  This paper reports some advances in the study of the symplectic blob algebra.
We find a presentation for this algebra. We find a minimal poset for this as a
quasi-hereditary algebra. We discuss how to reduce the number of parameters
defining the algebra from 6 to 4 (or even 3) without loss of representation
theoretic generality. We then find some non-semisimple specialisations by
calculating Gram determinants for certain cell modules (or standard modules)
using the good parametrisation defined. We finish by considering some quotients
of specialisations of the symplectic blob algebra which are isomorphic to
Temperley--Lieb algebras of type $A$.
