Keepers at Tokyo’s Sumida Aquarium, which has been closed since 1 March due to the coronavirus pandemic, are asking people to call in for a sub-aqua video chat and remind the eels that humans are friendly. -BBC Newsbeat

In the end the idea of Facetiming the eels 
held more delight than actually 
Facetiming the eels because 
once I got through to them, and it took 
a while for my turn, I didn’t know 
what to say. Such a big responsibility 
to remind those shy squiggles, willowy
those licorice whips, pencil-thick
and frond those empty kite strings 
drifting in their tanks,
that humans are a friendly bunch,
especially when, as it turns out,
we aren’t, certainly not 
to them who, in their natural
warming habitat, are umbrellaed beneath
a floating island of our plastic trash.
How could I explain anything 
to those swaying captives, my face 
hovering from a suspended iPad, no body 
to speak of above the grains of sand from which 
the eels unspooled themselves, lengthening 
and leaning toward the screen.
I arranged my face to be happy 
to see them, or at least neutral, nothing 
to fear, and I gestured a little, threw
up my hands to say Yeah, me too, I get it, this
is weird. Mostly we just stared 
Am I frozen? 
Can you see me?
until it seemed we had said all there was
to say. I didn’t promise to call back 
and instead imagined 
their tiny frowns lifting just a bit 
as we argued like new lovers 
at the end of a long distance call: 
You hang up first. 
No, you. 
No.
You.