Curriculum Themes
Blue Reef welcomes more than 40,000 school children each year making it one of the largest marine-based educational resources for schools and colleges.
Every visit can include a guided tour or practical workshops with a member of our education or aquarist team. These tours are adapted to the age and abilities of each group.
Please choose a topic from the list below, designed to compliment and bring to life lessons in the classroom.

Sharks have fascinated and appalled in equal measure since man first set foot in the sea. This tour aims to dispel many of the commonly-held myths about these magnificent creatures and invites you to discover the real world of the oceans' ultimate predator. Sharks come in all shapes and sizes and are found throughout the world's seas, they have evolved incredible senses to help them locate their prey and come up with some amazing survival strategies! Blue Reef invites you to come face to face with some real sharks and enter their secret world.

The aquatic world is home to an amazing variety of creatures all perfectly adapted to survive in their own particular environment. From apparently barren seabeds to rocky coastlines, coral reefs to deep-sea trenches life has found a way to not only survive but thrive in virtually every water-based habitat on the planet. Discover the secrets of their success and the special adaptations they have made to ensure their continued existence.

Learn how the tiniest single-cell organism can affect the continued survival of the marine world's largest inhabitants including sharks and whales. Life in the oceans is an intricate web with each species ultimately depending on all the others to survive. Discover how the success or failure of a single species could potentially destroy the entire food chain.

Blue Reef has carefully recreated natural environments from around the world so you can experience them as realistically as possible.
A guided tour by a trained aquarist will introduce students to different coastal environments, habitats and animals that can be found there. Special focus will be give to our local coastline.

The marine world has been an inspiration for artists since the dawn of time - now here's your chance to get in the picture! Become a marine artist for the day with Blue Reef Aquarium. Sketch a seahorse, paint a puffer fish or create your own fishy work of art inspired by the amazing variety, patterns, colours, shapes and sizes of marine creatures.

The marine world is full of some amazing animals; some, like the seahorse, have been the inspiration for myths and legends while others, like sharks, have terrified humans for centuries. The exploration of the oceans has revealed countless other marine marvels from fish that create their own electricity to others that can blow up to the size of a balloon! This fascinating tour aims to inspire young minds to develop their creative writing skill.