Poole: Sea-life mural celebrates aquarium creator

The mural of marine animals and plants has been painted on the side of a three-storey shop

A mural to celebrate a marine biologist has been painted on the side of a shop in a coastal town.

Philip Henry Gosse grew up and explored the sea-life around Poole, Dorset, in the 1800s, creating scale drawings of his finds.

He came up with the word "aquarium" and created the first glass public aquarium in Regent's Park in London in 1853.

The artwork, spanning three storeys on 58 High Street, is set to be unveiled later.

Artist Ricky Also came up the design for the mural from Gosse’s drawings of marine animals and plants

Depicting a fish, a crab and a jellyfish, it has been painted over four days by local artist Ricky Also.

He said: "Gosse created so much beautiful artwork it was easy to piece it together to create a new composition for the wall.

"By recreating Gosse's artworks, as true to his as possible but at a scale they have never been seen before, we're showing them in an environment that is as alien as they would have appeared to human audiences when first published."

Gosse came up with the aquarium to keep marine life, specifically a sea anemone, alive in seawater

The mural has been paid for by Historic England and Poole Business Improvement District.

It forms part of the Poole High Streets Heritage Action Zone programme (HAZ), run in partnership with Historic England and BCP Council.

A blue plaque was unveiled at Skinner Street Church, near his former home, to commemorate Gosse in 2021.