Picking up a penguin ‘could bring in 20,000 more visitors’

They will be getting a new £750,000 home on three floors at the Deep aquarium in Hull, complete with ice, snow and bubble-making machines

Themed on Grytviken, a whaling station in South Georgia in the South Atlantic, where the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton is buried, it will include a jetty, 200 sq metres of space - the size of two modern semis - and 2.5 metres of water to dive in.

The Deep, which has had its busiest year since the recession with 350,000 visitors, hopes the display, which opens on March 3, could add another 20,000 visitors.

Chief executive Colin Brown said: “The reaction from the public has been incredible. There has been more interest than when we built the £6m extension which had one of the biggest displays on the deep sea in the world.

“They are so characterful.”

As well as the inside areas the penguins – five males and one female, who will eventually be joined by four youngsters – will have access to an open air sun deck.

The creatures breed successfully in captivity and the Deep is hoping to increase their numbers as part of an exchange with gentoos at Edinburgh Zoo, which holds the European stud book and acts as a “dating agency”.

In the wild gentoo populations are considered stable, and there are thought to be around 60,000 adults, covering numerous islands of Antarctica, their main habitats being the Falkland Islands.

Grytviken has strong historical links with Hull, historically a whaling port, and through crew members from the city, who accompanied explorers like Shackleton.

Many penguin species were once hunted for their blubber, which was used to produce oil for human consumption, and their eggs, with a schooner “burning” tens of thousands of birds.