How fishing city dug Deep to make a new living from sea
The Deep aquarium in Hull was one of the few lotteryfunded projects to escape the ‘Millennium curse’. Grace Newton looks at how the site has gone from strength to strength.
FEW WOULD have predicted that thousands of fish would become the magnet that would draw people back to Hull’s economically ravaged docks. It was the collapse of the fishing industry that led to the desolate shipyards and abandoned warehouses that came to define Hull as it approached the Millennium.
Nobody thought that sea creatures would spark Hull’s revival – but thanks to landmark visitor attraction The Deep, the city has an icon in its skyline once more and looks at the species that fed its people for generations from a different perspective.
The world’s first ‘submarium’ – a word invented as part of a canny marketing campaign – reached another milestone this autumn when the eighth millionth visitor walked through the doors.
The Deep has been an incredible success – it pulls in around 450,000 visitors every year, is a popular destination for corporate entertaining, and is home to some of the world’s leading marine experts.
It was the project that was supposed to salvage Hull’s post-industrial reputation, and it’s worked when other Millennium legacy attractions have floundered.
In the late 1990s, Neil Porteus was an accountant at Hull City Council working on a project which was to change his career. Originally from Northallerton, he stayed in the city after completing a maths degree at the university. He was the finance lead tasked with securing funding for an ambitious visitor project that could bring tourists to Hull.
After The Deep opened in 2002, he was so inspired by its potential that he moved across and is now the attraction’s deputy chief executive.
Neil was responsible for the capital programme and was successful in it being awarded £19m of lottery cash. It was only half of the total needed to make a world-class aquarium a reality.
The solution was to become a charity, enabling the team to apply for a number of regeneration and support grants. The EU’s development fund was one backer and more financial support came from government regeneration funds for deprived areas and the nowdefunct Yorkshire Forward agency.
The council gave land– in the form of a disused buoy depot that had once been a shipyard – to the charity and the University of Hull also became involved.
“Hull has always made a living from the sea, whether that be whaling, fishing; there are strong connections. The Deep was about building new relationships with the ocean – we wanted to be more than just an aquarium, we wanted to tell the story of how the seas have formed.”
The site chosen for The Deep was at the confluence of two rivers, the Hull and Humber, and offered the visually arresting location that Neil hoped would make it as recognisable as Sydney Opera House.
After setting what they thought was an ambitious target of 250,000 visitors in its first year, The Deep’s opening 12 months instead pulled in 865,000 visitors. A further £5m in funding was secured for a £7m extension, which opened three years later.
Support for the project came from the Millennium Commission, a public body funded by the National Lottery, which became notorious in the early 2000s for its legacy of highprofile failures, including the flagship Millennium Dome in London, and within Yorkshire, Doncaster’s Earth Centre and Sheffield’s National Centre for Popular Music.
“I think the reason ourselves and the Eden Project in Cornwall have been a success is because we have ‘living’ exhibits which seem to capture people’s imaginations,” reflects Neil on The Deep.
“People come back again and again because we’re a ‘changing’ exhibit.
“It has really put Hull on the map.”