UAE | Environment

Gulf News campaign makes global headlines

The International Herald Tribune picked up the Gulf News Free Sammy campaign from the wire agency Associated Press.

  • Staff Report
  • Published: 23:53 October 10, 2008
  • Gulf News

  • A motorist joins the campaign by sticking Free Sammy the Shark sticker to the windshield of his vehicle in Dubai.
  • Image Credit: Sriram ChandraSekaran

Dubai: The International Herald Tribune picked up the Gulf News Free Sammy campaign from the wire agency Associated Press. This is the report:

Environmentalists on Thursday called on the managers of a massive new marine-themed resort in this Gulf boomtown to release a whale shark they are holding inside a giant fish tank.

The 13-foot long female whale shark wandered into the shallow waters off Dubai's Gulf coast in August. A week later, representatives of the recently opened $1.5 billion Atlantis hotel announced that the resort's marine biologists and veterinarians had rescued the whale shark and transported it to an open-air aquarium with 65,000 fish, stingrays and other sea creatures.

But environmentalists and wildlife activists in Dubai say the whale shark has become the hotel's hostage and needs to be release back into the wild. Representatives of Atlantis resort did not return calls to the AP on Thursday.

The Dubai-based English language newspaper, Gulf News, has called the confinement of the whale shark "cruel, beyond belief."

The paper has nicknamed the whale shark Sammy and has asked its readers to join a "Free Sammy the Shark" campaign by downloading an image of the creature and wearing it as a badge.

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