Blizzard Won’t Stop SeaWorld Protest at New York Travel Expo

Costumed Penguin Protests Real Ones Used as Props, Decries Wild Animals Exposed to Noisy Crowds

For Immediate Release:
January 23, 2015

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Thirteen-year-old New Yorker Rose McCoy didn’t let an arrest stop her from protesting SeaWorld, and a blizzard won’t stop her, either. The honors student will wear a full-body penguin costume and brandish a sign that proclaims, “Penguins Aren’t Props,” outside The New York Times Travel Show on Saturday to protest SeaWorld’s plan to promote its orca prison parks and its habit of carting penguins around as props at the expo.

When:   Saturday, January 24, 12 p.m.

Where:  Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 655 W. 34^th St. (at the intersection with 11^th Avenue), New York

“Sensitive, shy wildlife should never be dumped, scared and confused, in front of noisy crowds as a sales ploy at a travel expo any more than orcas should be kept in SeaWorld’s tiny concrete tanks,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel Delcianna Winders. “PETA is calling on families to stay far away from SeaWorld and all animal parks that exploit animals for the sake of entertainment.”

Last year, New York City’s Bagatelle restaurant pulled the plug on SeaWorld’s 50^th anniversary bash after learning from PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—that transporting wild animals across the country for photo ops and forcing them into close public contact leaves them agitated and frightened and that SeaWorld’s very business model involves locking far-ranging orcas in tiny concrete tanks, where they suffer physically and psychologically from the constant deprivation of confinement.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.