Following the outcry, the company closed down the ice rink over the weekend and issued an apology on its website, reading: “We deeply apologise to the people who felt uncomfortable over the Aquarium of Ice event. In accordance, we have stopped the event from today.”

It’s an embarrassing turn-around for Space World, which just weeks before the opening of the ice rink had promoted the new attraction as the first of its kind in the world.

Its creators reportedly went shopping for thousands of small dead fish at a wholesale fish market before burying them in the ice, as though they were swimming through the rink, according to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.

The fish bodies were accompanied by photographs of larger marine creatures, such as whale shark, with the images also placed just under the ice as part of the display.