National Marine Aquarium

The National Marine Aquarium is the largest public aquarium in the UK welcoming 300,000 visitors per year (including the 30,000 school students who engage with our innovative Just Add H2O Schools Programme). Our awe-inspiring exhibits, featuring marine animals from near and far, provide an environment that intrigues, inspires and motivates our visitors to engage with our conservation messages and hopefully do their bit to help protect the marine environment.

Since we opened our doors in 1998, we have chosen to focus on promoting a sympathetic understanding of our oceans, tailoring our marine conservation efforts around our mission to connect people with our Oceans. Rather than delivering the in-situ conservation that other organisations are better placed to deliver, we’ve aspired to place ourselves as leaders in the engagement and education fields of marine conservation. We do this by guiding our visitors through a journey of discovery and learning to further understand their connection to the marine environment.

As a self funded charity we have a range of business pillars that support our charitable work and mission to connect people with our Oceans.

What sort of research do we do?

Since opening in 1998, the National Marine Aquarium has hosted over 120 research projects. The majority of these projects are animal-husbandry based (e.g. nutrition, animal behaviour, water quality analysis), reflecting our interests in keeping our animals in the best possible conditions. Research interests, however have evolved and expanded over the years and now encompass a range of additional topics, including:

public attitudes to marine issues/sustainability
the impacts of informal learning programmes
aquariums and human health
citizen science
ocean literacy

Most of our research efforts have been focused on conservation but as the Aquarium has developed so have our ambitions.

Consultancy: We offer consultancy on everything from evaluation to designs, install and management of aquaria.

Functions and Events: Book an event at a unique location. We can cater for everything from weddings to corporate banking events and even 90th birthday parties.

Charitable Giving

As a charity we really value the support of our visitors, volunteers and partners, but equally we feel it is important for us to give back to our wider communities. With this in mind we donate more than £418,000 equivalent value of tickets each year, to enable more people to learn about our Oceans. This essentially breaks down to more than £300,000 of free child tickets, and £115,000 of adult and other tickets. If you would like to find out more you can contact us through donations@national-aquarium.co.uk