As an aquaphobic Editor, in the water is the last place Rob Davis wants to be… but this month’s challenge of feeding the sharks at The Deep made putting on a drysuit a particularly scary prospect.

When people are making a list of their life-long ambitions, everyone always states a desire to swim with dolphins – oddly enough, nobody reveals a hidden desire to swim with sharks, perhaps due to the - lets face it – pretty poor PR the species has received from the Jaws franchise. But according to the aquarists of The Deep, just over the Humber in Hull overlooking Grimsby and Immingham, the creatures are much maligned, and to prove it, they challenged me to spend a day feeding the creatures and tending to their every whim, alongside ten of the centre’s aquarists.

Opening six years ago this month to an initial influx of over 850,000 visitors (three times the expected number), the facility is constructed around a massive six inch thick acrylic tank over ten metres deep, containing 2,500,000 litres of carefully monitored water, plus 30 other tanks containing a total of 3,500 creatures, including 40 sharks.

The centre this month sees the beginning of Shark Summer, which attempts to redress the bad press the species endures – as part of the season, a host of conservation and education events will take place and a special Behind the Scenes event limited to 60 strictly booked places will enable members of the public to see exactly what the 100 full time members of staff have to do in order to retain The Deep’s reputation as the largest, most modern and most conservation minded centre of its type in the UK.

For my very own behind the scenes tour, I was invited to join Assistant Curator Katy Rigby and her team as they prepared for another day of visitors, preparing the food, feeding the sharks and cleaning their tank.

The team begins work at 8.30 each morning, and it’s all hands to the pumps as each member of staff gets to work cleaning the tanks inside and out to ensure the public gains the best view possible of the exhibits. My first job was to join Seb as he prepared over 25kg of raw squid and other fish and created the different feeding buckets for each of the tanks.

Needless to say a strong constitution is needed to handle that much raw fish so early, but with all the food prepared, and each tank looking spick and span, the morning routine of feeding and water testing could begin.