Ushaka Marine World struggles to stay afloat in pandemic

IN the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, eThekwini Mayor, Mxolisi Kaunda revealed that 6000 companies were forced to close down, resulting in 300 000 job losses while the city lost R34 billion in income due to Covid-19.

The iconic Durban Marine Theme Park (uShaka Marine World) is among those hard hit by the pandemic.

Durban Marine Theme Park CEO, Ndalo Khoza, said the number of visitors to the park has plummeted.

“Overall, we are bound by the restrictions, so if you take the park, ordinarily there’s a capacity of 8000 people but now we can only bring 250 people in. So you can understand the dynamics we now have to deal with,” he said.

The operational cost of the park does not decrease, said Neville Pillay, operations executive for the park.

He said the facility spends some R2 million on electricity as 200-300 cubic metres of water is drawn into the facility per hour.

Also read: City of Durban loses R34 billion to Covid-19

“Within the facility, that water is further treated and filtered for essentially two reasons: one is to make sure it’s clear so people can see everything in the exhibit. The second reason is from a biological perspective to ensure the environment for our fish and mammals is conducive to healthy living. That water is pumped around the facility by 150 different pumps and we pump thorough 20 mega litres per hour and the throughout through the aquarium is 90 minutes,” he said.

“Because we utilise a lot of electricity and water, we have recycling systems in place- backwash facilities- so we can reuse some of the water. We have rainwater harvesting systems in place that we are further enhancing to reduce water. We have solar panels in place to generate some of our own electricity. Someone was asking me why we don’t just put solar panels in place to get all of our electricity requirements. If I had to do that I’d have to line the entire promenade with electricity,” he added.

Also read: Green Turtle shows positive signs of recovery at uShaka

Larry Oellermann of the South African Association for Marine Biological Research (SAAMBR) explained that the theme park supports their research which exists in three branches: uShaka Sea World, Oceanographic Research Institute (ORI) and Sea World Education.

“Before Covid-19, Sea World Education, saw about 120 000 children every year and those children would come here and get to see the aquarium, have lessons , do courses and learn about the marine environment. The idea was to target youth and hopefully they would take the interest back and encourage everyone else to get involved. On the research side, ORI does institute research which means it does research in the environment where the animals live and we generally have about 50 research projects ongoing at any tone time,” he said.

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