Japan Images: Beluga White Whale

Tuesday, November 30th, 2010

On one of our last days in Japan, we decided to head down to Yokohama’s Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, which is about an hour’s train ride from Tokyo with a few line changes along the way and ending with the Sea Paradise monorail.

The park features heaps of rides and the standard theme park attractions but the most exciting part (for me) was the huge aquariums that house over 100,000 sea creatures of all shapes and sizes including sharks, stingrays, dolphins and several beautiful Beluga white whales.

The Beluga featured here was housed in a massive cylindrical glass tank in a standalone feature called Dolphin Fantasy. While I don’t completely agree that these intelligent creatures should be locked away, he did seem well cared for and there were a couple of external tanks where they seemed to get a good run around…or swim around as the case may be ^_^

My favourite part of the image was the sun breaking through the top of tank to strike his/her head at exactly the right moment.

Hakkeijima Sea Paradise, Yokohama: Photo Location

View Yokohama’s Hakkeijima Sea Paradise in a larger map

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Tariq

Look at the pretty fishy!! ^.^

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AdelaideBen

That's a beautiful shot... of a beautiful animal. I agree to often being in two minds when I go to Japanese zoos... or any zoo for that matter. Is this really such a good thing to keep these animals locked in a prison for our amusement? Or is the value in teaching people about animals (even if almost through osmosis) outweighs this. I suppose it's good to put a hold on those thoughts, and just enjoy it when you're there.