A whale shark was released back to the sea by Taiwan's national museum of marine biology & aquarium (nmmba) on July 10th. Unfortunately, the whale shark was beached twice because where it was released were too close to the seashore. The museum insisted on practicing the 3rd release regardless of the injuries on the poor animal.
For more than 8 years, this whale shark had been captive of the museum and helped attract a lot of tourist’s attention. Because of the longterm captivity in the water sink, the whale shark was used to swimming round and round and that’s why it got beached after the first and the second release attempts.
According to the museum, they decided to practice the 3rd release because a doctor in the team claimed that the whale shark still showed signs of life and suggested to continue.
We are not able to know whether the whale shark is still alive because the museum did not put a tracker on it. According to a team member, they did not equip the whale with the tracker because the tracker was “too precious”. Is the life of the whale shark not precious enough to deserve the tracker?
