Oh dear, oh dear. With all the hype surrounding the new opening of Dubai's £950m Atlantis Hotel, a storm has arisen over the hotel's aquarium, with its stockists accused of those aged old hotel crimes - deceitful acquirement of dolphins and underhanded whale theft.
Dolphin Bay, a central attraction of the hotel, was planned as the first rescue and rehabilitation centre for injured or stranded dolphins in Dubai, where customers can pay £75 a pop to have a swim with one of the resident Flippers. However, as reported in The Telegraph, far from gathering up knackered or orphaned dolphins the hotel has been accused by the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WDCS) of buying 24 bottlenose varieties from a dealer in the Solomon Islands, originally captured from the waters around the island.
A spokeswoman for Atlantis said it was entirely committed to the welfare of all marine life at the resort. "The dolphins in residence at Dolphin Bay came from an existing facility in the Solomon Islands called the Solomon Islands Marine Mammal Education Centre. During the year they have been in residence in Dubai, two calves have been born, a sign of excellent acclimation and good health," she said.
However, the precedent isn't great. The row follows an order issued last month by the government of the United Arab Emirates to free a 13ft whale shark from a huge tank in the lobby of the 1,539-room hotel, after an international outcry. Environmentalists claimed that the owners of the Atlantis hotel had disregarded international permit laws and nicked the shark from shallow waters off the Gulf coast in August and then stuck it in a display for hotel guests.
It appears there are some things money can't buy. And that thing is a 13ft sympathetically-sourced whale shark.
Leave a comment
What a user pic? Get a Gravatar!