Aquarium vs. Nature

During my vacation in Okinawa, I had the opportunity to observe fish in two very different settings: an aquarium and the ocean.

I visited Churaumi aquarium in Okinawa for two main reasons. First because it has one of the biggest aquarium tanks worldwide. And second because it is an indoor activity that can keep you occupied on a rainy day :-).

The first thing you encounter when entering Churaumi is a tank with an open top where you can touch several types of starfish and sea cucumber. One part of me was fascinated by the opportunity to actually feel the texture of sea animals (I'm one of those people who has to touch things to really get a feel for them - if you want to keep me occupied, just put me in a toy store with stuffed animals...). But another part of me kept thinking about the living conditions these animals have to endure. They are constantly pushed around, there is no place to retreat, and huge monsters keep intruding into their personal space. Is this any way to treat a living being?

The hands-on tank in Churaumi

As I continued through the aquarium, I kept having similar thoughts again and again. Seeing all these fish perched into tanks that are way too small, often with next to no attempt at recreating a natural habitat... that's just cruel. Even the main tank - a huge tank containing 7.500 cubic meters of water - is little more than a paddling pool for the huge whale sharks and manta rays kept there.

Viewed from this perspective, the main tank surely seems to be huge - at least in comparison to the size of humans

Viewed from the top, and in comparison to the size of a whale shark (on the left-hand side of the image), the tank suddenly seems a lot smaller

To top it off, the aquarium also has a dolphin show. It was my first time watching a dolphin show, and hopefully the last time, too. I recently watched a documentary about how animals are treated by humans, and the training of circus animals is one part of it. As you might guess, they don't use patience, love and rewards to teach them, but rather pain and punishment. No wonder that at least one of the dolphins tried to escape during a show last year.

A few days later, I went on a snorkeling tour. There, I discovered that the behavior of fish in their natural environment is completely different from the behavior they exhibit in captivity. In aquarium tanks, they apathetically swim in circles all the time, without any real interest in their surroundings, just to have something to do. In the ocean, they are much more lively, nibbling on a bit of coral here, ducking behind some coral there, and vanishing in one of the many small openings between coral when they feel the least bit threatened.

No question that I'll choose snorkeling or diving over aquarium visits in the future!

Tropical fish up close

We even saw a shark - a whitetip reef shark - about 120cm long and not known to attack swimmers ;-)

As I don't own an underwater camera, the underwater pictures have been shot by Mike, my guide on the kayaking/snorkeling tour.