Hearing ends without a ruling on petition to sell assets, including animals, to 4% owner
BOISE, Idaho––The fate of anywhere from hundreds to thousands of animals surviving at the five remaining SeaQuest interactive aquariums still hangs in the scales of justice, after the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Boise, Idaho, blocked an application to sell the remaining assets––including the animals––to a 4% shareholder in the bankrupt company for $80,000, mere pennies on the dollar owed.
How many animals remain flipping, flopping, hopping, and gasping for air at the five remaining SeaQuest facilities is unknown, and was apparently not disclosed at a January 31, 2025 hearing on the proposed bankruptcy settlement.
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As many as 7,500 animals left among four locations
The last SeaQuest locations, of 14 built, are in Folsom, California; Layton, Utah; Las Vegas, Nevada; Roseville, Minnesota; and Boise, flagship headquarters for the SeaQuest company.
Each location reportedly opened with about 1,500 animals, including small sharks and rays, a variety of other fish, and various birds, reptiles, and mammals––many of them not normally associated with aquatic environments––available for petting and feeding by visitors.
Applying for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2024, SeaQuest Holdings LLC chief executive Aaron Neilsen indicated that animals of about 300 species were at each site then, but did not say how many individual animals that represented.
Revenues fell by almost half in two years
The prospective purchaser, had the Boise bankruptcy court approved the deal, was to be Jeff Cox, owner of a company called Z&A Management LLC, of Caldwell, Idaho.
Cox “owns a 4% stake in SeaQuest through Noveen Capital,” reported Mars King for Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minnesota.
According to the bankruptcy petition, gross revenues from the SeaQuest aquariums had dropped from more than $27 million in 2022 to $15 million in 2024, following a string of investigations and exposés of alleged neglect of animals, injuries to animals and visitors, and violations of both animal care standards and safety codes.
“Attorneys now say SeaQuest and Aaron Neilsen have been unable to find a partner or investor, and have no sufficient funds to continue operating,” summarized Darrell Smith for the Sacramento Bee.
Taxpayers to be left holding the bag
“The U.S. Small Business Administration, which holds a $3.9 million lien on SeaQuest’s Folsom property, would only be paid a small fraction from the [bankruptcy settlement], according to the filing,” Smith added.
“The hearing for the sale, which includes all animals, equipment, tools, furniture and fixtures, was expedited,” Mars King said, “because ‘The welfare of certain animals owned and controlled by (SeaQuest) may be in jeopardy,’ according to court documents.
PETA doesn’t buy it
But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] gave those suspected crocodile tears the seahorse laugh in a response filed on January 29, 2025.
“PETA lawyers filed a brief,” spokesperson David Perle said, “asking the court to shut down SeaQuest’s outrageous attempt to use the welfare of the surviving animals in its possession as a bargaining chip to arrange an expedited sale of its business to a company insider for only $80,000—despite owing millions to creditors.
“Long & sordid history of animal neglect & death”
“Following a long and sordid history of animal neglect and death at its facilities” Perle continued, SeaQuest “has threatened that if the proposed bargain-basement sale to the insider does not occur by the end of February, the welfare of several animals will be in jeopardy—a situation SeaQuest itself created, as the Acting United States Trustee accurately pointed out in a motion to convert the case to Chapter 7 and liquidate its assets.
“PETA’s legal brief, filed in support of the Acting United States Trustee’s motion and in opposition to SeaQuest’s motion to sell its property,” Perle said, “notes that the proposed sale to an insider with no experience in animal care will do nothing to protect the animals’ welfare—which will remain in danger for as long as SeaQuest remains in business.
“PETA’s brief asks the Court to order a timely public auction of SeaQuest’s remaining assets, which would allow concerned entities the chance to step in and give surviving animals their best shot at receiving the care they need at reputable facilities.”
SeaQuest sued alleged whistleblower
A week after the SeaQuest bankruptcy petition was filed, the company and former SeaQuest marketing coordinator Lana Westbrook on December 19, 2024 “jointly filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit that SeaQuest filed last year, which sought to gag Ms. Westbrook after she spoke out about SeaQuest’s treatment of animals,” Animal Activist Legal Defense Project spokesperson Lauren Gazzola said in a media release.
The Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, represented Westbrook.
According to a May 24, 2024 report on the case by Eric Rasmussen of KTSP Eyewitness News in Minneapolis, “SeaQuest accused Westbrook of violating a nondisclosure agreement she signed when she was hired in 2019.
Never appeared in exposés
“She worked for the company for less than a year, but it sued Westbrook in September 2023, citing her public criticism of SeaQuest on various social media platforms. It also accused Westbrook of providing information to ABC News for a national investigation of SeaQuest in partnership with 5 Investigates.
“Westbrook’s attorneys denied the allegations and pointed out that she never appeared in the national reports that aired on ABC News in February 2024,” Rasmussen recounted.
“Other former employees of SeaQuest in Roseville agreed to speak with 5 Investigates,” Rasmussen said, “on the condition of anonymity. Some of them specifically expressed concern about possible retribution from the company because they signed non-disclosure agreements.”
Note: a non-disclosure agreement cannot be invoked to prevent a current or former employee from testifying to law enforcement agencies or in court about alleged crimes, and usually are also void if the signer discusses matters that have already been made public by others.
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Extensive rap sheet
The SeaQuest has an extensive rap sheet.
The former SeaQuest aquarium at the Ridgemar Mall in Fort Worth, Texas, for instance, in October 2024 “closed permanently,” Fox 4 in Fort Worth reported, after “Fort Worth police confirmed it opened an animal cruelty investigation based on complaints from PETA about two dead sharks.
“PETA also claims the Fort Worth location had been cited under the federal Animal Welfare Act for an unsanitary duck enclosure and two guests who were bitten by animals,” Fox 4 added.
“Overall, SeaQuest has violated portions of the federal Animal Welfare Act more than 100 times at its locations between 2019 and 2024, according to the Humane Society of the United States,” reported Tim Harlow for the Minnesota Star Tribune on December 5, 2024.
HSUS undercover investigation
“Last summer,” Harlow recounted, “The Humane Society of the United States [HSUS] placed undercover investigators in SeaQuest locations in Fort Worth and Las Vegas. In November, the organization released a video showing rodent and maggot infestations near animals’ food and visitors and staff. Clips from the two locations showed animals begging for food, being stepped on, and distressed and running in circles to avoid interactions with people. After the society’s investigations, the Texas and Nevada locations shut down.”
Said HSUS director of captive wildlife Laura Hagen, “Our investigations reveal that SeaQuest animals are confined to live in dark, hot, filthy spaces with no windows, fresh air or proper enrichment. Basic mental, physical and behavioral health requirements of the animals are simply ignored. Wild animals are surrounded for hours by loud crowds poking and grabbing them, day after day.”
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12 years of investigations & exposés
ANIMALS 24-7 has repeatedly exposed SeaQuest conditions, beginning upon receiving anonymously sent “death logs” in November 2015, dating to 2013, from the former Portland Aquarium, one of the first facilities developed by SeaQuest founders Vincent and Ammon Covino.
The Oregon Humane Society had investigated some of the allegations sent to ANIMALS 24-7 in August 2013, but neither PETA nor HSUS was known to be involved yet.
(See Could SeaWorld survive if founded today?, The SeaQuest empire, the Covino family, & who is “The Codfather?”, Covino SeaQuest Littleton follows duck-billed dinosaurs to extinction, Big fish, little fish, red fish, blue fish: hard times for aquariums.)
Vincent Covino bailed in August 2024
Vincent Covino, who started SeaQuest in 2012, “officially stepped down” as chief executive on August 8, 2024. His legal issues, involving much more than visitor safety and animal care, began long before that.
The Idaho Department of Finance in March 2017 fined Vince Covino and SeaQuest $5,000, reported Cynthia Sewell of the Idaho Statesmen, “for failing to disclose a previous securities disciplinary action while selling nearly a million dollars’ worth of membership interests in SeaQuest to investors.
“A former broker, [Vince] Covino had been in trouble before over investors’ money,” Sewell explained. “He was registered in Idaho as a securities broker/dealer from January 1998 through December 2011, when his registration was suspended for 30 days after the securities industry’s self-regulation body, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, ruled that he had borrowed money improperly from a client to buy a home.”
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Trafficking sharks & rays
Ammon Covino, meanwhile, ran into trouble originating with the Covino brothers first venture into the aquarium business, as cofounders of the Idaho Aquarium.
The Idaho Aquarium, three years in development, opened in Boise in December 2011––the same month in which another cofounder, Christopher Conk, and his ex-wife Deirda Davison, pleaded guilty to trafficking in smuggled coral. For that offense Conk was sentenced to serve six years on supervised probation.
The Idaho Aquarium was incorporated as a nonprofit organization. While it was under construction, Ammon and Vincent Covino in December 2012 opened the Portland Aquarium in Milwaukie, Oregon, a Portland suburb.
Within less than eight months the Idaho and Portland aquariums both were struggling. Ammon Covino and Conk on September 24, 2013 pleaded guilty in federal district court in Key West, Florida, to illegally conspiring to acquire eagle rays and lemon sharks from the Florida Keys.
A year plus a day
Ammon Covino was sentenced to a year plus a day in prison, followed by two years of supervised release. Conk was sentenced to four months in prison plus two years of supervised release.
A Covino nephew, Peter C. Covino IV, 20, was sentenced to serve 100 days of home detention for obstruction of justice, in connection with seeking to destroy records pertaining to the case.
While Ammon Covino served 10 months in federal prison for his Key West convictions, Vincent Covino opened aquariums in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, in December 2014.
Released on parole, on conditions that included “an agreement not to buy, sell or possess fish or wildlife,” according to Katie Terhune of KTVB-Boise, Ammon Covino was arrested for parole violations in Texas in late October 2015 “after he remained engaged in activities at the Austin, Portland, and San Antonio aquariums,” summarized PETA.
A federal judge returned Ammon Covino to prison for 30 days in February 2016, and again in November 2016, this time for eight months, after he “was involved in opening two SeaQuest aquariums,” PETA said.
One of those was the one in Layton, Utah; the other, the one in Las Vegas.
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