A blow-by-blow account of release of Dubai Atlantis whale shark

Freedom at dawn : Sammy's release
The release of the whale shark was kept a well-guarded secret by Atlantis. Here's a blow-by-blow account of the highly delicate operation
Derek Baldwin, Gulf News 25 Mar 10;

Dubai : Dubai's most famous whale shark checked out of her five-star home on Thursday, March 18 at 5.15am.

Her departure marked the end of a controversial 18-month stay and was filmed, said a top marine scientist at Atlantis.

Following criticism that no visual proof of the release has been presented - leading to wild speculation the shark fell ill and died in captivity - Steve Kaiser, Vice-President, Marine Sciences, said the private release exercise was filmed, but the public and media were excluded for the shark's safety.

Under cover of darkness, the 4.5-metre shark was released on the eastern end of The Palm crescent along the sea wall boulders, XPRESS has confirmed through multiple sources.

The clandestine nature of the pre-dawn operation ensured waters were free of boats and dangerous propellers to give the shark clear passage out to sea, he said.

The release is important, given that whale sharks, the largest fish in the world, are listed as vulnerable and easily targeted for their fins, which can fetch small fortunes in fish markets. Grey and covered with white spots along bodies that can reach up to 12 metres, these sharks are easy prey because they move slowly and are often found near the surface.

Irrefutable evidence

"We have photos and video," Kaiser said in an exclusive interview, "but I don't release photos, I release animals."

Kaiser has worked at the sister Atlantis hotel in the Bahamas where he helped in the release of other marine creatures such as large manta rays into the wild.

The decision whether to issue photos by Atlantis is in the hands of higher-ups at the $1.5 billion (Dh5.51 billion) Atlantis hotel and is not his to make, he said. An official media request through Kaiser to Atlantis executives for photographs or video went unanswered by press time.

Kaiser said the operation was top secret from the beginning, given months of bad press, public concern about the animal's continued captivity and fears that rubberneckers would swamp the hotel area and possibly compromise the effort.

"We didn't make this a media event. If we announced this, we would have 50 boats offshore," Kaiser said, adding hundreds of curious onlookers could have also gathered on shore. "It could go off the rails. We put our animals first."

Kaiser said an elaborate operation involved two large cranes, the first to lift the shark out of the hotel's 45-million litre aquarium facilities and place it on a truck for transport to the second crane tasked to lower the whale into the Gulf along the sea wall.

According to Kaiser, the operation was carried out in darkness and cooler temperatures to reduce stress on the animal. In the five days leading up to the top-secret operation, the aquarium temperature was raised from its usual 23C closer towards the 35C Gulf water temperature to help the whale adjust to natural waters when released, he said.

"We didn't want her to go into thermal shock," said Kaiser, an American who has worked in the marine field since 1974.

Kaiser's account of the Dubai release was corroborated by Al Faris Equipment Rental senior officials who confirmed that the shark was freed some time after 5am on March 18.

As per plan

Al Faris Operations Manager Charles Govias said "all went as planned" after crane operators and Atlantis staff conducted a "dry run first" a few hours before the real operation was carried out.

Al Faris' Technical Manager Brian Green said they prepped two Liebherr cranes - a 500 tonne one and a 1,200 tonne one - the day before to get a fresh start right after midnight.

Green said when the shark was lowered into Gulf waters "it was still dark and we had spotlights on her". A team of eight divers waited in the water to help free the shark from her plastic container. "They undid one end and she swam out peacefully and off she went," Green said, noting that not a single detail was overlooked to keep the shark safe at all times during transport. "This was planned for months and months. It was an operation straight out of James Bond."

Green said freeing the shark privately proved a wise choice.

"This way it was less likely to draw people and end up like the end of a circus," he said.

After a year of brickbats being thrown at Atlantis for not releasing the creature sooner, Kaiser defended the decision noting that it was set for release a year ago during the migratory transit season for the species in the region. Those plans, however, were dashed amid the red tide bloom here in early 2009 which lessened the shark's chances of a solid return to the deeps.

"It would be completely irresponsible to release her in the middle of the red tide," said Kaiser, who waited for the migratory season to roll around once more before her release. The bad timing led to a string of less-than-favourable media reports throughout last year that Atlantis was planning on keeping the shark as a tourist attraction, he said.

The irony is that even after Atlantis announced her release, people remain ever sceptical.

"Lots of people said we would never release her. Now they say we didn't release her," Kaiser said.

Recovery time

Contrary to reports that wide-roaming sharks don't do well in captivity, he said the whale shark recovered well from the time her listless frame was found by rescuers in August 2008 off Jebel Ali. The shark was discovered in 39C water, with higher-than-normal salinity levels and was suffering from what Kaiser called a serious "heat stroke" before she was taken back to the $3 million (Dh11 million) marine rescue centre at Atlantis for recovery.

Estimated at 1.5 tonnes and between the age of 6-8 years, the shark measured 3.8 metres long when first rescued, Kaiser said, but when released it had grown by 60 centimetres.

As she slipped out of her custom cradle into the sea late last week, the shark was fitted with a tracking tag to monitor her movements for 90 days. In partnership with shark research organisation Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, Kaiser and staff have pre-set the electronic tag to detach itself from the shark and float to the surface where the device will transmit its data to satellite.

"We have made Mote Marine the recipient of that data," he said, noting the information may help marine scientists better understand the whale shark for future conservationist efforts.
The cloak-and-dagger-style release of the Atlantis whale shark is in stark contrast to other Atlantis releases of sea creatures into the wild, according to media reports.

In early 2008, for example, American network giant NBC featured on its Today Show the release of a large manta ray from Atlantis, Paradise Island resort, Bahamas.

After living at the Atlantis aquariums for roughly three years, the giant relative of the shark was shown being tagged with a satellite tag to track its movements in the Caribbean seas.

The manta ray was put in a large sling and flown by helicopter to its release location and then released into waters offshore.

Rescue was in the bag...

If you've ever tried to scoop a goldfish out of a home-variety fish tank, you can appreciate the difficulty Atlantis faced in scooping a 1.5 tonne shark out of a behemoth indoor aquarium.

Those who watched the lift-out were amazed when a team of divers plunged into the waters and manoeuvred a six-metre-long plastic bag of sorts into place directly in front of the slowly-swimming whale shark.

"She swam herself right into the bag on the first attempt," said one of those watching the spectacle. "The divers were fantastic, they just guided her right in."

Divers then moved to close the bag and, with a thumbs-up, the water-filled bag was lifted up and out of the tank, over part of the Atlantis hotel rooftop and onto a waiting support frame on a truck waiting in the car park nearby.

Divers simply repeated their aquarium efforts in reverse when the shark was released into the Gulf waters.

Jaws are still working after whale shark's alleged release
Jonathan Gornall, The National 26 Mar 10;

There is, as any fan of police dramas knows, no murder without a body. On the other hand, there is also no resolution of a kidnap stand-off without proof of life.

This week neither was on offer as the management of the Atlantis hotel, on Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, contrived to make a bad public relations situation rather worse.

For the past 18 months the resort has been criticised for what has widely been perceived as the seizure in 2008 of a young female whale shark as a star turn for its Lost Chambers aquarium.

The four-metre long animal was “rescued” at the end of August 2008, shortly before the Atlantis opened its doors to guests. The timing fuelled scepticism about the Atlantis’s claims that the animal was found in distress and needed looking after.

As soon as the hotel announced it had captured the animal, a succinctly entitled Facebook page surfaced: “Set the whale shark free from the Atlantis aquarium Dubai”.

Now, the Atlantis says, the animal has been released. Local press reports say the shark was put back into the sea on the eastern end of The Palm along the sea wall boulders in a clandestine pre-dawn operation to ensure the area was free of boats whose propellers could harm it.

But without the testimony of independent witnesses or photographic proof this latest twist in the story has merely added to conspiracy theories.

“I was initially overjoyed to hear of [the] alleged release,” wrote one poster on the travel website Trip Advisor this week, “but I now think it seems so unlikely that Atlantis would have done it in such a cloak-and-dagger fashion if they had nothing to hide.”

Another posting read: “Strong rumours whale shark died – any info?”.

Yet, despite the potentially positive PR that might have been generated, the Atlantis has still not produced any pictures of the release.

Lisa Perry, of the Emirates Wildlife Society – World Wildlife Fund (EWS), said the attitude of the Atlantis throughout the 18-month episode had been “disappointing”. All approaches by her organisation had been ignored.

“From the very beginning when the whale shark was captured, the EWS has been requesting the release of the animal, because of its chances of survival in the wild being greater than in a hotel aquarium,” she said.

The welfare of captive whale sharks has been a matter for concern since two died in the US in 2007. Other than the Atlantis in Dubai, Georgia Aquarium was the only aquarium outside Asia to house whale sharks, the world’s biggest fish. The cause of both deaths remains unclear.

In a written statement issued earlier this week, Steve Kaiser, Atlantis vice president of marine and science engineering, said “outsiders” had not been invited to witness the release to ensure the shark’s safety. The animal, he added, was in good health and had been tagged for research purposes and released off the east side of the Palm on Thursday last week.

The time was right for the release because conditions had been perfect. “The health and well-being of the animal has always been our number one priority,” he added.

Yet Kerzner International Holdings, the owner of the Atlantis, has not always been so protective about the privacy of animals during releases. In May 2008, invited press were on hand to document the release of Zeus, a giant manta ray that had spent three years at the Atlantis’s Paradise Island resort in the Bahamas. The 1,000lb creature, suspended in a cargo net, was airlifted by helicopter and dangled for a photo op in front of the resort’s fake Mayan temple.

Confused whale sharks have turned up off Dubai before. Dubai Marina has had at least three unexpected visitors, the most recent last year. In 2005, members of the Emirates Diving Association worked with Emaar and the police to stop boat traffic and shepherd a young shark to safety.

Ibrahim al Zu’bi, the director of environment and research for the EDA, who has worked on a programme tagging whale sharks in the Seychelles, said the association had contacted the Atlantis when the animal was captured.

“We talked to the Atlantis people at the beginning and the agreement was that the shark would be tagged and released,” he said. “The difference was about when she should be released; we wanted it to be immediately. This is when the communications stopped.”

According to the statement from the Atlantis, the whale shark was fitted with a tracking device that in about three months will automatically free itself, float to the surface and transmit information via satellite.

If all goes well, data from the Mk10-PAT “pop-up archival transmitting tag”, will allow shark researchers to reconstruct the animal’s tracks and the depths and water temperatures in which it has been swimming.

All whale shark enthusiasts around the world, said Mr al Zu’bi, would be watching for the data and he urged Atlantis to make sure it was made available on a website.

“I love whale sharks,” he said. “I am so glad she is out and safe. The whole marine community is happy and I am sure plenty of people in Atlantis feel the same.

“Hopefully, in three months we will have some good news that she is on the migration schedule. In October, I am going to Djibouti to spot whale sharks; I hope I can meet her there.”

Surprisingly little is known about the world’s largest fish, a gentle giant that can grow up to 40ft in length yet is harmless to humans – though not to plankton or krill, which it hoovers up through a mouth that can grow up to four feet across. Estimates of its lifespan range from 70 to 150 years.

While there were apparently no independent witnesses to the Atlantis whale shark’s tagging and release, Dr Robert Hueter, the lead shark researcher from the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida, had advised and trained Atlantis staff in the fitting of tracking devices. The National has learnt, however, that no one from the organisation was present during last week’s release.

“Dr Hueter has told me he can’t comment on its condition when it was released, simply because he wasn’t present during the release,” said Hayley Rutger, a spokesman for the laboratory, whose shark researchers will analyse any data received from the tracking device.

“Atlantis staff informed him that the shark was healthy, heavy and had grown 0.6 metres in length in the 18 months it was housed at Atlantis. Dr Hueter said this growth rate was similar to the rate for wild sharks, indicating that it was in good condition.”

On Thursday, a week after the whale shark’s release, the Atlantis issued a statement.

It included an account of how the animal had come into its possession on August 28, 2008, and a description of its condition.

“Found in the shallows, the whale shark was clearly under duress when it was sighted by a local fisherman … The temperature of the water was approximately 37°C to 42°C with salinities of 47ppt to 52ppt. The temperature and salinity would put incredible stress on almost all fish species.”

Although the animals were seen during all months of the year in the Arabian Gulf, “off Dubai, whale sharks normally occur from January to June with a peak March-May. A whale shark in August is not typical.”

The animal was found to be “very thin … her body mass was well below average. On arrival, some of her fins were observed to have been damaged, which we believe was caused by her struggles in the shallow water where she was found.”

The statement added that the animal’s release had been documented by photography and video, but the Atlantis has so far failed to respond to requests to release images or footage.

It remains to be seen whether the statement will appease Kerzner’s critics.