A lot of work goes into getting our fish, shellfish and other animals into the aquarium. The animals we have on display are a mixture of wild, farmed, and captive bred.

Getting wild animals into the aquarium is a real challenge. The most vital part is to get them in good condition: without damage, stress or injury. This requires careful handling from the moment they are caught to the time they arrive in the aquarium, sometimes several hours later.

We have good relationships with several local fishermen, who are excellent at finding and bringing us unusual creatures for our aquarium. However, most of the time, we collect the animals ourselves. We have several methods for doing this….

We catch bigger fish such as Smoothounds, Stingray and Pollock by angling for them at certain locations at set times of the year. For example, in 2004 we went to Co. Wexford in late July, as we had information from the local anglers there that Smoothounds were present. It was an 8 hour round trip, plus 4 hours fishing time, but it was worth it as we came back with three beautiful male Smoothounds. By going ourselves, rather than relying on the fish to be brought to us, we were able to transport the Smoothounds back to Galway in special holding tanks, complete with filtration, aeration and chilling. The three Smoothounds arrived in Galway in perfect condition, and have been doing well ever since in our Ocean Tank. We travel all over the country to the best locations looking for our target species.

We have a variety of shapes and sizes of nets which we use in rock pool and on beaches to catch smaller specimens such as juvenile Plaice and Whiting, as well as Pipefish, Gurnards and Grey Mullet. Netting is a great way of collecting small fish as they can be transferred directly from the net to the transport tank without any need for being handled.

We have a number creels out in Galway Bay which are excellent for collecting mid-sized creatures such as Crabs, Prawns, young Eels and juvenile Cod. We bait and empty the creels regularly so that any animal we catch can be quickly transferred to the aquarium.

Some of our species, particularly those less common or less easy to find, we bring in from fish farms or hatcheries. This includes most of our fresh water fish such as Salmon, Brown Trout, Arctic Charr and Rudd. We require special permits to transfer these fish, but it is worth the extra work as our fresh water exhibit is one of the most complete displays of native fresh water fish in Europe.

Where possible, we try to rear our animals in the aquarium. This saves having to take them from the wild. So far we have successfully bred and reared Thornback Ray, Spotted Dogfish, Bullhuss and one species of Seahorse. We are in the process of developing a Seahorse rearing system which will allow us to rear many more Seahorses, and not require us to take too many from the tropical fish trade. Most of our juvenile Cod have also been captive-bred, coming from the NUI-Galway’s Marine Research Laboratory in Carna, Connemara.