Swimming with the sharks draws fire

ATLANTA — Vikas Chinnan stood over a tank at the world's largest aquarium, peering down at the world's largest fish species. He was wondering what it would be like to frolic beside the whale sharks.

The creature approached, eerily quiet. It was longer than a Ford Expedition, impossibly elegant as it banked into a turn at the tank's edge, flexing its massive, gray, mottled form into a parabola of living flesh.

"Oh man," muttered Chinnan, 32, one of eight divers who had paid $290 for the privilege. "I hope they fill up our [oxygen] tanks, because I'm going to be breathing hard."

Whale sharks are as harmless as they are imposing, preferring plankton to people. But with the Georgia Aquarium launching its "Swim With Gentle Giants" program this month — allowing a dozen swimmers and divers a day to enter the sharks' habitat — marine experts fear it is the humans who could pose a threat.

Much of the trepidation has to do with the 2 ½-year-old aquarium's track record with whale sharks. Last year, two died for reasons that baffled employees. Today, the "best hypothesis," according to spokeswoman Meghann Gibbons, is that they reacted poorly to a chemical treatment used to combat parasites.

Jean-Michel Cousteau — son of famed underwater explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau — was critical of the swim-with-the sharks program, given that the aquarium was not 100 percent sure why the animals died.

"I certainly don't think there's something to learn from someone swimming with a whale shark," said Cousteau, founder of the nonprofit Ocean Futures Society in Santa Barbara, Calif.

George Burgess, director of the Florida Program for Shark Research at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, agreed. The whale sharks, which roam hundreds of miles in the wild, are stressed by their confinement, he said. And they probably will be harmed further by proximity to humans — and by potential exposure to germs exotic to them.

"It'd be the equivalent of you being in a bedroom for the rest of your life after having had the ability to walk around freely," Burgess said. "And then having 20 people come join you in your personal space every so often."

Georgia Aquarium employees defended the program, saying the four whale sharks are monitored loosely. Chief science officer Bruce Carlson is confident they will coexist with the daily stream of visitors.

"If we're wrong and these animals look like they're having negative reactions, we'll pull the program," he said.

Spokesman Dave Santucci noted that the fish were used to people swimming among them: Last year, he said, humans made about 5,000 trips into the tank for maintenance.