Winter Olympics remote-controlled fish hockey: What am I watching?

What, exactly, is being remote controlled here?

The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, have given us no shortage of viral moments and delightful imagery.

So far, there has been Chloe Kim tweeting about churros and ice cream while in the middle of a competition; Bermudans wearing Bermuda shorts in the Opening Ceremony; shirtless and shiny Tongan Pita Taufatofua (again); and curling, generally.

But now Pyeongchang has gone ahead and entered the year 3018 with whatever the heck this is:

My colleagues in the FanSided office and I are having some disagreements about what it is, exactly, we are seeing here. My take is that these are very much real fish swimming in that tank and that hockey “puck” in the water is the thing being remote controlled (i.e. remote-controlled modifies the words fish hockey, not the word fish, itself). Their tail movements appear to be too irregular and organic to be mere machines.

However, my fellow editor, Josh Hill, maintains that these are, indeed, robotic fish. (“Fish aren’t playful,” he insists).

One point that could play out in Josh’s favor is that these fish seem to possess giant, blue, soulless eyes:

Also, as someone noted on Twitter, PETA would not be happy if these were real fish.

Anyways, the rules of remote-controlled [fish] hockey seem to be pretty similar to the rules of regular, human hockey; this black fish slaps the puck into the net with its tail, a light goes off and we learn that it is dominating the greenish-yellow fish 5-1:

Fifteen minutes of research that my boss totally supported because this is an important, breaking Olympics story did not turn up any further information on remote-controlled fish hockey in Pyeongchang, and NBC Olympics has not revealed its source.

We’re left only to wonder: Are these real fish? Is that a real puck? What are we watching? And why is the greenish-yellow fish so bad at hockey?

For more from the Winter Olympics, and breaking updates on the rules of remote-controlled fish hockey, make sure to follow FanSided and stay tuned to our Olympics hub for all the latest news and results.