The New Ideas Zone at Weymouth SEALIFE

Dear mummy, we love visiting aquariums and seeing the underwater world. We were lucky enough to visit Weymouth SEALIFE the other week and catch the last of their summer Finding Dory event. It gave us the opportunity to walk round, fill in a fact sheet and track down all the characters from the film who lived in the tanks. I had great fun finding Clownfish Nemo and Dory the Blue Tang. After seeing the film at the cinema I was very excited at continuing the story around the centre.

While we were there a new feature caught our eye called The New Ideas Zone at Weymouth SEALIFE Adventure Park. It’s a new part of the park with three large areas that house different attractions called Glow, Electricity and the 4D Tidal Rockpool. On entrance to the New Ideas Zone, an impressive light sculpture, which features seven hundred waste drinking bottles, draws attention to plastic pollution in the world’s rivers and oceans. SEALIFE worked with a local school called St Augustine’s School, to design and install this impressive and very pretty art piece.

Each bottle holds an environmental message from the school children, in an effort to inspire us all to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic items and to protect the world’s oceans for generations to come. A lovely sentiment and impressive display.

We loved the colourful exhibit called Glow, which showcased homegrown luminescent corals, sea fans and anemones. We spent ages watching the jellies float by silently and it was a very relaxing area, all the tanks were lit up with colours of the rainbow.

We were most impressed with the tidal 4D rockpool experience – built to resemble the Giants Causeway which we’ve visited many times. It had sensory features such wind, rain and tides and is home to temperate creatures including starfish, crabs and sea urchins. We loved the hand-held cameras which allowed us to spy on the crabs and anemones from below the surface and then project their images on the large screens dotted around the room.

Another interesting area was the Electricity room which contained a series of new 3D interactive features which displays the sparks and flicks of static electricity, given off by creatures such as electric eels. There was a rather large eel sculpture built-in the wall, with gave off a loud cracking noise.

We really enjoyed this new area at Weymouth SEALIFE centre and can’t wait to visit again. It’s always a real treat to see below the surface and watch the fish. I’m sure we’ll be visiting more in the winter months now that the weather is starting to turn.

Have you visited SEALIFE recently?

Love Bella x