Ad disclosure: We are Blogger Ambassadors for Sea Life Birmingham, and as such we have a season pass for the purpose of blogging about our visits.
One thing the girls have missed during lockdown is visiting our local Sea Life Centre in Birmingham. We have been lucky enough to to be blogger ambassadors for the centre for years now, so the girls have grown up visiting the centre regularly and both have their favourite sea creatures they say hello to every time we visit.
Georgie has seen her particular favourite, Zebedee the Zebra Shark, grow up from a baby shark in the nursery tank through several tanks as he grew, all the way to his ‘graduation’ to the huge ocean tunnel tank as an adult. As you can imagine, both Georgie and Lydia have missed visiting the centre – it seemed very odd to have a half term break at home without heading over to see the fishies.
The centre reopened after months of closure, yesterday on July 4th. I booked our slot as soon as I saw the announcement a week or so ago! The girls were so excited about our outing to one of their favourite places, especially after months of nothing but the odd walk in the countryside and around the local area.
Of course, Georgie’s absolute favourite type of wildlife is penguins, so she has been a huge fan of the penguins at the centre since they arrived. She was so happy to be back and playing with them!
The newest residents of the centre are the Sea Otters, Ozzy & Ola, who only arrived shortly before lockdown began. As such, this was our first time seeing the cute creatures, and they did not disappoint! They swam around in the water, chilling out on their backs, and played together on the ‘shore’ of the mammal rescue centre, which spans two floors of Sea Life.
We have been regular visitors to the Otter Sanctuary near my parents’ house in Cornwall, so the girls are familiar with several different types of otters, but these are the first Alaskan Sea Otters in the UK, so something completely new to us. These otters are much bigger than the smaller river otters we are used to.
I’m looking forward to going back and trying to snap some better photos soon – it was one of the busier areas so we didn’t have long to watch them.
In terms of preparations to become “Covid Secure” as the government call it, we were impressed with the steps Merlin have taken with the centre. All tickets have to be pre-booked in advance and you have a 15 minute slot to arrive at and enter the centre. As we entered we had our temperature taken and tickets checked by staff, who were safely decked out in PPE or protected behind screens. There was also a sanitising station at the entrance for us to use if we wished.
Once inside the centre, the girls were given magnifying glasses so they could see the tank inhabitants closer up without having to get too close to the glass – this had the nice side benefit of them having something in their hands reducing the amount of surfaces they were touching.
There was clear signage throughout the centre to help with social distancing, and one way systems were put in place in areas where it wasn’t already naturally one way – including in the shop/exit.
Overall in that sense we had a pleasant visit – the number of people allowed into the centre at once seemed to be a sensible amount; we didn’t feel like it was too busy to social distance properly. The only issues we had were the odd inconsiderate visitor ignoring distancing or doubling back along the one way route.
We saw members of staff cleaning frequently touched areas throughout the centre, and the only areas completely closed were the cinema and small soft play area, for obvious reasons.
It was great to be back to the centre, and one more step into to the “new normal” that our life is going to be like for the foreseeable future.
Enjoy a relaxing compilation of clips of our visit:
