Fish without chips or mushy peas (The Deep)

Member Name: koshkha

Product:	The Deep
Date:	03/11/06 (1005 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good range of sharks and other biggies, some nice small displays

Disadvantages: Too noisy and too much reliance of video games and gimmicks

Back in the Dark Ages when I was looking at University Prospectuses and trying to decide where to go, I came across Hull University. They must have hired a really good advertising and design company because the place looked great. And in those days you could buy a house in Hull for not much more than a week's shop in Waitrose (I exagerate a little perhaps). I remember saying to my Mum, 'hey, have a look at this place'. She dismissed it out of hand saying 'You can't go to Hull, it smells of fish'.

And that's how Hull stayed in my mind for a long time. Sadly to day Hull doesn't smell of fish any more - the old fishing industry has been hit hard by the Common Fisheries Policy and the locals wish it did smell of fish again. However, if you want fish in Hull today, you'll probably be off to have a look at The Deep - conceived perhaps as a tribute to Hull's noble past as a major fishing centre.

I hadn't been to Hull for a long time and I wasn't expecting to be back again soon - it's not exactly the sort of place you pass on the way to anywhere else. So knowing that the one thing I really wanted to see was the new 'Submarium' (nonsense name, I thought) I battled the one way system and a temperamental sat nav system to find it.

Firstly, if you too are trying to get there with a Sat Nav system, it can be tricky. There's no road name given in the address. I plugged in Nelson Street which is apparently very close but once you see the brown tourism signs, ignore your Sat Nav and follow them. It's the kind of place you can see but, like a tantallus, you can't quite grab it.

First impressions - I'd love to say they were 'Wow! What an amazing looking building?' but in fact my first impressions were 'Gosh, is the weather ALWAYS as awful as this?' The wind was blowing a gale and the spray off the Humber was spiking horizontally across the car park. Apparently the building was designed by Terry Farrell and Partners but I'm not going to pretend I've heard of him - however, it's got touches of the style of Norman Foster (my architecture hero) or Frank Gehry.

Faced with an iconic new building, I would normally have taken a big deep breath and got a good eyeful of this stunning wedge of silver and glass before walking in. However, with that wind, I could hardly stand up, let alone admire the view so I put my head down and ran for it.

Background
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It's only fair at this stage to point out that I adore big aquariums and have been to many really good ones. Therefore, I may be a bit harsh in comparing The Deep to places like the Oceanarium in Lisbon (see my recent review) and the KL Aquarium in Kuala Lumpur. I'm also a keen diver and have seen a lot of good stuff in the raw so I tend to scepticism when the wrong kinds of fish are put together or the coral is plastic.

If you haven't been to one of these big aquariums, you'll probably really enjoy The Deep - but in my capacity as a 'Fish Anorak', I possibly set higher criteria to judge an aquarium by.

Car Parking
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There's a mid-sized car park beside The Deep. I would imagine at busy times it wouldn't be anything like big enough. I arrived at a few minutes to 5 pm and there were only half a dozen cars there.

In front of you there's a nice big bronze of a shark that would probably keep some kids amused for a while and be good for some holiday snaps.

The car park is £3 - I thought that was pretty shocking really, especially as I was on my own so it was adding a lot to the cost of my visit. However, the £3 ticket includes a sticker worth £2 that you can exchange for food and drink. I used my discount to get £2 off the guidebook, making it a much more reasonable £1.50.

Entry
****
The last entries are at 5 pm - I had to run to beat the deadline so maybe it's a good thing that the weather stopped me loitering over the building. I would have been furious after parting with £3 for the car park if they hadn't let me in because there's ABSOLUTELY nothing else to do around The Deep.

Prices -
Adults £8.00
OAPs/students £6.50
Children £6.00
Family of 4 £25.00
Family of 5 £30.00.

Personally, I think that's a bit on the steep side.

Off to see the Fish
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After paying, you walk along a corridor and take a lift or the stairs to the 3rd floor of the building. The tour then involves walking down a series of wide ramps and working your way from top to bottom. There's quite a lot of walking involved and if you are in a wheelchair, you might want to check your brakes before taking on the hairpin bends. I had the impression that part of the purpose of the ramps was to give the impression that the place was bigger than it really was.

I entered through a turnstile and right in front was a beautiful small tank of tiny box fish, and some green fellas that looked like a cross between a sea horse and a piece of grass. The chap at the turnstile came over to talk to me about the tank and I really enjoyed that personal touch, brief though it was. However, this was a nice tank and my hopes were high for the rest of the tour.

Then started the interminable ramps and the excessive noise. For goodness sakes, the sea is a pretty quite place, one of the benefits of diving is there are no mobile phones. And certainly not non-stop looped video screens telling me about the history of the earth. The first ramp is presented as an Earth Timeline with distance representing time since the world began. Oh boy, I'm so not interested in all of that stuff. I have a degree in geology and I don't need another 'big bang to present' model. All along the ramp are touch screens for the kids to play with, quizzes and video screens. It was empty when I was there but I could just picture thousands of school kids running back and forth, fiddling with all the displays. Where was the peace and quite I was seeking and more importantly, where were the fish?

The first big tank display was the Lagoon of Light - now this was a gem of a tank, full of all the things you'd expect to see in a coral lagoon - banner fish, tangs, damselfish, parrot fish, little spotted rays and some gorgeous little bonnethead sharks (a bit like hammer heads but with a shovel instead of a hammer). The lighting in this tank was bright and the colours were sharp and true.

According to the website, it's supposed to be possible to put your head into this tank through a bubble but if this was available, it wasn't obvious where or how.

Tucked in a corner near by the coral lagoon was something called the Discovery Corner. This wasn't open when I visited but apparently the small tanks were filled with creatures that the kids can touch and play with. They limit the 'stress' caused to the animals but having just a few sessions each day. Shame they don't think more about the stress to the humans!

More ramps, more video screens, more games and quizzes and I'm off to the big tank - the 'Endless Ocean'. Now the 'big tank' is the one thing that really makes or breaks a good aquarium. If you get a truly spectacular one, then I can forgive all the other annoyances. The viewing of the Endless Ocean tank is good - floor to ceiling glass walls give great visibility but that's hampered a bit by the glass being curved and slightly distorting. The tank was quite gloomy - I wondered if someone had turned down the lights at first. Everything was rather grey and poorly lit - so much so that big sharks could appear suddenly and I missed them a few times. The large rays down at the bottom of the tank could sometimes only be seen by flashes of the underside of their 'wings'.

What's in the Big Tank?
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Ten out of ten for the range of sharks and other 'big fish' - a rather lower score for the smaller stuff. There are a lot of rather dull grey and silver fish swimming around in shoals.

The sharks are not your little babies - these are big fellas and some have the sense of pre-historic menace that really attracts me to them. Whilst the white tip reef sharks are quite small and sleek, like sports cars, there are some big ugly ones in there that look like they've been hiding out in Loch Ness for a few million years. They have nurse sharks, tiger sharks, zebrasharks and some odd things like wobbegongs and the Green Sawfish. The Sawfish is more closely related to rays than sharks but looks like a squashed shark with a hedgetrimmer stuck on its nose.
There are some big rays and some large morays as well. I think the tank is a bit over-crowded.

Other tanks
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As with most big aquaria, there are a number of other sub-zone tanks around the centre. These include a 'twilight zone' which ought to contain lots of glowing luminous critters - I think I went wrong at that stage because all I could see were yet more video screens.

There's an excellent tank of cod that might make you think twice next time you go to the chippy. There's a cold water zone and displays of anemone clown fish, poisonous lion and scorpion fish and many others. I generally find these small displays quite interesting but there was nothing that really stuck in my mind.

The Submarine
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Now maybe it's just because the video screens and noise were really getting to me by this stage, but I didn't explore this area. There is some kind of re-enactment where the kids can pretend to be piloting a submarine into the deep ocean. It all seemed a bit 'Blakes Seven' to me and I was really teed off with all the gimmicks by this stage so I marched off in search of more fish.

The Wow Factor
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Every big aquarium needs a good 'Wow!' moment and it's usually delivered near the end. The Deep has two - neither of which is a 'megawow' but both will impress first time I'm sure. The first is a tunnel in the tank - it's quite a short one but it's effective. When I was in the tunnel some staff had just thrown in some food and there were three large sharks cuddled up to the glass looking for food. It was an excellent view. I would imagine that at busy times this would really get congested. Other aquaria I have visited (e.g. Blue Planet in Ellesmere Port, KL Aquarium) have moving walkways and longer tunnels and still have to heard people through to stop them blocking so this shorter tunnel looks like it would have problems. The final Wow is the 'great glass elevator' - my term, not theres - which actually rises up through the tank, stopping for a few seconds in the middle where you can be ignored by all the fish. There is apparently a long wait for this during the day but I breezed straight in at 5.30 with no delay.

Catering
*******
There seem to be a lot of places to eat and drink but at 5.30 they were all closed. One of the restaurant areas gives you the opportunity to go up to the 4th floor and look out over the Humber - the brownest water in the universe, I should imagine. I spotted an indoor 'picnic' zone which seemed like a good idea because a day out for a family is a bit pricey and you might want to bring your sarnies.

Shop
****
As you'd expect there's a big shop where you can stock up on all the cuddly stingrays and plastic shark pencil sharpeners you could ever need. I found it very easy to resist.

Overall Recommendation
*********************
If you haven't been to a big aquarium and you aren't likely to fly off to one of the world leading ones then yes, you should go and have a look.
If I were in the North and could get equally well to this or the Blue Planet at Ellesmere Port, I'd drive the other way down the M62 and head off to the Blue Planet for a better variety, less irritating gimmicks and an excellent shopping centre on the doorstep.
If you are in the area - then definitely give it a look
If you have kids, they'll probably love it.
But for purist fish anoraks like me, this isn't one to return to.

Summary: Good idea, sadly badly executed.