Aquarium offers shark swim

ATLANTA, June 9 (UPI) -- Officials at the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta say 1,500 people have registered for a new program that allows visitors to swim with whale sharks and other fish.

The officials said 1,500 people are registered to swim with the whale sharks and thousands of other species during the remainder of 2008, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Monday.

The program is aimed at keeping attendance high at the aquarium and educating visitors about the different species of fish.

"It's the only place where you are guaranteed to swim with whale sharks," aquarium spokesman Dave Santucci said. "We want to engage people with animals and help them make a connection."

However, some experts have criticized the program.

"I have numerous concerns with this," said Lori Marino, a senior lecturer in neuroscience and behavioral biology at Emory University. "The first is that they have lost two of them already. And secondly, we don't know a lot about whale sharks, so this just seems risky."

Two of the aquarium's whale sharks, Ralf and Norton, died in 2007. Ralf suffered from peritonitis and Norton is believed to have been made ill by a pesticide that was used to treat his tank for parasites.