Submission Dive Blog

Sub-Mission Dive Club had an absolutely brilliant afternoon and evening for Simon’s Gone to Birmingham, with 26 club members turning up for a riveting visit! We were lucky enough to have a guided tour of the Sea Life Centre in Birmingham from Tom, the head Aquarist and Displays manager. He took us from one amazing tank to another giving us plenty of bonus information, essentially sharing with us the secret lives of fish.

If you’ve never been to the Birmingham Sea Life Centre it is certainly worth a visit but give yourself plenty of time to wander around as the building is four floors of beautiful, colourful, thriving tanks that you can’t pull yourself away from. Conservation is definitely at the heart of the Sea Life Centre and it is evident from the petitions dotted about, the Shout out for Sharks wall as well as endless information boards designed to captivate people and inform them of the issues. They home an array of Seahorses and have a captive breeding program in an attempt to increase the population of some of the rarest species, like the Spiny Seahorse. There is also a significant Turtle breeding program, which is great to see and in the Ocean Tank there is a humungous turtle that was brought in by a lady who no longer wanted to keep it inside her handbag!

One of the highlights for me was the Saltwater tank, home to a vast number of UK species such as Cod, Bass, Bream, Lobsters, Plaice, Rays, Spidercrab and one of my new favourites Bernard the Gurnard!

We finished off a great afternoon with a fantastic meal. It was cool to be able to chill out and mull over the visit and enjoy some great food with awesome company. Thank you Simon for organising such a great trip out for us.

Do you want to get away from the Christmas Shopping crowds? Would you rather be looking at sharks and rays than thinking of what to get your family for Christmas? Fancy a date with a tank full of fish rather than the office Christmas party?

Join us for some fishy fun at the Birmingham Sea Life Centre on Saturday December 3^rd and bring your family with you. Simon has organised for us to be guided around the aquarium by the staff so that we get very personal attention and lots of information about each of the displays. There are loads of brilliant features at Birmingham such as Reef sharks, Moray Eels, Green Turtles, Rays, Sea Horses, Clownfish, Octopus, Nurse Sharks, Bamboo Sharks as well as Otters and many more exciting sea creatures.

The guided tour is due to last for an hour and a half and then we’ll get an hour to wander around on our own and play in the touch pools! Yes, that’s right; there are more touch pools with star fish, crabs, sea squirts and limpets.

After the enchanting tour around the Sea Life Centre, Simon has arranged a table for us at a local restaurant; ‘Around the World in 80 Dishes’. We will celebrate and enjoy ourselves whilst choosing food from Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, Italy, Mexico and others so there will certainly be something for everyone.  

So get in touch if you’re interested in having a great day out with Sub-Mission! The Sea Life Centre is £6.00 per person and £19.95 for the meal. Contact Katy to put your name down, but don’t delay as spaces are limited and payment will be required.

During the visit to the Sea Life Centre on Thursday night, I totally and utterly turned into a child. At one point I became so excited by the experience that I felt like I was going to burst and I just wanted to run up and down through the corridors to expel some of the adrenaline. I couldn’t keep still, couldn’t stop smiling and couldn’t keep myself from falling in love with Larry, the non conformist Cownose Ray.

I was really impressed with the turnout and we all piled into Shark Bait Reef like a rabble of rowdy teenagers after stopping for a photo opportunity. Lucy Handel had arranged for us to visit late during closing time for the rest of Alton Towers and we literally got the aquarium to ourselves. We were able to wander around the attractions, with Lucy answering our questions about all of the different creatures.

Shark Bait reef is much bigger than I expected and I was pleasantly surprised by how many unusual and fantastic marine species the aquarium homes. I certainly wasn’t expecting to see sea horses; showing off to all of those that walked past. And Razor fish! Who would have thought that there would have been razor fish? And Cownose rays! And Japanese Spider crabs! These were particularly impressive, with their long legs and beady eyes.

There was much to be enjoyed in the touch pools too and we all came away with much cleaner nails thanks to the shrimp manicures. Lucy introduced us to Zena, the Zebra Shark, Larry the Cownose Ray, Dave the female clown fish and many more species who we were all completely endeared to by the end of the tour.

We arranged this tour to coincide with European Shark Week and Project AWARE’s Big Shark Shout Out, which was last week. Therefore Lucy requested we make a donation to the Shark Trust as way of recompense for our evening of fishy fun and we managed to raise £190! Thank you everyone for your generosity and for joining me for a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

I would really like to thank Lucy on behalf of everyone who attended last night. She gave up her free time to talk to us about Sea Life, conservation and marine creatures. She was incredibly helpful, very informative and her enthusiasm and passion shone through.

My favourite things about Aquariums are the touch pools; I love them. To be allowed to touch fish and not harm them or frighten them is definitely a massive highlight to me, well at least it gets me away from the fish counters in the supermarkets! So, what else better could I be doing on Thursday night than visiting the Sea Life Centre at Alton Towers for a Sub-Mission Private Tour, shark presentations and access to the touch pool!

Why don’t you come and join me? Don’t expect to get anywhere near the touch pool, but you will definitely enjoy the opportunity to wander through the Sea Life Centre, with Lucy there to answer any of your questions and then listen to her presentation on the sharks that they have. This is a one off, backstage tour I suppose and not to be missed!

We are meeting at Alton Towers at 6.30pm (details to be confirmed) and spending a couple of hours in the Aquarium with Lucy and her team. There is no entrance fee for the visit however, because this was arranged with European Shark Week in mind, we are asking for a donation to the Shark Trust, which Lucy will collect.

If you want to come along, please confirm with me on katy@divecourses.co.uk or call the Dive Centre and I’ll put your name down.