The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Students out to cut ties with Miami Seaquarium
Animals’ care distresses them after federal probe.
Some students at the MIAMI — University of Miami want the school to stop sending them on research field trips to the Miami Seaquarium after a damning federal report revealed that park managers fed spoiled food to marine animals and allowed bacteria to multiply in tanks, making manatees and dolphins sick, among other violations.
A group of undergraduate students stated a campaign last month asking the school to cut ties with the marine park. The campaign, built around a petition on Change. org, is part of a political science class assignment on activism. It hasn’t generated much traction, however, attracting only 209 signatures since it was posted a month ago.
Organizers said the campaign reflects frustration by some undergraduate students at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science who are required to study animal behavior at the Seaquarium. Rosenstiel School students said they felt uncomfortable going on field trips to the Seaquarium, a facility that has been the target of numerous animal rights campaigns alleging mistreatment of dolphins and of Lolita the orca, for decades the park’s main attraction.
The political science students said their intention is to help the Rosenstiel students raise awareness about what they consider academic field work that doesn’t add to their education, while working on a real-life campaign for their activism class, said Catherine Mcgrath, a third-year political science student.
“We realized that many students at RSMAS were quite upset with this requirement to do work at the Seaquarium, so we joined forces with them to help with a campaign,” she said. “We believe this is a credibility issue for UM. We don’t want our university to be associated with an abusive marine park.”
The marine park was purchased in 2014 by Palace Entertainment, a unit of Madrid-based Parques Reunidos.
Palace found itself in the spotlight two months ago when public records showed an atypical string of deaths between March 2019 and April 2020. Five bottlenose dolphins and a baby California sea lion died — a high number for a park with just 25 dolphins before the deaths occurred.
A few weeks later, the Seaquarium was cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for multiple critical infractions, including water quality problems that made animals sick and feeding the animals rotting food.
The Rosenstiel School didn’t make anyone available for an interview. In a statement, the University of Miami’s communications department said: “The petition contains incorrect information. Undergraduate students at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science are able to participate in a voluntary field trip to the Seaquarium to observe mammal behavior of dolphins and manatees. If a student chooses not to participate, they are not penalized and it does not impact their grade.”