So I gather a mush of the prawn-like creatures, form a slimy lump and lob it into the pool. The ball separates in mid-air, showering me in a spray of stench.

The whale shark in the aquarium below doesn’t care and neither do I – I’ve just become one in less than 1,000 people around the world to get to feed one of these amazing creatures.

With a grace that belies her huge size, she twists her mottled back, doubles back on herself, opens wide and sucks a load into her open jaws.

‘We thought of calling her Hoover,’ says Steve Kaiser, the man giving me the feeding lesson. ‘But I think we’ve settled on Sheika. Pending approval by the PR department, that is.’

Marine science

Steve is the unreconstructed Hawaiian ‘ichthyologist-cum- marine biologist stroke engineer and architect’ – or vice-president of marine science and engineering, to give him his proper title – at Atlantis, the mega resort which opened on Dubai’s man-made Palm Island this week. And if it’s a big title, it’s a big job for, while Atlantis is huge, Steve is the man charged with looking after its showpiece attraction at the heart of the main hotel, The Ambassador Lagoon.

Holding 11million litres of water, it’s the third largest aquarium in the world and is home to 65,000 fish. Steve also takes care of its sister attraction, Lost Chambers, 21 more tanks that – in the eyes of visiting children at least – are supposedly the last relics of the legendary submarine city and house everything from translucent jellyfish to 2m-long wels catfish.

‘See that bad boy?’ asks Steve, pointing to a particularly ugly goliath grouper as we walk through. ‘He was in the main tank but he went through five sharks, ten stingrays and three barracuda so we gave him a tank on his own.

Then, when I was showing some investors round, he just turned and emptied his bowels in front of them.’

It’s easy to be cynical about Atlantis. It’s big, bold, brash and has that level of servile service Brits seem to loathe and Americans adore. Rooms such as the $25,000 (£13,400)-a-night Bridge Suite suggest guests with more money than sense and even less taste, while environmentally it seems to open itself up for the punch.

It’s built on an island made from sand dredged from the bottom of the sea and proudly states more than 100,000 light bulbs are used in the resort – and believe me, most of them are on at night. But the work of Steve and his team seems to go almost unrecognised in an effort to balance the scales.

Sheika, for instance, was rescued just down the coast in the Arabian Gulf. Found by a fisherman in water that was too shallow, too hot and too saline, if she’d not come to Atlantis she would almost certainly have died. There are so many like her in the resort’s aquariums – there’s even a fishy hospital backstage where newcomers are acclimatised and sick fish cured.

Feeling the buzz
Steve’s passion is mirrored in everyone from the guys employed to sweep sand off the drive to world- renowned chefs such as Giorgio Locatelli and Santi Santamaria, who operate two of Atlantis’s 17 restaurants.

It’s an enthusiasm that can’t help but rub off on you. I’d expected to hate Atlantis but it is much less vulgarly bling than I’d expected – save for the Disney-esque exterior, that suite and a particularly horrible 30m-high blown statue in the lobby, that is – and over the course of a few days, I’ve found myself gradually being won over.

There’s tons to do: the Aquaventure water park has stupendous slides, there’s a great spa, children’s clubs keep the brats out of the way and the food is excellent.

Back at the Ambassador Lagoon Steve is explaining his aquarium philosophy. ‘All I want is for people to come in and say: “Wow, look at all the neat fish.”‘ Thanks to him and Sheika, I at least have had my ‘wow’ moment.