Go Here To Get A few Aquarium Tips This is the first of what will hopefully be an occasional series of articles, or jottings, or whatever, about some of the fabulous public aquaria that I have been lucky enough to visit whilst touring the world with various disreputable (okay, and reputable) bands. Places such as London, Cancun, Boston and even Isleworth (!) will hopefully get the Brennan treatment.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always loved fish. Not in the Troy MacClure way, you understand, but simply as a love of their beauty, their colours and diversity. I learned words such as “Carcharodon Carcharias” and coelacanth before I could say Dada. I don’t get out much.

Anyway, in 2000, I visited Japan three times (with The Chemical Brothers, Ocean Colour Scene, and Iron Maiden, if you must know). Each time, we visited Osaka, and had at least one day off there. I knew they had a pretty good aquarium there, but it was only when the Concierge at the hotel gave me the guide leaflet that I realised that they had a bloody great Whale Shark in the place (or should that be plaice? Sorry.)

It is very easy to get to the aquarium by train. The tube map is very easy to read IF YOU ARE JAPANESE, but once you learn how to match up various characters and hieroglyphics, you are sorted. When you get to the appropriate station, it is a very pleasant 7-8 minute walk to your goal. Americans, be at peace: there are 2 McDonald’s between the station and aquarium…you will not go hungry.

There are two easy landmarks to look for: firstly, one of the biggest Ferris wheels in the world is perched directly over the building, and secondly (for the rock & rollers amongst you), it is just next door to a club gig called “Bayside Jenny’s”. On the way to the aquarium, you will notice how important this shark is to the city. Virtually all of the advertising is based around the big beasty. This, as you will see shortly, is a PLOT POINT.

The aquarium’s theme is based around the “Ring of Fire”. This is the ring which encompasses the area from the West Coast of North America, the Poles and the East coast of Asia- including, of course, Japan. It is a region of high volcanic and tectonic activity- hence the name, “Ring of Fire”.

You enter through a fabulous tunnel of small marine fish, and a few rays. The colours and choice of fish are quite beautifully made, and serve merely to whet the appetite.

After going past a huge copy of a fossilised turtle shell, you travel up a large escalator to the main body of the aquarium. There is a tropical forest setting with sea otters darting around, and some sort of crab, forever scuttling up a waterfall, and constantly getting washed off again. Don’t ask me why.

The next part of the journey takes in many and varied life-forms, ranging from penguins standing under snow-making machines, to otters again, this time running in and out of fake mammal rib-cages. This only gave me the giggles, because I remember the Monty Python sketch from “Holy Grail” where the rabbit is surrounded by a plethora of human skeletons. As I say, I don’t get out much.

Small alligators, tropical shoals, iguanas, and even tree sloths welcome you over the next few hundred feet. The settings are generally good, and the animals healthy, but I must confess that I did kinda hurry through these tanks, because of what I knew was coming soon. I then came to the only exhibit that caused me a problem. There was a tank with about eight Pacific White-sided Dolphins. They were magnificent, but their enclosure was woefully small. A similar argument could be made for the seal and sea-lion enclosure, but they, at least had an area of dry land in addition to their wet environment, to break up the monotony.

The whole aquarium is based around the huge Pacific tank, and it is enormous. The path through the aquarium uses this tank as the hub about which you descend, with the other exhibits in tanks around the external edge of the building, or in small cul-de-sacs off the main route. This means you keep spotting the main tank almost at every turn. And so to the main event.

I fell in love. I know I love sharks, and any “shark encounter” or “shark experience” is always the focus of my visit, but this was different. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was a twenty-foot long male whale shark. As I came into the viewing area, it was doing a right to left swim past. Its colouration was awesome, truly beating any wildlife photography hands down. A school of remoras, and several other smaller fish, hanging around to grab any bits of flaking skin, or parasites that may come by accompanied it.

After what seemed like an age, I finally noticed some of the other wonders in the tank. This also did not disappoint. I had to do a double take. There were two Manta rays, swimming as if they were flying effortlessly around the place. Various other large rays, pelagic and bottom-dwelling sharks by the dozen, several types of tuna, lumpheads, fish by the score. It was a wonderful, active, living attraction, and always dominated by the peaceful giant swimming around the surface.

Other features that I especially enjoyed included the Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola, to give it its Latin name), which lived inside a special slatted plastic shield inside its tank. I can only presume that this was to stop it bumping into the tank wall, due to poor eyesight. Flash photography was not allowed either in this section.

As you went towards the end of the route, a relatively small tank held a couple of dozen deep water Japanese crabs, which looked for the world like the face-huggers from “Alien” or the creature from John Carpenters “The Thing” which up-ends a victim’s head, and scuttles off with it. There was also a pair of deep-sea seven-gill sharks, swimming serenely about.

They were basically the highlights to my first trip to the aquarium. I bought a camcorder for my second trip, which was just as memorable, but the third trip was memorable for a different reason. I had been banging on to the Maiden crew for weeks about this damned shark, and so eventually one of the boys came with me. We got to the tank, and my first thought was that “he’s bloody shrunk!” All that time in the water had finally taken its toll, or something, I thought. It was no more than twelve feet long and a lot more slender in build. The feeling of dread (or, to be more honest, “Oh shit, I’m going to get the piss ripped out of me”) was inescapable. I cornered one of the guides and tried to find out what happened. It turns out that it had developed a stomach infection and finally died six weeks before!! A combination of sorrow for that magnificent fish was tempered by the inescapable knowledge that I was not going to be allowed to forget this for a loooooooooong time.

I was right.

As I said before, the (now deceased) whale shark featured heavily in the city’s advertising. It dies, big panic. It would appear that as soon as my friend was dead, they had to dash out with the biggest shrimping net you’ve ever seen, and catch another of these beautiful fish. Ahhhhh, commerce.

In conclusion, this was just about the most extensive aquarium that I’ve been to in the world. There have been bigger, and possibly more attractive, especially from the outside, but I still loved it very much.

I hope to write further (shorter) pieces about my fishy exploits, if anyone is interested. They help me to remember some good days out on tour, away from the usual bar/pub/restaurant/bed with a hangover vibe that we all know so well. I hope you enjoy them. What’s that? The title of this piece? Well, what else do you do with a twenty-foot long hunk of fish bait?

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