SEA LIFE London Aquarium

 

VO: Usually when you get this close to a shark you’d have a good reason to be scared but thankfully you’re more than safe at the £25 million London Aquarium

 

Liz Downey, London Aquarium

London Aquarium is basically housed within county hall which is an enormous stone building right next to Westminster Bridge and the London eye.

 

Liz Downey, London Aquarium

We’ve various different type of shark here. We’ve got sand tiger sharks, we’ve got brown sharks and they we also have zebra sharks and nurse sharks which are two bottom dwelling species.

 

VO: There are more than 350 million different species to see from turtles to piranha and each of them are cared for by the aquariums team of experts.

 

Liz Downey, London Aquarium

Our divers go into the tanks for lots of different reasons. One of the main reasons is to actually feed the displays. In our Atlantic tank for example we have a large number of mackerel at the top and if you threw in food from the top all the mackerel would get the food but we also have lots of rays down the bottom which need to get food so the divers go in and basically hand feed them.

 

VO: Thanks to the aquariums touch pool it’s not just the divers that are allowed to get close to the fish

 

Liz Downey, London Aquarium

Our touch pool has lots of different rays from around the UK. They rely on camouflage and they very safe to touch so people can go up and feel them and they’re really really soft

 

VO: If you’re looking for something more colourful then the aquarium has one of Europes largest coral displays

 

Liz Downey, London Aquarium

We have a coral reef section here and all of our corals have been designed not to damage the environments from which they came so we actually breed a lot of corals here and if you have a look in our tanks then there’s loads of corals that are actually growing fantastically well here and look stunning in the tanks

 

VO: With such a wide variety of aquatic life it’s easy to see why the aquarium is one of London’s most popular attractions

 

Liz Downey, London Aquarium

I think people should cone to the aquarium because we’re on of the only aquariums in London and we’re in such a central location and it’s wonderful to come in and have something very relaxing and stare at some wonderful animals from around the world and we’re almost like a haven in the middle of London to come to to spend some time and relax