On the land next to GZ the Cleethorpes Zoo & Marineland was founded in 1965 by Edwin Pentland Hick. It was somewhat special in the realm of British zoos in that it was the first feature built on the site, and there was no country house or similar attached to the site.
As a feeder zoo for Flamingo Park, later to become Flamingo Land, some animals were just temporarily held at Cleethorpes and were never officially on show. Species that were exhibited include: Lions, Elephants, Hippopotamus, Black Rhinoceros, Giraffe, Dromedary and Bactrian Camels, Reindeer, Arabian Gazelle, Yak, Chimpanzees, Orangutans, Silver Leaf Monkeys, Patas Monkeys, Dolphins, Californian Sealions, Elephant Seals, and Penguins. There was also a well stocked range of waterfowl ponds, a tropical house and a reptile house.
The Marineland complex comprised of three pools. The main exhibit pool was designed to display dolphins and the two supplementary pools were designed for the display of seals and sea lions. However, one of the supplementary pools was used as temporary accommodation for a Beluga Whale which passed through the zoo in early 1969. Due to delays in building a pool at Marineland in Nice, France it was used again a few months later for Calypso the Killer Whale, who arrived in Cleethorpes from Vancouver, Canada on the 30th of December 1969.
Apart from the obvious error in the newspaper above, the story of Calypso's journey was big news at the time and she is shown in this Pathe News video while in Cleethorpes:- >> link << . As well as her record breaking flight she was also, although unsuccessfully, the first Killer Whale to be artificially inseminated. With the pool in France completed Calypso was transferred to Marineland in June 1970.
The zoo closed in 1977 and the site was abandoned until the Garden Stadium was built over the south-east half of the zoo in 1981. This consisted of a stock car track surrounded by a greyhound track. Greyhound racing was last held in 1986 and after continuous complaints about noise the stadium closed completely a few years later. The north-west half of the zoo was temporarily the home of the Bomber County Aircraft Museum before the whole site was redeveloped into Pleasure Island Theme Park in 1993 . Pleasure Island closed in 2016 and the site is once again abandoned.