A new aquarium called Mare Nostrum will open on the south coast of France on 15 December.

The visitor attraction – located on a 19-acre leisure complex near the city of Montpellier – will feature an 8-metre cylindrical aquarium complete with a jellyfish tank, a Poseidon grotto with red coral, a submarine fault with groupers and moray eels and a seagrass tank filled with bass, bream and mullet fish species as well as Mediterranean flora and fauna.

The aquarium’s huge oceanic tank will offer a panoramic view of the ocean, filled with hammerhead, sand tiger and gray sharks as well as barracudas and spotted eagle rays.

A zone called the Cape on the Southern Seas will comprise a realistic wheelhouse where visitors can experience a hurricane in the roaring forties, while a Patagonian landscape reached via an ice grotto will house a colony of penguins.

The Deep Sea Explorer experience will provide the atmosphere of a submarine engine, 3,000 metres under the sea, where tube-dwelling anemones, nautilus, giant isopods and Japanese spider crabs make their homes.

An educational area will provide tactile tanks, where activity leaders will bring the experience alive for children, while a 50-seat snack bar will offer a view of the aquarium’s lagoon and tropical forest.