City News

A month long celebration of the heroic dads of the marine world starts Fathers Day at the National Sea Life Centre.  

Dads will also be offered free admission for themselves any day between June 20th and July 31st.

The oceans abound with fishy superdads, from seahorse fathers who give birth to arowana dads who both incubate eggs and guard their offspring in their mouths!

“Of course every human dad is a hero to his own children as well,” said the Birmingham attraction’s display supervisor Lynsey Thompson.

“So we’ll kick off our festival of fab’ fishy dads by letting every father in free on Father’s Day, when accompanied by the kids.”

Seahorses and arowanas both feature at the Centre, as does Ozzy the electric eel who uses his own saliva to build a nest in which his partner can lay as many as 10,000 eggs.

Even the lowly three-spined stickleback male is a hero dad. He builds an elaborate nest platform which his partners lays her eggs on, then wraps it up carefully to safeguard against predators.

And with a miraculous sub-marine sixth sense he unravels it again just before those eggs hatch.

“Lumspucker dads are another example,” said Lynsey. “The female lays her eggs in the shallows then swims back out to deeper water leaving the male to guard the eggs, which he does at the expense of feeding himself.

“When they hatch several weeks later and his job is done, he generally dies of starvation.”

These and other paternal exploits beneath the waves will be highlighted in the Centre’s talks programme from Father’s Day on.