Sea Life Centres
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Sea Life Centres are a chain of sealife themed attractions.
The chain has twenty three centres located in Belgium, England, Finland, France, Holland, Ireland, Scotland and Spain. The chain is owned by Merlin Entertainments.
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[edit] Attractions
Sea Life Centres are marketed to families seeking as easy, entertaining and educational experience. They are marketed by owners Merlin Entertainments as a "friendly and authoritative guide to the last great frontier...the seas and oceans of the world and their myriad mysterious and amazing inhabitants."
Each centre combines modern glass and display technology, biological expertise and entertainment to provide themed journeys through European and tropical waters. This often provides close encounters with sealife from shrimps and starfish to seahorses, sharks and stingrays.
Sealife centres also claim to champion the cause of marine conservation, through education, awareness and, wherever possible, direct action.
[edit] Seal Sanctuaries
Seal Sanctuaries operate from three centres: the National Seal Sanctuary, Cornwall; the Hunstanton Sea Life Sanctuary; the Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Oban
[edit] SOS campaigns
Since 2001 all Sea Life Centre conservation, rescue and campaigning work has come under the SOS scheme, an acronym for Save Our Seas.
SOS supports the work of numerous wildlife charities and campaign groups including Greenpeace, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, and the British Divers Marine Life Rescue. Each centre also has a headline campaign which change on an annual or bi-annual basis, which in the past have called for increased protection for Loggerhead Sea Turtles, and restrictions on the practice of shark-finning.
[edit] Locations
[edit] UK and Ireland
- National Sea Life Centre, Birmingham
- Blackpool
- Bray
- Brighton
- Great Yarmouth
- Loch Lomond
- Scarborough
- Yarmouth
- Weymouth
[edit] Germany
[edit] Rest of Europe
- Blankenberge, Belgium
- Helsinki, Finland
- Paris, France
- Den Haag, Holland
- Sea Life Centre, Benalmádena, Málaga, Spain