Dubai Aquarium Tiger Sharks Turn a Killer

So again, we see that you really can’t “domesticate” nature, as we see in the Dubai Aquarium last week, where sand Tiger sharks have killed at least 40 smaller reef sharks and been aggressive towards divers at The Dubai Mall Aquarium, Khaleej Times has learn. Divers carrying out tasks in the tank, without a cage, have had their equipment substantially damaged and experienced minor injuries due to the behaviour of the sharks, according to sources.

The aquarium recently described the sharks, which can grow to 3.5 metres, as a ‘docile, non-aggressive species’.

Yousif Al Ali, General Manager of The Dubai Mall, confirmed on Wednesday some of the details of incidents at its showpiece aquarium with 33,000 marine animals.

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Flippers from Around the World: We are not happy!

Bottlenose dolphins suffering from food shortages may be killing their sibling species to take out the competition, scientists have warned.

A series of dead porpoises and young bottlenose dolphins washed up the country’s coastline have borne the animal’s teeth marks.

But the appearance of the body of a rare baby Risso’s dolphin on a beach in the Scilly Isles has raised fears that bottlenose dolphins may be becoming more aggressive in its desperate search for food.

The latest victim, which washed up in St Agnes, was young enough to still be dependent on its mother for nourishment and researchers believe it was killed by an adult predator.

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Whales are dying… dying sad.

The whale population has already fallen dramatically over the past few centuries because to culling by Japan, Norway and Iceland, and the poisoning of oceans which kills off their food.

But now a French scientist has said the majestic mammals - which can reach 80ft in length and weigh the same as a passenger jet - could also suffer from heartbreak.

Paris naturalist Yves Paccalet said: ‘It may be that these intelligent animals are so exhausted from their combat with humankind that they have simply have given up the fight.

‘And the psychological consequences of our aggression have compromised their will to live.’

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God we are sick of Japanese stupidity!

It’s a scene that brings laughter and cheers from visitors to a Japanese aquarium - two white beluga whales wearing Santa hats. But environmentalists are saddened by the sight of what they say is the final humiliation for the whale in a country that hunts them down with harpoons.

The beluga whales have been fitted out with the cute Santa hats to entertain the crowds at the Hakkeijima Sea Paradise on Yokohama Island.

There’s even a chance to receive a wet kiss under the mistletoe from a yuletide beluga.

Yet while the white belugas are entertaining the crowds, their humpback cousins are facing a brutal end in cold storage at the hands of Japanese whalers in Antarctica.

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Iran alarmed by mass dolphin deaths

The mysterious “mass suicide” of 152 dolphins washed up on Iran’s coast over the past month has alarmed environmentalists, with the blame pointed at regional fishing practices, officials said on Monday. In September, 79 striped dolphins were found washed up near Jask port in southern Iran, and last week another 73 were found dead in the same area.

Pictures of rows of the corpses have been widely featured in Iranian newspapers, which said the dolphins had “committed suicide” — behaviour the animals have occasionally exhibited in the wild.

“The suicide of dolphins on Jask’s coast continues,” Iran’s state run-newspaper wrote on Saturday. “Locals tried to put the animals back in the water but they refused to return.”

Concern over the deaths of these highly intelligent mammals prompted Iran’s environmental protection authorities to show reporters the cut and bruised corpse of a dolphin to explain the “suicides”.

Mohammad Baqer Nabavi, deputy head of Iran’s environmental protection organisation in charge of marine biology, said the most likely explanation was that the dolphins drowned after becoming entangled in fishing nets.

“We are basing our hypothesis for the suicide on fishing — either nets left at the bottom of the Persian Gulf or the big fishing nets that ships spread to catch different kinds of fish,” Nabavi said.

“As you know, they are marine animals but they need to come up to surface and breathe.”

It was unlikely that the deaths were caused by pollution, with no traces found in the tissue of the dolphins examined a month ago, he said.

“We did not spot any kind of pollution in their digestive system that could have been caused from eating poisoned fish, and we also have not spotted any viruses or parasites,” he said.

Striped dolphins are normally found in temperate and tropical waters.

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