Miami Seaquarium Parent Company to Face Scrutiny at Annual Meeting

Right Before Parques Reunidos Goes Private, PETA Will Call For Release of Lolita and Other Marine Mammals From Cramped Tanks

For Immediate Release:
October 28, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

“When will you release the orcas at your parks to seaside sanctuaries?” That’s the question a PETA representative will pose to executives of Parques Reunidos—the parent company of the Miami Seaquarium—at the company’s annual meeting in Madrid on Tuesday. The meeting is the final one open to shareholders before the company goes private.

“Going private won’t hide the pain and misery that the sensitive marine mammals held captive in Parques Reunidos’ abusement park prisons endure,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling for these suffering orcas to be sent to safe seaside sanctuaries, where they’d finally be able to feel the ocean currents, dive deep, and have some semblance of a natural life.”

PETA will point out in the meeting that the National Aquarium in Baltimore is building a seaside sanctuary for the dolphins currently held there, two whales were just moved from a marine park in China to a seaside sanctuary in Iceland, and Canada recently banned cetacean captivity. Yet a lone orca, Lolita, has been held at the Miami Seaquarium in the smallest orca tank in the world for nearly half a century, and another four orcas are imprisoned at Marineland of Antibes—another of Parques Reunidos’ parks, in France—where at least 12 orcas have died since 1970.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. The group purchased stock in Parques Reunidos in 2017, specifically so that it could influence management decisions from the inside and liaise with other shareholders.

PETA’s full shareholder question is available upon request. For more information, please visit PETA.org.