In the vast 400,000 litre tank at the centre of Macduff Marine Aquarium, the saltwater is circulated four times a day to keep it fresh for the creatures living inside.
Without change, the environment would eventually grow stale, not providing everything required for the inhabitants to grow and develop – in other words, not fit for purpose.
The volcano-shaped building surrounding the open-topped tank has stayed the same for the 25 years since it first opened to the public, a unique sight on the small town’s coast.
It is a popular destination for families in the north-east, but there are concerns that the building, like the tank, needs a refresh to get it to its full potential.
“The aquarium’s been sitting on this site for 25 years,” said manager Claire Matthews. “It’s done really well but it’s never quite taken off.”
Over the past few years, a project has been forming – first just an aspiration, but recently a solid plan with detailed designs drawn up by local architect Craig Matheson.
Transformational plans
If it goes ahead, the aquarium will get some of the facilities visitors have been seeking for years: a cafe with views over the stunning rocky shoreline, and an education space to serve as a base for school visits.
The appearance of the familiar circular building will also completely change, with a second storey being added to accommodate some of the new features.
Those transformational plans are now closer than ever to reality after Aberdeenshire Council formally requested almost £6 million from the UK Government’s Levelling Up fund to go towards them.
The fascinating attraction with a challenge
When we visited Macduff Aquarium, the blazing sun had encouraged a wealth of green algae to appear in the central tank.
Claire, who has worked there since six weeks before it opened in 1997, said this was more of a problem for the visitors than for the fish, who don’t mind it much at all.
All the sea creatures in the tank and the wider aquarium – from halibut, conger eels and dogfish to lobsters, anemones and jellyfish – are taken from the Moray Firth, barely ten metres from the northern wall of the building.
Watch as we take a tour of the facility, and go behind the scenes at mealtime
There is plenty of diversity on display, more than you might think for a chilly patch of bottle-green water off the north-east coast.
But even someone who takes the time to carefully read the detailed information boards beside each exhibit would not currently take very long to get around the entire attraction.
Need for ‘breathing space’
“As a user, you go round and by the time you get to the end, you kind of want to go round again, to be honest,” said Craig, the architect.
“So having a bit more breathing space here is a good thing.”
As a resident of Banff, Macduff’s almost symmetrical neighbour on the other side of the bay, his children are very familiar with the marine delights in the aquarium.
However, at the moment they simply “wheech round”, and before they know it they are out the door again.
His plans aim to combat that, by providing more reasons for people to stay longer.
Alongside the cafe-restaurant, the aquarium team want to open up a new lobster hatchery, where baby crustaceans would be grown before being sent out into the North Sea.
And new coastal paths would also encourage visitors to see other local landmarks – including the art-deco Tarlair lido, itself soon to become the subject of a massive renovation project after sitting neglected for almost 30 years.
Cash to help towns develop
Though the designs for the transformation have been around for a while, the council’s application for £5.7m in Levelling Up funds is the first major step towards securing cash for the project.
Mark Findlater, Aberdeenshire Council’s Conservative leader and a Macduff native, said the plans would make the aquarium “an even better facility than it is already”.
Calling the site one of his favourite places, he said: “It’ll have a great knock-on effect for the area.
“Visitors will come to Macduff Marine Aquarium, then they’ll go out and visit other places around Banff and Buchan.”
The local authority hopes to also secure £18m for a new cultural quarter in Peterhead, centred around Broad Street and the disused Arbuthnot House.
Its bid to the UK Government says “significant areas” of both Peterhead and Macduff are among the 20% most deprived parts of Scotland.
The hope is that such an injection of cash and confidence in the cultural offerings of the two towns will act like the circulation pump in the aquarium’s main tank – providing replenishment and renewal.
Local MP David Duguid said: “There are fantastic tourist attractions right across Banff and Buchan, especially round the coast. This is just one of them.
“The idea of the levelling-up process is not just to increase opportunities, revenue and infrastructure, but to make every single part of this United Kingdom a good place to come and visit.”
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