By KO MATSUDA/ Staff Writer
April 1, 2016 at 17:00 JST
Editor's note: This is part of a series of videos offering an up-close perspective on the animal kingdom. A special 360-degree video camera system was set up in zoos and other facilities to show how the animals view their world as they interact.
Also visit our special 360-DEGREE LIVES page (http://t.asahi.com/360lives), where you can watch all the previous videos.
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Clione, called a “fairy in drift ice,” float upward by drifting along with the flow of the water.
Their bodies are red and translucent, and they swim as if they are flying. When as many as 1,000 cliones are in motion, the scene is spectacular.
At Yokohama Hakkeijima Sea Paradise aquarium in Yokohama’s Kanazawa Ward, a special clione exhibition was held that cast a magical spell over visitors.
“They are very small and cute. Their scenes are dreamy and romantic,” says Chizuko Yamamoto, a homemaker from Niigata Prefecture, north of Tokyo.
The water temperature in the clione tank is 5 degrees or lower. Bathed in lighting and curtains whose base color is blue, the tank stands in a dreamy space like that under the sea.
In the water tank, a camera was installed that can shoot a video of the half celestial sphere at a 360-degree angle.
The video shows cliones appearing one after another from below, making viewers feel as if they are swimming along with them.
Clione are 2 to 3 centimeters in length. They live in the Okhotsk Sea off Hokkaido, northern Japan. They swim by using “limbs” called pteropod.
When visitors see them, they become fully aware why they are also called “sea angel” in English.
Though clione are called angels, they feed by extending their tentacles from their heads, making some say that clione have changed to devils.
Clione are fussy about their food. Currently it is difficult to obtain their main food source, limacina helicina, a kind of sea snail.
Therefore, the aquarium cannot give it to them, according to So Abe, a lead keeper.
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