NEWS · B1 Level - Part 1

Lonely Fish Cheered Up By Fake Visitors

Aquariums can be lonely. Just ask this sunfish.

Level: B1 · 19 sentences

Transcript

  1. Aquariums can be lonely.
  2. Just ask this sunfish.
  3. The Shimonoseki City Aquarium in the Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan,
  4. needed to undergo renovations and temporarily closed to the public in December 2024.
  5. One of the aquarium's residents, the sunfish, seemed to take the lack of human visitors hard.
  6. After a week without guests, staff said he lost his appetite.
  7. Their solution?
  8. Paste clothing and pictures of human faces to the wall of his tank,
  9. mimicking the hundreds of people who normally peer in on the fish each day.
  10. Ocean sunfish are also known as mola.
  11. They can be found in oceans all over the world,
  12. and according to National Geographic,
  13. have the distinction of being the heaviest of the bony fish.
  14. One mola can grow up to 14 ft vertically,
  15. 10 ft horizontally,
  16. and weigh in at nearly 5,000 lb.
  17. After putting up the fake visitors,
  18. aquarium workers say the highly social fish perked back up.
  19. Just one day later, he was back to eating again.