How do you cheer up a lonely fish? Wait, fish don’t get lonely.
Or do they? It’s difficult to know for sure, but one aquarium in Japan seems to think, in fact, they just might.
The Kaikyokan Aquarium in Shimonoseki, southern Japan closed on December 1st, 2024 for renovations. Within a few weeks, their 30-plus kilogram ocean sunfish began exhibiting strange behavior.
It stopped eating its jellyfish meals, and would frequently rub its narrow, lumpy body against the tank. Parasites or digestive problems were suspected.
“We couldn’t figure out the cause and took various measures, but one of the staff members said, ‘Maybe it’s lonely because it misses the visitors?’ We thought 99% chance ‘No way!’” said the aquarium in a post on X.
“But we attached the uniforms of the staff members (to the tank). Then…the next day, it was in good health again!”
Cardboard cutouts of the staff members’ faces were taped onto the tank, while the uniforms hung from suction-cupped hooks. Seems like they’d hardly fool a lion or monkey, but they brought the sunfish back ’round again.
“The sunfish was popular (among visitors) before the renovations. It’s curious and would swim up to visitors when they approached the tank,” Mai Kato, a 26-year-old exhibit staff member, told the English language Mainichi Shimbun.
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Ocean sunfish live in semi-tropical and tropical oceans all over the world. The strange bony fish can grow to behemoth sizes, but the one at Kaikyokan is still a small fry at just shy of three feet long.
“I hope many people take interest in the sunfish, and when the renovation work is finished, I’d like visitors to wave to it in front of the tank,” Kato added. The aquarium is scheduled to reopen this summer.
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CNN reports that this isn’t the first story of a Japanese aquarium making headlines for cheering up fish. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, staff at the Sumida Aquarium in Tokyo video-called their spotted garden eels, allegedly for the same reason, as they were becoming increasingly recluse without the presence of visitors.
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