The 2024 academic year has begun, but have you all been fully prepared for the start of a new school year or new semester? Some of you may be very prepared, while others may be feeling a bit overwhelmed. So, this time, I'd like to introduce the preparations that the aquarium staff, especially the Education and Outreach Section to which I belong, make before the aquarium opens.

When you think of the preparations that aquarium staff make before opening, what comes to mind? Cleaning the tanks? Preparing the food? Of course, many staff members do cleaning and preparing the food. But that's not all. They do a lot of other preparations as well. One of them is... "patrolling"!

Some of you might think, "Is that all?", but it's actually a very important part of the preparation. From here, I'll introduce some of the points that the education and outreach staff pay attention to during their morning rounds.

First, we observe the health of the animals. If an animal becomes unwell and needs to be temporarily moved to a tank in the back, the animal care and exhibit staff will contact us, but if we observe them beforehand, we can quickly understand the situation. If public viewing is suspended, we remove the labels from the exhibit animals near their tanks. For newly introduced animals, we put the labels back on once their health is stable.


The process of changing labels
The second is observing their daily behavior, such as spawning in the tanks. If there are any points we want visitors to notice that day, we immediately post explanations or talk about them in guided talks. We also show videos introducing observation points above some of the tanks in the "World's Oceans" area, and we sometimes change the content of these videos depending on the situation on that day. We also gather information from the animal care and exhibit staff to make sure we haven't overlooked anything.

There are things to see both inside and outside the aquarium!
If you pay attention to the area around the tanks and the content of the guide, you might discover something interesting that you didn't see on your last visit. The aquarium is fully prepared and awaits your arrival this year!

[Tokyo Sea Life Park]

◎Related News
・ Here are some cleaning tools to help you keep your aquarium clean! (April 8, 2022)
・ What you can see from the "catwalk"—the contents of the bucket (October 12, 2018)

(April 19, 2024)