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Curators Statement: Aquarium attack 'an act of spite'

By Robin Ross-Thompson and Toni Müller

EAST LONDON -- Curator Willie Maritz believes that the brutal slaughter of sea birds at the aquarium here this week was "aimed to shock or hurt us".

He said yesterday he discarded the act of killing nine penguins, two gannets and two pelicans on Saturday and Sunday nights as the work of a naughty child or for eating.

"It was the work of criminals."

He was hoping that the R5000 reward being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved in the killings will bring witnesses forward.

"I am convinced there must be someone in East London who knows something about this," he added. "There was definitely more than one person involved."

Maritz said that as a Marine and Coastal Management inspector in conservation matters he has always taken the attitude of education before prosecution and when he finds transgressors he tries to persuade them first that what they are doing is wrong and not to do it again. He doubts that any of these sorts of people would resort to such a barbaric act.

But as a marine biologist he was also subpoenaed by police and conservation authorities as an expert witness to give evidence in various cases where poachers are involved in commercial-scale capture and removal of marine resources in the Eastern Cape.

"The aquarium is an easy target for these people to extract revenge on me or on conservationists in general. That is the only motive I can think of besides it being an act of pure vandalism."

Maritz said he would also like to make it clear there was never any suggestion aquarium staff might have been involved in the killings as another Eastern Cape newspaper reported yesterday.

Meanwhile clinical and investigative psychologists had offered to construct a psychological profile of the attackers.

Mike Earl-Taylor, of the MTN Centre for Crime Prevention at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, said: "I am in the process of contacting Dr Mark Welman, who is a clinical and investigative psychologist, and we will be constructing a psychological profile of the unknown suspect this morning which will then be passed on to the commanding office and the investigative officer involved in the incident."

Other parties had also offered to assist the aquarium in different areas.

Two security firms offered their services free to the aquarium as from last night - Shurlock Security for a period of two months and King Security for an indefinite period.

East Londoners, too, are stepping forward to help -- by contributing money to the reward fund set up by Friends of the Aquarium.

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