At the center of Kagoshima Prefecture lies Kagoshima Bay. Locals call it Kinko Bay(錦江湾), I’m told.
It formed when seawater flowed into a caldera created by a massive eruption tens of thousands of years ago. Sakurajima is a newer volcano that grew up on its edge.
In other words, Kinko Bay is a sea sitting on volcanic terrain. Maybe that’s why its ecosystem is a bit unusual. Some creatures here apparently live thanks to volcanic gas bubbling up from the seabed.
A fascinating place.
There’s a place that preserves and studies this Kagoshima marine ecosystem, and shares what it learns with the public.
It’s Io World Kagoshima City Aquarium(いおワールドかごしま水族館).
:: The Aquarium, a Perfect Place to Hide Indoors From the Heat
Day two in Kagoshima. This is already my fifth visit, so there wasn’t anywhere in particular I wanted to go sightseeing. Still, I couldn’t just lie around in the hotel room.
After lunch at Friend&Bird, I headed to the Kagoshima aquarium.
I’m not all that interested in looking at fish in aquariums. But in midsummer heat like this, it’s better to plan mostly indoor activities, right? That’s why I picked it.
I paid the 2,000-yen adult admission and went in. Even though it was a weekday, there were tons of kids. Probably because it was summer vacation.
Pushed along by the crowd, I ended up at the dolphin pool. According to the dolphin show schedule on the wall, the show would start in five minutes.
Very lucky.
:: Dolphins That Looked Like They Were Having Fun
It had been a very long time since I’d seen a dolphin show. The dolphins swam fast around the small pool, then jumped very high on the trainers’ hand signals. They looked like they were having fun. It didn’t feel like they were suffering, kept in a cramped space.
Maybe it was my own mood, enjoying the trip, projected onto them. But in their jumps, their movements, and their expressions, I clearly felt something like joy and excitement, a response to the encouragement and cheers of the audience and trainers.
I’m told the Kagoshima aquarium has a unique channel. It’s called the Iruka Channel(イルカ水路). It connects the aquarium to the sea of Kinko Bay, and through it the dolphins can feel the bay outside the aquarium just as it is. So when the dolphins come out into the Iruka Channel, you can see them from the outdoor area outside the aquarium, too.
Is it because they’re not just shut inside the aquarium and can feel the sea? I don’t know the details. And I can’t actually know how the dolphins feel. But that’s how I felt.
That the dolphins were happily putting on the show.
:: A Whale Shark Sent Back to the Sea Before It’s Fully Grown
After the dolphin show, I started the aquarium visit proper. Take the escalator up, and a huge tank appears: the Gigantic Kuroshio Fish Tank(黒潮大水槽). To be honest, it’s no match for the overwhelming impression of the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium. You have to admit what’s true.
The tank is a bit small, but the view is much more worth seeing than I expected. If you haven’t seen Churaumi yet, I think you can get a similar feeling here. You’ll see from the photos. It really is quite a sight.
The whale shark swimming in the tank is named Yuyu(ユウユウ). It’s on the smaller side compared to other aquariums. That could be because of the tank’s size, of course, but apparently it’s because the Kagoshima aquarium raises whale sharks a bit differently.
The Kagoshima aquarium only cares for a whale shark until it reaches 5.5m, then releases it back into the sea. This is called the “Kagoshima method.” Caring for them only while they’re young, and returning them to the sea before they grow big.
I think it’s a method that makes perfect sense.
:: A Lounge With a View of Sakurajima
After walking around on your feet for a long while along the route, you reach a lounge on the fourth floor. It’s a place where you can see Sakurajima across the sea through the window. In Kagoshima, you can see Sakurajima from anywhere, I’m telling you.
You can buy a drink from a vending machine and sit down to rest. After over an hour of standing and looking around, my legs were starting to hurt, so I was glad there was a lounge.
On one wall, a skeletal specimen of a Longman’s beaked whale is on display. It was once considered the rarest whale on Earth. One was found alive on the Japanese coast, and after it died, it has been kept here.
I chose the aquarium to escape the heat, without much interest or expectation, but it turned out to be a good choice. I got to see lots of sea creatures for the first time in a while. The whole visit took about two hours.
Since it was summer vacation, there were a lot of families with kids. Overall, it was crowded enough that the aquarium felt full of people.
That said, it wasn’t so busy that it got in the way of seeing things. It was the kind of crowd where people could look around while being considerate of each other.
