The son of the late, world-renowned oceanographer Jacques Cousteau has called on Ocean Park to help release back into the wild the six beluga whales it considered importing to Hong Kong.
Jean-Michel Cousteau has written to Ocean Park chairman Allan Zeman praising his decision last week not to import the near-threatened beluga whales from Russia for the park's new Polar Adventure attraction following an outcry from animal welfare groups.
Ocean Park held an option on the whales, captured in 2010 in Russia's Okhotsk Sea on its western coast, but decided not to go ahead with the importation despite funding a four-year sustainability survey. It concluded they could be removed from the wild without harming the population.
Ironically, the whales - which the park says are being held in a marine facility in western Russia - now face a potentially worse fate if they are instead sold to less well-regulated aquariums on the mainland or elsewhere.
In his letter, Cousteau, president of the California-based Ocean Futures Society, applauded the decision not to take the option on the six whales, but appealed to Zeman to take responsibility for their fate.
'There would be tremendous public support for you to release these whales, being held in pens, back into their natural habitat and to commit to a future of not capturing any more marine mammals from the wild for display or entertainment at Ocean Park,' he wrote. Cousteau's father died in 1997.