The Importance of Being Passionate

During the last few weeks I have visited two different aquariums: Silent World in Tenby and Tropical World which is very near where we live in Leeds.

Silent World was created in an old chapel sixteen years ago by a family with a passion. It’s not very big: a floor of tanks downstairs, with fish and amphibians: recreations of pond and sea.

Upstairs there is good coffee, and a parrot, and lots of reptiles. The owners are always on hand and are happy to talk about any of their creatures. The animals are well-looked after and the owners seem to know about all of them, from tiny baby starfish to really very big snakes. My favourites are the seahorses which twine their tails around each other and float gracefully round the tank.

Because the owners are full of enthusiasm, they are keen to impart as much knowledge as possible and share their interest with the visitors. Hence the labels, which are well-written, informative, often funny and tell you where to look for each creature. “This frog is not dead. He likes to hang in the water like this.”

Every time I visit Silent World I notice families clustered round the labels, reading them, looking at the fish, referring back to the label, discussing it all. Although the aquarium is small, it takes a long time to look at it all properly, and we always visit twice in the week to see the things we’ve missed.

Tropical World in Leeds is much bigger, with fewer, larger creatures. They do seem to be well-looked-after. Nobody, however, seems to be interested in telling the public much about them. The labels are commercially-produced, badly-written and dull.

It tells us nothing about these particular zebra finches, and has a curiously distancing effect. People just point and go “Aren’t they cute?” or “Ooh, there’s a funny-looking fish!” There’s never anyone around to talk about the creatures with the visitors. Every time I visit I long to find the Person in Charge and feed them to the piranhas.

Then I would replace the Person in Charge with someone who’s passionately interested in it all and wants to communicate that interest to the public.

Small-scale, individual passion wins out over municipal grandeur every time.