by A. Marshall

Created on: July 14, 2009   Last Updated: July 15, 2009

The Sea Life centre is located at Scalby Mills in the English seaside resort of Scarborough, North Yorkshire. It can be found by following the signs for North Bay Leisure Parks or Sea Life. There's plentiful parking outside, with a pay and display car park which overlooks the seafront. It's a good place to visit whatever the weather, as it is mostly indoors. There are outdoor areas with picnic benches, where you can visit the otters, seals and penguins, which can be avoided if it's a rainy day.

It's open daily from 10 am to 4.30pm, with last admissions at 3.30. Admission prices at the gate are 14.00 GBP for adults, 10.00 GPB for children and 12.00 GBP for concessions. However, you can save 5 GBP per ticket by booking on line, so it's worth planning in advance. We bought tickets at a good discount by booking at our campsite reception, where we paid 8.50 GBP for an adult ticket, and 25.00 for a family ticket for two adults and two children, which was quite a big saving.

On entering the first things we came to were the shop and toilets, and stairs that go up to the cafe. Then we entered the aquarium passageways which we followed, viewing jellyfish, octopus, crabs, rays, sharks, turtles, fish and seahorses. The rays are amazingly graceful, and surprisingly nosey, as they kept coming up to the window as if to deliberately look back at us. There's also an underwater tunnel to walk through and a huge tank full of very big fish and an enormous turtle. Our three year old granddaughters spotted a fish like Nemo and went around shouting 'I found Nemo!' So now we know where Nemo is. Phew, thank goodness for that!

They were also very impressed with the jellyfish area, which is lit up with ultraviolet light to show up the jellyfish. They do look beautiful, and the girls were mesmerized, but part of the excitement for them was the fact that their clothes were glowing as well! Another highlight was the demonstration tank where a member of staff was taking out small crabs for the children to touch. One of the girls was quite enthusiastic about stroking the crabs, but the other one found the whole experience a bit too freaky and ran off shouting 'I don't like it!' I can't say I blame her, as I didn't want to touch them either. There is antibacterial gel available for hand cleaning afterwards.

There's also an interactive educational area for children with machines where they can press buttons to see what creatures eat, or turn a dial to see a sea creature swim faster than

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