Undiscovered Scotland

 

At the time of our most recent visit, in April 2026, Macduff Marine Aquarium was closed for a very significant expansion. Three of the images on this page give a sense of the scale of the work. As a result, the rest of the page is significantly out of date and will be updated when we have been able to revisit.

Macduff Marine Aquarium occupies a circular building right next to the sea in the fishing port of Macduff on Aberdeenshire's north coast. The shore here looks out onto the Moray Firth, the broad inlet of the North Sea that bites deeply into north-eastern Scotland and whose coastlines extends west from Fraserburgh and south-west from Duncansby Head before (almost) coming together at Inverness.

But while it is possible to gaze out over the Moray Firth, gaining an understanding of what goes on beneath the surface is rather more difficult. Unless you visit the Macduff Marine Aquarium, whose role is to allow visitors to see much more of the sea life of the Moray Firth.

The layout of the aquarium is fascinating. Think "doughnut". The doughnut is sliced into by a glass roofed segment on its car park side, and this is where you find the visitor reception and shop. The rest of the doughnut is a structure roofed in grey slate, and this is home to most of the exhibition areas, through which visitors move in an anti-clockwise direction. (Continues below images...)

 

But what really makes Macduff Marine Aquarium special is what is happening in the centre of the doughnut. As you approach the aquarium you get the impression that it has some sort of volcanic crater at its core, surrounded by a lining of artificial rock. In fact, the core of the aquarium is home to a cylindrical tank of seawater, open to the sky and holding 400,000 litres of water. Welcome to the deepest seawater tank in Scotland, and one of the deepest in Europe. The seawater used in the main central tank, and in the other tanks within the aquarium, is pumped from the sea into underground reservoirs and filtered and cleaned before use.

Other attractions include watching the fish being fed, something that happens five or six times per week. It is also, especially at weekends, possible to find divers in the central tank ensuring that the algae encouraged by the direct sunlight through the open top is cleaned off the glass.