Right now, we’re recruiting for a key role in our animal care team and on the lookout for a Senior Aquarist here at SEA LIFE Scheveningen. 

SEA LIFE is the world’s largest aquarium brand, making up a global community of marine experts and welcoming over 20 million explorers into our incredible underwater world every year. We focus on bringing the wonders of the sea to life through a fantastic visitor experience delivered by passionate, knowledgeable teams and great interactivity.

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About the role

Reporting to the Aquarium Curator, you’ll help drive the continual development and innovation within the animal display areas as well as ensuring best in class animal husbandry and welfare.

You’ll coach, motivate, and inspire a team of aquarists to undertake the vital day to day tasks involved in caring for over a thousand amazing creatures, supporting the team to achieve their own potential through ongoing training and coaching.

You’ll be ensuring our vital life support systems are always operating correctly along with driving standards of cleanliness and presentation of our displays, always striving for best in class. You’ll ensure suitable diets and feed plans are in place, as well as robust health, medication, and treatment regimens for our many species and continually develop our excellent animal welfare across the whole collection.

This role is full time and includes working a regular, fair share of weekends and public holidays as required as well as providing emergency call out cover on a roster basis.

About you

It goes without saying that you’ll already be an experienced aquarist, having a robust practical knowledge of aquatic animal husbandry, associated life support systems and public aquarium procedures, protocols and health and safety. Experience of working with caiman, otters, penguins, and sharks would also be very advantageous.

Beyond your technical expertise in animal care, what is just as important for this role is your proven experience to lead a team and get the best from them. A natural coach, with an inclusive and encouraging leadership style, your previous experience will show how you positively engage and motivate a team, support them, and inspire them to be their best.

You’ll be a self-motivated and proactive individual, as you’ll be identifying and making innovative operational changes which will evolve and continually improve our working practices. As you’ll often be deputising for the Curator, you’ll also be a pro at troubleshooting, thinking on your feet, prioritising, making decisions and ultimately taking the lead. You’ll therefore inspire confidence and credibility with the team you’ll be managing.

We’d love it if you have a good understanding of zoo licensing standards, processes, and requirements, having been through zoo licence inspections/reapplications in a previous role. Project management experience would be an advantage also and you’ll ideally be educated to degree level or equivalent in a relevant bioscience, animal care discipline.

Why join us?

When you join us, you’ll receive a competitive salary (in line with your experience), alongside holiday and public holidays (increasing with service), 25% discount in our retail shops and restaurants, travel allowance and benefits (Group Personal Pension Plan, Employee Assistance Programme). You’ll also get a Merlin Magic Pass - giving you FREE tickets to our attractions across the GLOBE!