas, but the room itself seemed a little dark and (warning: pun!) cold. I guess it matched the nature of the ecosystem as such but I feel that maybe the room would be overlooked by the public. 

Overall it was an excellent experience - I'd like to go again (and am doing soon - next week hopefully if time permits) and I think that the aquarium and charity itself has come a long way to help educate the general public about the major conservation issues. It would have been nice to see more things on what we can actually do to help save the seas as such and one suggestion we have thought of as a group was to do with placement of leaflets. The Marine Stewardship Council 'Good Fish Guide', for example, would have been well placed next to a tank with popular 'restaurant' or 'table' fish, and near the main tank with the sharks it would have been a good idea to place the 'Shark Trust' leaflets.


I need to go now (I've procrastinated far too much lately, and this was another one of those moments). My next blog post is going to be relative to Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing since we covered that in our seminar yesterday (that, to my surprise, went really well. Apparently I am a confident and professional speaker... I obviously hide my nerves well).

I'm going to leave you with a few more photos that I took during the way. Again, apologies for the quality but I hope you enjoy them.

Copperband Butterflyfish, Chelmon rostratus

Tiger Shovelnose Catfish, Phseudoplatystoma fasciatum

Moon jellyfish, Aurelia aurita

Anemone - I'm not sure of the species but it was beautiful.

Blue lobster - unsure of the species?

One of the divers (taken from the tunnel walk-through).

Capenwray; our first two open water dives!

I'm currently in the middle of my second 'reading week' at the University of York and I feel like I've done very little work thus far... okay, scratch that I've actually done nothing this week. I have been fairly busy mind you, so I guess it can be excused just this once.

Last Friday night I had another pool session in Yearsley for my Open Water diving qualification, this time it was for 'dry suit orientation' since none of us had actually put on a dry suit, and buoyancy control in one is very different from if you were in just a wetsuit and a BCD. Anyway, once assembling the gear as we did every week (oxygen cylinder to the BCD, regulators attached to the cylinder etc) we struggled to get on our dry suits... well, I did, mainly because it was a little small getting over my bum - still, it was a hilarious struggle and everyone had a laugh at the same time! That's one of the main things I've learnt about diving (asides from "never hold your breath"), that it isn't the most glamorous of activities and yes, you will look a little bit like a stumbling Michelin Man but no body cares. Also, there may come a time where you really are struggling to get into either drysuit or BCD and there will be a number of hands over your body trying to either a) tuck you in or b) get the bloody things to fit right! Anyway, the pool session went well - we learnt to control our buoyancy using the actual drysuits (and cuff dumps to release air) and only use the BCD at the surface.

I drove back to my home town on Saturday night with my man so that it was much easier for me to drive to Capenwray in the morning (we had to meet at 9am and it would have been a 2+ hour drive from York... just over 1 hour from Warrington). I got up bright and early (and nervous) on Sunday, packed everything up, stuck on my million (+1) layers to brave the cold and set off (forgetting my lunch, typical). I arrived at Capenwray Diving Centre after a bit of a struggle finding Jackdaw Quarry, paid my £19 entry fee (+ trainer's fee) and met with the rest of the crew before getting ready for our first two OW dives.  We were given thermal underlayers to put on (unfortunately they had no 'small' so I was shoved into some medium/large thermals - not like I was bothered, it gave me a little more padding) and instructed to get into our drysuits up to the waist. I tried one on which was a size larger than the one I had tried on Friday and it first perfectly, albeit a little long in the arm and leg but at the end of the day as long as the cuffs were well and truly watertight it didn't much matter. We were given the usual safety briefing and site orientation which was interesting... we found out the water was a mere 4°C but visibility was fantastic as we could see from overhead.

Time for dive number one! We head back to the van to kit up, pile on the 18kg of weight (no wonder I was sore the next day) and made our way to the quarry. Before we left I did manage to get a cheeky photo in (without fins, mask, hood or gloves unfortunately) to which I think I look absolutely hilarious but it's all part of the fun...

My BCD, cylinder, weights, fins...

Miss Michelin Man 2012 ;)

Dive one was quite simple. All we needed to do was essentially swim around for the 20 minutes to get used to a) the cold and b) drysuits! It was freezing. I don't think I've ever been so uncomfortable in my life upon first getting in the water - I had a really bad head rush/brain freeze and I was contemplating signalling to our dive master and instructor that I wanted to get out. I stayed in and braved it to see whether it would ease off and it did so... all was well. We got to about 6m deep and swam around, over a sunken boat and towards one of Blackpool Pleasure Beach's carousel horses. That was funny. I was first in line and had to jump on its back (which is quite funny when you're still trying to get used to the buoyancy control. I think I rolled all over the place).

20 minutes were up and we got out of the water, stripped down to the thermal layer and changed into different tops for the next dive as well as donning a fair few jumpers, hats, scarves and gloves to warm up. A few hours later and after a quick briefing of the skills we would be doing for this dive we kitted up and headed back down to the quarry for dive number two.

Getting in a second time was just as cold if not colder but that's what you get for diving in the UK over Winter. We had to do more skills this time; fin pivots, half mask flood and full mask flood (both fine in warm pool water, not so much in cold temps), reg recover, share air with a buddy and share air with a buddy and ascend - I panicked a little when I had to purge the secondary reg (where I was breathing from my buddy's air supply) because my hands were that cold and numb I just couldn't press the purge valve so I could breathe! Instead I had to hammer it with my first, allowing me to purge it, allowing me to breathe and allowing us to ascend  These were all fine and once we were done and the 20 minutes were up we could get out and warm up.

Before heading back to Warrington to devour the most delicious lamb roast dinner (hey! I'd been diving, I was tired and hungry) I took a few photos of the dive site with my iPhone - what a beautiful place:

Mount Teide, Tenerife.

I know I know, not remotely marine (or coastal) but it is a National Park in Tenerife that we happened to visit when we were on our cruise over Christmas. I just thought to share a couple of photos that were taken on our day trip to see the volcano. Unfortunately we weren't on a walking tour (as much as I would have liked to do it) but it could have gone one of two ways - we could have got to a walking point and be told not to progress further (due to snow or bad weather, likely over Christmas) or we would have been fine (which, given the lack of snow - odd - would have happened this time round). C'est la vie! It was still a brilliant day.

Slightly random addition to the photos but... it was nearly Christmas and we got given 'Tenerife Christmas Hats'
You had to join in, right?

Mount Teide from our first stop off point, just above the clouds.

It was cold!

Back on the coach so apologies for the bad quality but... the clouds.

Mt. Teide and the clouds

"Cake" rock. Several different layers.

Mount Teide from our second stop off point.

Volcanic rock formation

It was very beautiful up there.

Volcanic rock formation with Teide in the background.

The weather couldn't have been better either, okay a little warmer would have been nice but we were expecting to need a million and one layers when we took these last few photos... I ended up taking off my fleece and walking around in just the light cardigan I had underneath it! We were very lucky.

And she returns!

I'm back off my holiday, a lovely cruise to the Canaries (sailing from Southampton) on the Independence of the Seas (Royal Caribbean). We sailed to Vigo, Lisbon, Madeira, Gran Canaria, Tenerife and La Coruna [unfortunately we didn't get off here] and saw some lovely things. Once I've got the photos off my harddrive [most likely tomorrow evening] I shall stick some on here, we took some wonderful photos from the aquarium in Lisbon.

For now, I shall leave you with a photo of me and my wonderful mother and grandfather by the Christmas tree on board.