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AQUARIUMS
‘DELIVER
SIGNIFICANT
HEALTH
BENEFITS’
People who spend time in aquariums could improve their physical and mental well- “As you might expect, people felt a lot more relaxed and significantly happier after
being, a study has suggested. As well as improving people’s mood, the experiment watching the tank with more fish - in other words with more biodiversity - and
showed “significant” reductions in participants’ heart rates and blood pressure, there were significant drops in heart rates and significantly lower blood pressure.
the authors added. “Most of the physiological changes happened within the first five minutes and
then plateaued out, so it happened quite quickly and then stabilized. However,
Previous studies have linked contact with nature and improved wellbeing but this the psychological measures showed that the benefits continued over the entire
study is believed to be the first controlled experiment of its kind. The findings ap- exposure - people got happier and happier, basically.”
pear in the journal Environment and Behavior.
“Generally, people felt happier in parks that had more birds or more butterflies, In order to rule out the possibility that the participants were responding to the
although people did not really appreciate the levels of biodiversity.” biodiversity in the tanks rather than the tranquil environment, the first set of data
was gathered while the participants looked at an empty tank, which only contained
Dr. White said that there were a number of reasons why the team of researchers rocks and lighting etc.
from the ECEHH, Plymouth University and the National Marine Aquarium were
interested in the potential impact of aquariums on people’s wellbeing. The experiments were carried out during the day while the aquarium was open so
“Firstly, we were particularly interested in aquatic environments,” he said. people taking part in the experiment were experiencing the normal conditions of
the aquarium, such as noise etc.
“Obviously most people cannot see different kinds of fish because they do not dive Dr. White added: “The first thing to notice is that people relaxed, even watching an
etc., so aquariums are a nice way to make the invisible marine environment just empty tank, and the benefits increased as we introduced more fish over the course
outside our doors visible and accessible. of about a four-week period.”
“What we were able to do here was - as far as we know in the world’s first controlled The team was interested in exploring whether the experiment’s results could be
experiment: we knew exactly the number of species and the number of [fish] that replicated in a medical setting.
people were looking at, and they were systematically altered over time - monitor “For example, if we were to put a live (video) link into Derriford (the local hospital)
people’s heart rate, blood pressure and various changes in mood over a 10-min- into waiting rooms or even into some of the wards and we could show clinically
ute period while they watched the very large tank (500,000 liters), “ Dr. White meaningful reductions in heart rate and blood pressure among specific groups,
explained. such as hypertension for example, it could be really important for medical reasons,”
Dr. White suggested.
20 INTERNATIONAL
Friday, July 31 2015 - ARUBA TRAVELLER
