Sea Life Centre Aquarium Says "So Long Suckers"

By John Filmer 

Blackpool, UK - The curtain has fallen on a thirty-legged attraction at Blackpool Sea Life Centre.

The hugely successful ‘Suckers’ exhibition, starring a quartet of octopuses and some of their close relatives is being dismantled to make way for a fresh new feature ‘Scary Monsters.’

Giant pacific and Californian long-armed octopuses have already moved out…but there is good news for admirers of Henry the Hexapus, the unique six-legged octopus who captured national headlines on his arrival last March.

Henry will shortly be moving to a cosy retirement tank behind the scenes in which he will see out the rest of his days.

“Henry has grown very inactive and his appetite has shrunk, which is usually the first sign that an octopus is reaching the end of its natural lifespan,” said displays supervisor Carey Duckhouse.

“Rather than send him onto another Sea Life centre therefore, we will look after him in quarantine where he can see out his final days as peacefully as possible.”

Tony the common octopus is also staying in Blackpool, however.

He will be transferred to one of the Centre’s other public display tanks when the new residents arrive for Scary Monsters.

“After Jellyfish in 2007, we were excited to get Suckers, having only ever had one octopus on site before. It was great to learn more about them and spend time getting to know them”, she added.

“They are such intelligent creatures the whole team here grew very fond of all of them, and we’re delighted that Henry and Tony will be staying.”

Carey and her colleagues are nonetheless extremely excited about the new creatures destined for seafront stardom in the Scary Monsters exhibit.

“It will be a line-up of the weird, the scary and the downright creepy,” she said.

The Centre has already revealed that one of the creatures featured will be one of the world’s biggest creepy-crawlies…a 30 cm long sub-marine relative of the wood louse.

Scary Monsters is set to open at Easter.