The unique underwater attraction hidden beneath a museum in Greater Manchester

While Bolton is known best for birthing Peter Kay and introducing pasty barms to the world, its revolutionary underground aquarium can sometimes fly under the radar.

The Bolton Aquarium, which celebrated its eightieth birthday last year, has welcomed millions of visitors over the years and today houses over seventy varieties of unique and exotic sea creatures from all over the world.

Prior to the Covid pandemic, the aquarium would welcome over 100,000 visitors each year to its home beneath the Bolton Museum on Le Mans Crescent and, as the world slowly reopens after two years in and out of lockdowns, the aquarium is officially back open for business.

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While the museum took a heavy focus on British species of fish when it first opened in 1941 – obviously, exotic species were hard to get a hold of in those days – today visitors can marvel at a whole range of fish species ranging from far-flung countries such as Costa Rica, Peru, Malaysia, Madagascar and Africa. 

A number of these species are endangered in the wild and in need of conservational support such as the Pygmy Glass, one of the smallest fishes in the world.

Read More: Chester Zoo help bring rare ‘tequila fish’ back from extinction and reintroduce it into the wild

Over the years, this particular fish has gained a lot of attention from scientists and conservationists on the look out to find reliable breeding methods to help medical science.

Another fish that has proven popular with visitors is the fierce Red-Bellied Piranha; according to legend, anyone who enters the water in the Amazon region where these fish are found runs the risk of being eaten alive in mere seconds.

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Though over in Bolton, the truth is much less gory as the piranhas are kept nice and happy on a diet of small fish.

Bolton Aquarium also houses the unique and somewhat sinister-looking Ornate Bichir, a snake-like fish native to the swamps of central Africa, near the Congo River.

This species belongs to an ancient group of fish that was believed to have been in existence around the same time as dinosaurs. And now you can find a couple of them in Bolton, who’d have thought it?

And one of the most easily recognisable fish in the aquarium’s collection is the Oreochromis niloticus or Nile Tilapia, a fish that originates in the river Nile in Egypt.

These fish are often seen depicted in hieroglyph drawings in ancient Egyptian tombs, and were a great source of food for Egyptian slaves as they built the Pyramids.

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Looking after these exotic creatures is no easy task, however, so Bolton Aquarium prides itself on recreating authentically natural environments and keeping the tanks as close to the fish’s natural habitats as possible.

The Peruvian fish are all kept in tanks that replicate a similar environment to small streams found in Peru, complete with shallow waters, native plants and fallen leaves.

The Indian displays, meanwhile, have bright lighting and contain rocks and wood to give the fish the kind of shelter they’d find in their natural habitats. Images and video from local experts who live near the rivers were used to recreate this to the closest proximity.

For more information on the Bolton Aquarium and to read more about its collection of marine life, visit the Bolton Library and Museum Services website.