WITH recent reports branding Blackpool's beach a sewage-contaminated failure, the idea of going to Europe's most popular resort in search of marine life seems a total non-starter.

Not so.

The Golden Mile is a no-go area for the hapless creatures on the sea side of the promenade only; on the land side, in the shadow of the famous tower, nurse sharks bask, clownfish show off their orange and yellow bodies, and baby rays present "smiley faces to the paying public.

This is Sea Life, one of the curious quirks of progress which sees man destroy marine life in the sea only to recreate it on land. The ultimate irony. The living rock pools in which Enid Blyton's little characters rooted and dabbled, are, in many coastal areas, a thing of the past; but one has been recreated at Sea Life and, for a price, provides a dabble "touchpool" with starfish, crabs, anemones and other creatures once freely available for the delight and education of children.

Blackpool Sea Life is one of many such centres in the UK and Europe, housing one of the largest collection of marine life. It is not just a spectacle for the holidaymaker, but venue for many off-season school parties, A-level students and learning groups. Educational packs open up life underwater to young minds.

Sea water is pumped from across the prom and diligently filtered to provide a fitting environment for over 50 species of native British, and very many more tropical, sea creatures. Ian Crabbe is manager of the centre (no, he's heard it all before) and said Sea Life has some 600,000 visitors each year to inspect the various environments recreated - estuary life, rock pools, harbours, shipwrecks and caves, sea-bed, ocean depths and reefs.

Ian has the dry land administrative job, while Ashley Ball, 23-year-old aquarist and diver with a degree in marine and fish biology, plays an altogether more amphibious role.

Are the creatures happy in captivity? "Yes," replied Ashley firmly.

How do you know a fish is happy? "It thrives - and some of them breed." Sure signs of being at home in the created environment.

Certainly the pair of clown tomato fish looked chuffed as they guarded and fanned their eggs, laid in a rocky crevice, and the tiny two-inch baby rays grinned (or gurned) engagingly through their glass. The latter may eventually be released into the open sea. Ashley's personal favourites are the sharks. Their tank, containing half a million litres of sea water at a pressure of 500 tons, goes over a walkway and the glass makes the majestic creatures (one or two eight-foot long) look smaller than their actual size. But still the visitors duck as the sharks glide past.

Some species are cruelly hunted for their fins, used as soup ingredients, and the Japanese will, said Ashley, chop off the fins and throw the poor creatures back in the water, live. Other species are the subject of Australian shark-spearing competitions; still others are branded dangerous, when they are not.

In the tank with the sharks of the Fylde coast, Ashley finds them pleasant company, and at least one will nuzzle his ankles to remind him to stroke its sleek head.

New this year is a pair of octopodes (octopusses is archaic; octopi is wrong) which inhabit the entrance tank and are still settling in. Most fortunate of the inhabitants is, perhaps, one of the few lobsters in marine or culinary history to have got as far as the kitchen, and made it back to to sea water. This is Rocky, a five-kilo, metre-long dinner treat netted by a Fleetwood trawler and purchased at a fish merchant for the dinner table; the cook couldn't find it in his or her heart to do the dirty deed and the happy crustacean, estimated to be between 80 and 100 years old, now inhabits the large commercial food fish tank at Sea Life.

And across the road, on the wrong side of Blackpool prom for sea life without the capital letters, a scant few mussels and small shrimps hang on to a meagre marine life as they know it.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.