A theme park in Japan has come under some rather fierce criticism over the last few days, after it decided to freeze dead fish under its ice rink in a somewhat misguided attempt at entertainment.

It all began two weeks ago when Space World, an amusement park on the Japanese island of Kyushu, opened a new ice-skating rink.

However, visitors were soon astonished to find that, under the ice, more than 5,000 fish had been frozen. Some were arranged to form the word “hello”, while in other parts of the rink, enlarged photos of rays and whale sharks were displayed under the ice.

It should be noted the fish were all dead prior to being placed under the ice rink, having been bought from a wholesale market and deemed unsafe to eat, but that doesn’t really take away from the creepiness of the whole thing.

The attempt was to create something unique for visitors, but instead the idea massively backfired, with Space World receiving a huge public backlash on social media.

“In what alternate reality is your administration living in to think that freezing a bunch of animals into a skating rink would be a good idea?” said one commenter on the company’s Facebook page.

Now the company has closed the rink and apologized. Toshimi Takeda, the general manager of Space World, told Japanese broadcaster NHK: “We regret this terribly.”

The park is now planning to hold a memorial ceremony for the fish to try to make amends. But it just goes to show that, if you want to attract visitors, perhaps using dead animals isn’t a great idea.