Beloved Seaquarium Closes

The Miami Seaquarium is a once-beloved ocean park that played a role in many people’s childhoods. Sadly, the cherished park has recently closed its doors.

Seaquarium opened in the year of 1955, holding sea animal exhibitions and shows for decades before their downfall. The company received its eviction notice for the waterfront property it leases from Miami-Dade County last year, locals stating that it had “a long and troubling history of violations.” Then, there came a series of federal inspections that found multiple existing issues, such as “unsafely structured buildings, “continuous violations, including decaying animal habitats, and a lack of veterinary staff.” All of it has been pointed to one big issue: violating animal rights.

However, Seaquarium was not what people claim it to be today; in fact, it was the mainstay tourist attraction when it first opened, also serving as the place where the 1960s television series, “Flipper,” took place. Nevertheless, it seems Seaquarium has declined in recent years, slowly transforming from an attraction for tourists to an attraction for animal activists, who protest at the gates of Seaquarium in present time. There had been cases such as Lolita, the Orca, who had been kept in captivity for half a century, but only to pass away just as Seaquarium was planning for her release back into the ocean.

On the last day of the Miami Seaquarium, protestors cheered outside the park, popping open bubbly drinks and celebrating what they called the “end of animal cruelty”, specifically targeted toward the captivity of Lolita, the protests even sounding larger after the orca’s death. After all, they have been fighting the Seaquarium for years. “I have been protesting here since 1986,” said Susan Hargreaves, 66, of Palm Beach County, “Today is another nail in the coffin in the animal prison industry.” At the same time, some visitors would miss the Seaquarium. Over the years, people had been going to the park since they were kids, and now, they would still bring their grandchildren there. “This is an asset that has so many memories for so many families,” Mr. Martin said, adding that he first visited the Seaquarium when he was 3. “We want to do something that honors that, but at the same time modernizes the place.”

On Sunday, the last day of Seaquarium’s opening, adults and children bought their tickets and entered the park; despite the faded signs and the closed exhibitions, they visited Seaquarium just as they would any other day.