Kerzner in deep water over captive shark
Melanie Peters
February 14 2009 at 01:49PM
Environmentalists around the world are piling on the pressure for Sol Kerzner's newly opened Atlantis Hotel in Dubai to release Sammy the whale shark from her giant tank.
The Atlantis The Palm Hotel announced in September last year, before its $20-million star-studded extravaganza launch, that staff had caught the young female whale shark off the coast of Jebel Ali.
This week the campaign gained momentum, as several wildlife groups issued an open letter to the hotel.
They include the World Wildlife Foundation's International Global Species programme, Emirates Wildlife Society and the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Kerzner was in Cape Town last week to finalise the opening of his R1-billion One&Only Resort at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront.
Support for the release of the whale shark has been canvassed from around the world.
Eight different groups are campaigning for the creature's release on social networking site www.facebook.com.
One group - Set the Whale Shark Free from the Atlantis Aquarium in Dubai - has over 22 000 members.
Dubai newspapers said the plan was to keep the whale shark in the aquarium for "medical care and observation" and then release her.
The wildlife organisations' letter said the Atlantis confirmed in an interview with Dubai radio show Business Breakfast on September 24 that it would release the shark in due course.
"We urge the Atlantis Hotel to act on its promise. The whale shark is listed on the Red List of Threatened Species as 'vulnerable' to extinction, with a decreasing population trend.
"It is a pelagic species that feeds by filtering planktonic animals from the open waters in which it lives. Holding a whale shark in a highly constraining artificial environment, where it is unable to feed or swim long distances naturally, has been implicated in the early death of every whale shark known to have been held in captivity in other countries.
"Whale sharks migrate extremely large distances each year, and move regularly between surface and deep waters. This behaviour is simply not possible in an aquarium, no matter how large the facility may be.
"This highly migratory nature combined with its low abundance make it particularly vulnerable to exploitation. Furthermore, the fact that the captive whale shark is a female increases the detriment to the wild population.
"Taking a potential breeder from the wild removes not only one whale shark from the population, but also the offspring she could produce in her natural environment."
The letter said the environmentalists had urged Atlantis management to reconsider their rationale for keeping the whale shark and to release it into its natural habitat.
"We suggest the whale shark be fitted with a satellite tag before its release to improve scientific knowledge of the movements and behaviour of this species, and benefit the global community of scientists, fisheries managers and the interested public.
"Keeping the whale shark at a hotel, which is not an educational or scientific institution, provides no benefits for the conservation of the wild population."
Lisa Shrake-Perry, programme manager for EWS-WWF (Emirates Wildlife Society in association with the World Wide Fund for Nature), said: "Since the beginning (September), we have given interviews and called for the whale shark to be released.
"But our messages were never returned by Atlantis. So we thought we would collectively write a letter signed by national and international organisations, so they understand there is a lot of weight to it."
There was no response from Kerzner International or the management of the Atlantis The Palm Hotel in Dubai at the time of going to press.
This article was originally published on page 13 of Saturday Argus on February 14, 2009
