Marineland of New Zealand, Napier (Closed) Aquarium vs Marineland?

Simon Hampel

Simon Hampel

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20+ year member
Can someone from NZ please explain to me the difference between the Napier Marineland and the National Aquarium in Napier ?
 
well I haven't been to either personally yet, but the National Aquarium (or colloquially, "the Napier Aquarium") and the Napier Marineland are quite separate facilities, run by different organisations, although they are situated quite near to one another. The Aquarium is an actual public aquarium with fish and reptiles in tanks inside a building, while the Marineland is an outdoor pool facility nowdays used primarily as a rescue centre for injured sealife (birds and mammals) but which in its heyday was a proper marineland with performing dolphins, seals etc. Their respective websites are
New Zealand National Aquarium - Napier Hawkes Bay
Marineland of New Zealand, Napier
 
I think the thing that confused me was when I was trying to find them both on Google maps ... the Marineland was fairly easy to identify because of the pools, but the maps I had for the Aquarium showed that it was very close to that same spot. I was beginning to worry that they were actually the same place and just had two different websites for some strange reason.

Thanks for the update!
 
Is the Marineland still keeping sea leopards ? I think,they keep from time to time rescued animals and put them back to the ocaen after a few months.

In the 69ty or 70ty years they made a show with trainend sea leoprads, do anybody has more information about that and the sea leopards at marineland ? And is Taronga Zoo still keeping sea leopards ?
 
Marineland of New Zealand, Napier - History
this link has a list of the leopard seals the Marineland has had. They do not have any now. I have seen a photo of a leopard seal leaping to take a fish from a trainer at the Napier Marineland, and it was VERY impressive given the seal's enormous length!
 
I've uploaded photos of both institutions in the gallery...
 
Chlidonias,

thanks for the link, but I know this side. From there I have the information with the trained sea leopards.
 
location of the NZ Aquiriam

It is on the Marine Parade , about a kilometre South of Marineland .
If you have Google Maps its opposite Goat Lane .
Hope this helps .
 
Nigel said:
It is on the Marine Parade , about a kilometre South of Marineland .
If you have Google Maps its opposite Goat Lane .
Hope this helps .
Click to expand...

Is it the big white building on the water side of the road, kind of triangular at one end and round at the other ?
 
Yeah the round part is the original aquarium and the triangle part is the 2002 extension...
 
Brittany said:
I cant find the link with the list of leopard seals that were at the Marineland. Do you still have this link.
Click to expand...
All the pages which were on the old website are now dead.

But they kept at least five animals:

Female Snowy, June 1976 to December 1981

Female Angie, August 1978 to March 1984

Male Rocky, September 1979 to March 1986

Male Barney, November 1990 to April 1992

Male Casper, August 1984 to February 2001
 
driftaguy said:
The site can be viewed via Archive.org's Way back machine - Marineland of New Zealand, Napier - History
Click to expand...
Thanks.

There are some discrepancies between the timeline on the Marineland site and my list of Leopard Seals above which came from NOAA records, the two obvious ones being that the timeline has Snowy arriving in Oct 1976 instead of June 1976, and potentially my Rocky from Sept 1979 could be their Lucky from Sept 1976 (i.e. Rocky and Lucky being alternative names or a misreading from one end or the other, while the 1976 versus 1979 is an easy error for either side to have made). Having said that, my list came from NOAA records with specific dates of arrival and death, so I'd say is more reliable than a general timeline summary.

However, there are three animals on the timeline which aren't in the NOAA records (Sept 1969, Oct 1969, and July 1971). But there are also two animals in the NOAA records which aren't in the timeline (Angie from Aug 1978 and Barney from Nov 1990).

All up, though, it makes somewhere between six and eight Leopard Seals kept at Marineland.
 
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