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The Kuroshio at Churaumi

Visitors to this aquarium get one of the biggest shows on earth.

Okinawa's wealth of nature, history and culture can be experienced at Ocean Expo Park, a place where you can even play with dolphins. Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is one of many popular attractions at the Park.

At the Aquarium, an intriguing world of marine life found in Okinawa is spread out before you. The largest fish in the world, the whale shark, and the world's first successfully bred-in-captivity manta can be seen in a gigantic tank called, "The Kuroshio Sea Tank".

The Kuroshiro whale shark is 8.5 meters (27.9 feet) long.

The manta ray you see in the lower left hand corner has the world's record for longevity in captivity.

The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium is the first to breed multiple manta rays in captivity! Manta rays swim with ease in the beautiful seas of Okinawa, but do not live long in captivity. After a manta ray is born, it is immediately moved to a Seapen (net cage) where it is raised and then later returned to the Kuroshio Tank where it can be seen swimming with its parents. Currently, six manta rays can be seen circling around in the Aquarium.

If you are more adventurous, you can also go under the water to get your own fish-eye view.

You can imagine the difficulty of creating a glass front this size. The fact is that the glass, in this case, is not glass. Glass does not have the ability to bend under this much weight and pressure. Also, if one of the whale sharks were to ram into a glass window, it could shatter, destroying the aquarium, and killing all the aquatic life, as anyone who might happen to be in the area.

So, the large window and the covering for the underwater viewing area are acrylic. The main window measures 8.2m in height, 22.5m in width, and is 60cm (2 foot 5/8 inches) thick. It holds back the pressure of 7,500 m³(264,860 cubic feet) of salt water. It is probably the largest single-piece sheet of plastic in the world, and had to be produced in such a way that there were no irregularities, no weak spots, and no spots where both surfaces are optically smooth and the clarity is anything but perfect.

Of course, just like any other aquarium, the inside of the "glass" has to be cleaned on a regular basis. But there is no brush that can be dipped into the water here to do the job, so sure enough, it has to be done by hand - from inside the tank, and it has to be done very carefully, in a way that will not put even the smallest scratch in the soft acrylic.

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If you got impressions for which this feedback is insufficient, please take a look at the following web sites for more:

The Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium website (with advanced-level feedback data.)
Wikipedia
Japan-Guide.com
Okinawa Information site
Flixxy.com (video)
Damn Cool Pictures website (LOTS of pictures)