Sammy the shark checks out of Dubai hotel

Such battles between environmentalists and wealthy developers are common in the West but are new to Dubai, where any opposition to its trillion-dollar building boom is rare, and victory against influential, state-owned developers is more elusive still.

“The whale shark should be freed,” Rashid Ahmad bin Fahad, Minister of Environment and Water, told The Times. “There is no decision yet on the timing, but definitely it will be freed.”

The campaigners have demanded that the speckled grey whale shark — the world’s largest fish species — be returned to the sea. She was caught in the shallows off the Gulf coast in August.

Sammy’s plight has dominated local news headlines. Dubai’s main daily, The Gulf News, led a “Free Sammy” campaign, decrying the confinement of the whale shark as “cruel beyond belief”. Children donned “Free Sammy” badges, activists waved placards and supporters put bumper stickers on their cars.

DJs at Dubai 92, a local radio station, played their own Free Sammy song, to the tune of Michael Jackson’s Free the World: “Free the whale shark, Make it a better place, For all the small fish who are scared they might be eaten,” the remix ran. “There are frogs and dolphins who are scared they might be dinner.”

Dubai residents also launched a Facebook campaign, signed by more than 8,000 people.

Sammy was swimming in an open-air aquarium with 65,000 fish, stingrays and other sea creatures. Environmentalists, wildlife activists and scientists condemned its cramped living conditions as life-threatening for her.