Aquarium sticks human photos to “lonely” sunfish tank

A social sunfish that was missing its human audience during the temporary closure of a Japanese aquarium has been comforted in an unorthodox way.

A photo posted by the Kaikyokan Aquarium in Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture shows a sunfish swimming in front of pictures of human faces attached to a row of uniforms.

The move was a “last resort” to address the sunfish’s health problems, which a worker believed stemmed from loneliness, the aquarium said in an X account earlier this month.

And apparently it worked. “Looks like he’s in good health again!” aquarius wrote in X the next day.

After the aquarium closed for renovations in December, the sunfish stopped eating jellyfish and started rubbing its body against the tank, the Mainichi Shimbun reported on Monday.

Some of the workers initially suspected parasites or digestive problems, but one of them suggested that the fish might be alone without visitors appearing in its tank.

Sunfish, found in all the world’s oceans, is a delicacy in Japan. They are believed to be able to live up to 10 years in captivity, although they are not usually found in aquariums due to the extreme care required to house them.

The Kaikyokan sunfish is about 80cm (31in) long and weighs almost 30kg (66lb).

Staff member Mai Kato told the Mainichi Shimbun that the sunfish, which arrived at the aquarium a year ago, had a “strange” nature and would “swim towards visitors when they approached the tank”.

After the photos and uniforms went up, the next day the fish “felt better” and were seen “flapping their fins” in the tank, the aquarium said in its X release.

The post has received a lot of support from social media users. Some shared pictures and videos of sunfish on previous visits, while others promised to go see the aquarium when it reopened.

This is not the first time that a Japanese aquarium has proposed innovative solutions to entertain the animals under its care.

During the pandemic, zoos around the world reported that their animals were becoming lonely due to lack of visitorsIt was organized by an aquarium in Tokyo “emergency” video call event for his angularthey thought he had become uncomfortable with humans after not seeing him for a long time.