The Ray Pool covers the largest floor space of all our tanks. It is large, but shallow, and has been specially designed for the fish which like to have space to move around in; namely our Rays, Dogfish and large flatfish such as Turbot and Halibut. It is an open tank, allowing visitors to come literally face to face with the fish. We have five species of Ray in our Ray Pool: Thornback, Spotted, Blonde, Undulate and Painted Ray. These all react well to visitors, particularly the Thornback and Undulate Rays, and will often stick their noses out of the water to say “hello” when there are people around.

There is always something going on in the Ray Pool, and the Thornback Rays and Dogfish in particular spend a lot of time courting and mating. Each summer dozens of egg-cases from these two species are laid in the tank. We carefully remove the egg-cases and bring them to our Nursery where they are safe until the baby fish hatch. We have several years worth of baby Thornback Ray and Dogfish at this stage, and indeed some of our five year old juveniles are almost large enough now to rejoin their parents back in the Ray Pool.