Sea Angels of Hokkaido

Table of Contents

1 Did you hear about the “Sea Angels” ?
2 Okhotsk Ryu-hyo Museum
3 Information

Did you hear about the “Sea Angels” ?

The story is about Abashiri city in Hokkaido.

Abashiri city is a tiny city on the north-east coast of Hokkaido.
Abashiri located by Okhotsk Sea (which is located between Russia and Hokkaido. The sea is named after Okhotsk, the first Russian settlement in the Far East).

In winter, this sea is covered with sea ice (drift ice). This sea ice occurs when the cold air freezes the surface of the sea. It ranges from 10cm to 1m thick.

In the drift ice that appears only in winter, there mysterious creatures living there, that looks like angels, they called – Clione クリオネ

they appears when drift ice comes along the coast of Hokkaido and disappears as the drift ice decreases.

Clione are tiny creatures that companion to sea snails without shells.
The entire body of Clione is translucent, and the red area in the middle of its body contains digestive organs.

They are very adorable while swimming, but when they are eating, they became less adorable…

The Clione eats Mijinukimaimai, which is the same genus of sea snail. When Clione eats, its head splits into two, and it stretches its six tentacles to catch food. It sounds a bit scary, doesn’t it? Like a parasyte.

Clione look like little angels because of its adorable appearance of swimming. And that is why their second name is “Sea Angels”

Okhotsk Ryu-hyo Museum

You can see the Sea Angels of Hokkaido – Cliones – all the year long at Okhotsk Ryu-hyo Museum

The building has 4 floors.
The underground floor is the museum one, include aquarium area, with Clione and other fishes. So the museum itself is small, only one floor.

In the museum you can also experience in a simulated drift ice room where the temperature is set at -15c°. In the room they offer an experiment which called “Shibare experiment” , they give you a wet towel and tell you to spin the wet towel for few seconds. The wet towel is frozen as a bar.

The aquarium area also include other interesting fishes

The first floor include the entrance area, Clione cafe with Clione Soft cream and gift store with Clione goods.
On the second floor, there is restaurant with beautiful view of Okhotsk Sea.

There is also an observation deck at the 3rd floor, adjacent to the museum which gives you a perfect view of the natural heritage registered Shiren Peninsula, Akan Mountains and the Sea of Okhotsk.
When we visited there, the obervation deck was closed due to the strong winds, so we took a pictures from the window.