{"id":128,"date":"2010-03-19T09:28:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T05:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/2010\/03\/sammy-free-at-last.html"},"modified":"2012-10-28T15:59:57","modified_gmt":"2012-10-28T11:59:57","slug":"sammy-free-at-last","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/2010\/03\/sammy-free-at-last.html","title":{"rendered":"Sammy free at last"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stu and I have never visited the Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah for one simple reason-we were boycotting the place because they would not release Sammy, the whale shark. You may, or may not know the story. The 13-foot creature had wandered into the shallow waters of the Dubai gulf in August of 2008 and was then &#8220;rescued&#8221; by some fisherman and taken to the aquarium at the hotel. And that is where she stayed, for 18 months, despite orders from the government, requests from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.peta.org\/\" target=\"new\">PETA<\/a>, and several petitions and campaigns calling for her freedom.<br \/>\n<br \/>\n<figure id=\"attachment_733\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-733\" style=\"width: 320px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/DSC00295.jpg\" alt=\"free-sammy\" title=\"free-sammy\" width=\"320\" height=\"240\" class=\"size-full wp-image-733\" srcset=\"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/DSC00295.jpg 320w, https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/DSC00295-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 320px) 100vw, 320px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-733\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">[The &#8220;free Sammy&#8221; button from last year&#8217;s GN campaign]<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/gulfnews.com\/news\/gulf\/uae\/environment\/sammy-the-whale-shark-freed-in-dubai-1.599693\" target=\"new\">She was tagged, and released, yesterday<\/a> according to the paper this morning.<br \/>\n<br \/>\nWell done Atlantis, it&#8217;s about time.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stu and I have never visited the Atlantis Hotel on the Palm Jumeirah for one simple reason-we were boycotting the place because they would not release Sammy, the whale shark. You may, or may not know the story. The 13-foot creature had wandered into the shallow waters of the Dubai gulf in August of 2008 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catinthedunes.com\/Dubai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}