WASHINGTON, August 23 (RIA Novosti) – The star of the erotic drama “9 1/2 Weeks” and Academy Award winner for “LA Confidential,” US actress Kim Basinger has sent a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, urging him to release 18 Russian beluga whales from captivity and return them to their ocean home after Washington barred an aquarium in the United States from importing them.
“Now that these whales will not be transferred to the US, I urge you to take the next step and ensure that they are returned to their rightful ocean home,” Basinger wrote in the letter dated August 16, which was published this week on the website of international animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
“The plight of these whales has the whole world watching to see what will happen next,” Basinger, a longtime PETA supporter, said in her letter, urging Putin to “take a strong unequivocal stand in favor of marine animals” by setting the wheels in motion to have the whales released into the wild.
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) earlier this month prohibited the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta and its SeaWorld affiliates from importing the whales from the Utrish Marine Mammal Research Station in Russia, saying five of them may still have been nursing and were “not yet independent” when they were captured between 2006 and 2011.
Basinger noted in her letter that “at least four belugas and two whale sharks have already died” in recent years at the Georgia Aquarium, which claims to be the world’s largest aquarium.
NOAA also expressed concern that allowing the whales to be imported could have “a significant adverse impact” on the Sakhalin-Amur beluga whale population in the Sea of Okhotsk that the 18 whales were taken from.
A Texas-based ocean conservation group, Fins and Fluke, earlier launched a petition asking Russia to free the whales.
The Kremlin has not yet responded to Basinger’s letter, PETA said.
