Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium

Kelly Tarlton was a diver and salvage expert who wanted an aquarium where visitors moved through the water rather than looking at it through a flat pane. He found the space in a set of abandoned concrete sewage storage tanks under Tamaki Drive, and worked out how to bend acrylic into curved tunnel sections - a technique that had not been done at this scale before and is now standard in aquariums worldwide. It opened in 1985. Tarlton died seven weeks later. The tunnels remain the point: you stand on a moving walkway with sharks and stingrays overhead. There is also a sub-antarctic penguin enclosure kept cold with real snow, and a replica of Scott's Antarctic hut. The site is compact and it is an older facility - people expecting a very large modern aquarium find it smaller than they imagined.

History

In 1983 the diver and marine archaeologist Kelly Tarlton (1937-1985) proposed an aquarium in sewage tanks under the waterfront that had been unused since the 1960s, and it opened on 25 January 1985 after ten months of building, with a 110-metre tunnel of acrylic sheets heated and moulded to shape. A replica of Scott's Antarctic hut and a penguin colony were added in 1994, and it took its present name in 2012 (Wikipedia, Kelly Tarlton's Sea Life Aquarium).

The main sights

• The acrylic tunnels - the technique invented here, sharks and rays overhead.
• The penguin enclosure - sub-antarctic species in a cold room with snow.
• The Scott hut replica - a nod to Antarctic history.
• The sewage tanks - the structure it was all built inside.

When to go

Any season - it is entirely indoors. Weekday mornings are quietest; school holidays are busy. Book online for a lower price and a time slot.

Things to know

It is small and dated compared with newer aquariums, and the visit is short. The moving walkway keeps you going through the tunnel at its own pace. Feeding times are worth timing your visit around.

Nearby

Tamaki Drive continues to Mission Bay; central Auckland is west.

Key facts