Southern Encounter Aquarium & Kiwi House (Cathedral Square) suffered some damage as a result of the earthquake.

However, Operations Manager, Dave Bradshaw, says things could have been much worse: "Unfortunately two fish died and there has been a lot of water damage owing to water slopping out from the tanks into the aquarium and our gift shop. Luckily we have waterproof carpet.

There is no apparent damage to any of our tanks and, pending an engineer's inspection, we hope to re-open again this Thursday."

Dedicated staff members are hard at work cleaning up the immense amount of water spillage from all of the tanks.