For Speedy Launch:
November 8, 2022
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Miami – On the heels of a U.S. Division of Agriculture (USDA) inspection report revealing that the Miami Seaquarium restricted dolphins’ meals by as much as 60% for months with the intention to make them obedient for performances, PETA despatched a letter to Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners at present urging them to not finalize the Seaquarium’s new lease and as a substitute terminate it. The motion comes after the board of commissioners voted a 12 months in the past to switch the Seaquarium’s lease to its new proprietor, The Dolphin Firm, contingent on extra oversight stipulations. However the board nonetheless hasn’t finalized the lease, possible because of the Seaquarium’s failings.
The USDA report notes that ravenous the animals elevated cases of dolphin aggression towards trainers and the general public and {that a} dolphin named Aries regurgitated “excessively” for 88 days in a interval of simply over 4 months. The inspector famous that the regurgitation “might have been related to food regimen cuts or different medical issues”—but the Seaquarium failed to supply Aries with satisfactory veterinary care and continued ravenous him.
“The Miami Seaquarium has imprisoned very smart and social animals in completely wretched circumstances, starved them, and exploited them for years, and it must be shut down,” says PETA Govt Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Yr after 12 months, this firm makes false proclamations of higher care but fails these animals, and PETA is urging the board of commissioners to terminate the Seaquarium’s lease.”
A scathing 17-page report on operations on the Seaquarium issued by the USDA in June 2021 revealed that animals have been fed rotten fish, subjected to soiled water, and held incompatibly, leading to severe accidents and demise, together with two dolphins who died after trauma inflicted by different dolphins, one who drowned after he turned caught within the fence of the enclosure and whose physique additionally confirmed indicators of traumatic harm brought on by different animals, and one other who was left bloodied and blinded in a single eye because of aggressive interactions with different dolphins. Regardless of all this, a supervisor “indicated that they don’t have a method of monitoring which animals are housed collectively on a selected day.”
PETA—whose motto reads, partly, that “animals usually are not ours to make use of for leisure” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—notes that the Seaquarium’s obvious violations of Florida’s cruelty-to-animals legal guidelines stay below investigation by the state legal professional’s workplace.
For extra data on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please go to PETA.org or observe the group on Twitter, Fb, or Instagram.