The Deep, Hull: The Yorkshire aquarium that attracts nearly half a million visitors a year and the city where Enola Holmes 2 and The Crown were filmed has over 800 years of maritime history
Nearly half a million people visit one of the most popular attractions in Yorkshire to discover 800 years of maritime history.
The Deep first opened to the public in 2002 and was founded through the original regeneration project which was in progress for years before it opened.
The project was headed by Hull City Council’s David Gemel, who died in 2024, and Colin Brown, who wanted to put Hull on the map and attract visitors.
450,000 people flock to the aquarium every year, fascinated by the city’s ocean history.
The main aim behind The Deep is to encourage conservation and education, CEO Katy Duke said.
Ms Duke, 47, originally from Edinburgh, explained: “We try to engage people as much as possible in lots of different things and inspire people to protect the oceans and hopefully inspire the next generation of marine biologists who are going to come along and look after our aquatic habitats.
“We're very popular with school trips and those schoolchildren will receive a special workshop in one of our themed education rooms and they have a tour of the exhibition as well.
“It really helps to be a focus for the city but also to bring people in and for them to see what other fantastic free museums there are in Hull. It can be a real day out and even a weekend away.
“We really did tick that box of attracting people to the region, which is fantastic.
“We’re worth around £18 million annually to the visitor economy in this region and we attract visitors from around an hour and a half to two hour drive time, so people will come from Manchester, Sheffield, Doncaster, even Newcastle, which is great.”
Hull is known as Yorkshire’s maritime city and was the early theatre of battle in the English Civil Wars.
The town of Wyke in Hull was a port where wool was exported and was founded by the monks of Meaux Abbey in the late 12th century.
In modern times, Hull has been a hotbed for so many TV shows and films that it has earned the nickname ‘Hullywood’ in recent years.
Enola Holmes 2, The Crown, The Personal History of David Copperfield, Victoria and Blitz have been filmed in the city.
The city has drawn in big crowds due to a variety of museums, art galleries, a historic old town and a thriving arts scene.
The maritime history in Hull is quite a draw for visitors.
“There is so much maritime history here from the whaling industry to the fishing industry,” Ms Duke said.
“Maritime in Hull has been absolutely huge, it’s a fascinating topic in its own right. It’s supported by its own museums too.
“There’s a new maritime museum that should be opening in the next year, which will be very exciting and will bring that maritime history to life and make sure that it’s not lost.”
Throughout its history, the focus on various topics have changed along with changeable nature.
“We now cover topics such as plastics in the oceans,” Ms Duke said.
“As you can imagine, the exhibition has developed over the 23-year period that we have now been open, as nature has.
“These are all important things that we need to make people aware of. But more importantly, we tell people how they can be involved in being part of the solution and how they can make a difference in their daily lives so that we can continue to see healthy oceans which we all need for a healthy planet.
“We have some fantastic guides who are positioned around the exhibition and they’re always interpreting so they might be giving a presentation.
“We have special themes over the holidays, so whales are our theme for this Easter break and in the May half term we celebrate our theme of H2O heroes, so we partner with organisations like RNLI, Humber Rescue and Coastguard etc. We showcase the fantastic work they do in keeping us safe.
“This is an important message for us to get across because we’re obviously encouraging people to go and explore our coastline, to go and explore the beaches, but we want them to do that safely as well.”
Ms Duke said that the organisation has partnered with other businesses and charities to help rehabilitate wildlife, including the endangered sea turtles.
“We work alongside New England Aquarium Boston to help rehabilitate cold, stunned sea turtles,” she said.
“With climate change, we’re finding that on a regular, annual pattern around November and December time, turtles aren’t able to escape the cold waters on the coast of the country.
“A lot of them are becoming hypothermic and then of course they strand because they are unable to function.
“This project rescues hundreds of sea turtles every year and takes them back to the centre with almost like a conveyor belt of very sick turtles coming in that we support them in terms of turning the health of these animals around.
“Then we release them back into the oceans as soon as they are fit again because all sea turtles, no matter what species, are critically endangered and it’s a really important species that we need to support.”
Annual passes are sold for the aquarium to encourage visitors to keep coming back.
“We do embrace people to keep coming back as often as we can,” Ms Duke said,
“Every ticket that we sell is an annual pass; you only pay once but you could come back as many times as you want to for that cost.
“We try to make sure that we are as available, accessible and reachable to as many people as possible.
“We pride ourselves on being an accessible and fun family day out but within that you will learn a plethora of things.
“We also support student projects, for example we host degree projects for students from the University of Hull who are studying a marine biology or a related course and support them along with their supervisors at the university.”