(Beth Clifton collage)
The Dolphin Company is big, SeaQuest was small, but both are drowning
PANAMA CITY BEACH, Florida––The Gulf World Marine Park, one of four Florida marine parks owned by the Mexican-based Dolphin Company, has reportedly denied access to Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission inspectors investigating recent dolphin deaths.
Reported local television stations WJHG and WECP on March 22, 2025, “According to the Fish & Wildlife Commission, they were denied entry into the establishment by Gulf World staff to perform a wellness check and to view dolphin enclosures.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Calling the feds
“Officials say the enclosures are under the jurisdiction of the federal government,” WJHG and WECP explained. “They say that while the species and enclosures under state authority were found in basic compliance, they will remain committed to resolving this matter.
“They added that they have engaged federal partners to continue this investigation and will provide the resources necessary to expedite this matter.”
What “federal partners” will be able to do, following Donald Trump administration cuts to the already shorthanded USDA Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service staff, remains to be seen.
Triggering the investigation, described Amy Diaz of MyPanhandle.com one day earlier, was a March 1, 2025 incident in which “Staff members rushed guests attending a Gulf World dolphin show out of the arena after a dolphin reportedly hit a shallow end of the pool during a jump and died.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
14-year-old dolphin
Gulf World visitor Britten Moore told Diaz, “The water clarity was so bad, you couldn’t really tell a lot. I didn’t know for sure something was wrong until I saw the trainers freaking out.”
Continued Diaz, “A National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration marine mammal data sheet confirmed that the dolphin in the show was 14-year-old Jett. It also confirmed his cause of death was acute head trauma.
“Jett is just the latest,” Diaz recalled. “Within the last six months, three other dolphins died at Gulf World within a week of each other.
“According to National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration documents,” Diaz recounted, “14-year-old Gus was euthanized on October 4, 2024 for an unspecified life-threatening condition. On October 7, 2024, 15-year-old Turk died from a bacterial lung disease. Then four days later, 20-year-old Nate died. No cause of death was given.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
55 & over the hill
The dead dolphins were middle-aged, as captive dolphins go, but Gulf World, opened on Memorial Day 1970, is relatively old, though far from the oldest of the Dolphin Company holdings in Florida. Others include Marineland, opened in 1937; the troubled Miami Seaquarium, opened in 1955; and the newest, the Dolphin Connection swim-with-dolphins facility in Duck Key, opened in 1990.
“A January USDA inspection report detailed major issues,” Diaz reported, including “several penguins being housed in an indoor storage space,” dusty and cluttered.
“There was no working water filter in the east dolphin pool,” Diaz summarized. “The filter in the west pool was working at only 50%. The report also notes an abundance of algae in the pools, which they say can cause visibility issues for the animals.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Dolphin Company blows bubbles
Finished Diaz, “Gulf World officials declined to comment, referring us to corporate. The Dolphin Company corporate offices have not responded.”
(See The Dolphin Company, owners of 30-31 dolphinariums, goes bust.)
Diaz reported just 24 hours after Dolphin Discovery, also a Dolphin Company subsidiary, announced the opening of Dolphin Discovery Cancun, a swim-with-dolphins park boasting of certifications from “American Humane Certified Zoos & Aquariums and the European Association for Aquatic Mammals,” neither of which means so much as a bucket of rotten bait fish to many and perhaps most marine mammal advocates outside of the exhibition industry.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Gaslighting & “high-grading”
American Humane, founded in 1877, is the oldest U.S. national humane society, but by the end of the 1950s had degenerated into “certifying” animal use industries for money, including rodeo, and has done little else in the present century.
Suspicion is growing among advocates for captive marine mammals that the Dolphin Company may be “high-grading” the older facilities among its holdings, extracting the last money from the investments possible with aged animal inventories before closing them, while focusing investment on the newer and more lucrative swim-with-dolphins sites.
Eduardo Albor.
(The Dolphin Company photo)
“Can’t be much of a positive sign”
Across Florida, in the Flagler County town of Marineland, home of the Marineland oceanarium, just south of St. Augustine, mayor Gary Inks on February 21, 2025 expressed concern that the Dolphin Company has filed in Mexico for the equivalent of a U.S. Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
This could expedite dumping nonprofitable facilities.
“We’re not exactly sure what that means with regards to their Florida attractions,” Inks told FlaglerLive, but it can’t be much of a positive sign. So we have great concern.”
Explained FlaglerLive, “The Dolphin Company bought Marineland Dolphin Adventure for $3 million in 2019 from the Georgia Aquarium in 2019. Inks was the general manager there at the time, and was not retained.
(Beth Clifton collage)
General manager did not get paid
“Felicia Cook was general manager of Dolphin Adventure until the end of January, when she resigned. She had gone months without getting paid, as had other employees, according to Flagler County tourism director, Amy Lukasik. News reports have pointed to similar issues at other subsidiaries of the Dolphin Company.”
The Dolphin Company has described the Mexican filings as not a bankruptcy, but an application “to restructure its financial liabilities under the protection and supervision of a Mexican court specialized in financial debt restructure process.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Behind on taxes
Responded Flagler Beach bankruptcy lawyer Scott Spradley, who chairs the Flagler Beach City Commission, “The process described may not be a bankruptcy in the traditional sense, but the principles described suggest a mirror image of Chapter 11 reorganization in the U.S., which focuses on reorganizing debt under court supervision with the goal being to keep the business afloat.”
Marineland Dolphin Adventure “accounted for almost a third of the town’s property tax revenue of $127,000 in 2024,” FlaglerLive said. “It pays its bill in quarterly installments. But the last time it paid an installment was on July 1, 2024. Three installments are unpaid.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
SeaQuest plays swan song on kazoo instead of a tuba
While the Dolphin Company operates large facilities offering contact with very large marine mammals, the also bankrupt SeaQuest aquarium chain offered shopping mall “petting zoo” aquariums featuring hands-on contact with a variety of relatively small animals, including sharks, rays, birds, and even some mammals having nothing whatever to do with aquatic environments.
SeaQuest Holdings LLC, founded by brothers Vincent and Ammon Covino, rapidly expanded into a chain of 14 aquariums.
The first, 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 Deidra Davison, pleaded guilty to trafficking in smuggled coral. For that offense Conk was sentenced to serve six years on supervised probation.
Ammon Covino. (Beth Clifton collage)
Down the tubes
Ammon and Vincent Covino went on to open the Portland Aquarium in Milwaukie, Oregon, a Portland suburb, in December 2012.
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.
The pattern of rapid expansion, legal issues over animal acquisition and care, and financial implosion, leading to facility closures, continued until after both Covinos left the company.
SeaQuest Holdings LLC applied for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2024.
(See Covino SeaQuest Littleton follows duck-billed dinosaurs to extinction.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
25 animals removed from SeaQuest Woodbridge
As what remained of the SeaQuest chain went down like a soggy house of cards, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Fish & Wildlife Division on February 27, 2025 “removed and found new homes for 25 reptiles, birds and other animals from SeaQuest Woodbridge,” department spokesperson Caryn Shinske told media.
“The animals who were removed are regulated under the Endangered & Nongame Species Conservation Act and the Exotic & Nongame Wildlife Regulations, and includes several mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians,” said Shinske.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Fish stayed there
Fish remained on the premises.
“The facility, which is located in the Woodbridge Center mall, has not been ordered to close,” Shinske clarified.
“The removal comes after state officials notified the aquarium on January 31, 2025 that it had begun the process of revoking its permits. The order only covered regulated species and included the revocation of two of the aquarium’s exotic and non-game permits.”
The Woodbridge facility, though reportedly nearly $400,000 in debt, is still operating.
Canary rockfish.
(Beth Clifton photo/ collage)
Roseville, Minnesota location folds
The former SeaQuest location in Roseville, Minnesota, apparently folded in late February.
Reported Howard Thompson on March 9, 2025 for Fox 9 in Minneapolis, “While SeaQuest did not respond to a media request from FOX 9, the business was closed when FOX 9 tried to stop by and the location was marked as ‘permanently closed’ on Google.
“The Roseville location has also been removed from SeaQuest’s website.
“The Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth, Minnesota, and the Wildcat Sanctuary in Sandstone, Minnesota, announced they would step in to help the animals. The zoo said it would assist in getting the aquarium animals and fish to new homes, with some of the animals ending up in Duluth.
“The Wildcat Sanctuary said it would take in two Bengal cats named Ferguson and Flynn.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Now “NorCal Aquarium & Wildlife Adventures”
Goldcountrymedia.com reporter Midori Sperandeo reported on March 18, 2025 that Noveen Capital Inc. owner Jeff Cox, already a 4% owner of SeaQuest, had won an application to take over ownership of the SeaQuest location in Folsom, California, near Sacramento, “along with locations in New Jersey and Utah, according to court records.”
The New Jersey location is the one in Woodbridge.
“The company is reportedly being rebranded to NorCal Aquarium & Wildlife Adventures LLC,” Sperandeo said.
“The purchase of the Folsom aquarium reportedly includes the animals.”
PETA’s take on Ken doll.
“PETA will continue fighting”
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] unsuccessfully fought the Cox application to acquire SeaQuest for pennies on the dollar, leaving taxpayers holding the bag for much of an unpaid $3.9 million U.S. Small Business Administration lien.
Said PETA Foundation general counsel for captive animal law enforcement Brittany Peet, in a prepared statement to the Folsom Telegraph, “It doesn’t matter who owns the shady shopping mall aquarium and petting zoo in Folsom, as animals will always suffer when they’re denied any semblance of a natural life and forced into dangerous and frightening public encounters.
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
“PETA will continue fighting SeaQuest and other businesses like it until they are all shut down for good.”
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