Feds Cite SeaQuest After Multiple Guests Bitten

For Immediate Release:
March 21, 2022

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

SeaQuest is in hot water after a kinkajou bit an unsupervised guest who had reached under the door of an enclosure and an Asian small-clawed otter bit a guest during a public interaction session, causing the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to cite the aquarium, as PETA has learned through the agency’s just-released inspection report. The citation echoes similar animal welfare citations found at other SeaQuest locations across the country.

“SeaQuest Utah confines sensitive wild animals to a lifetime of deprivation while recklessly risking the safety of guests,” says PETA Foundation Associate Director of Captive Animal Law Enforcement Michelle Sinnott. “PETA is calling on families to stay away from SeaQuest’s seedy facilities, which are in hot water from coast to coast.”

SeaQuest Utah has a history of animal welfare issues, racking up seven prior reported animal bites since its 2016 opening. In recent years, the facility was cited twice for two separate incidents in which a coatimundi bit a guest and an employee during public interactions.

The chain’s other locations are no better: Last year alone, the USDA cited SeaQuest’s Littleton, Colorado, facility after a wallaby drowned; the USDA cited the Trumbull, Connecticut, facility after an employee was caught hitting otters with a metal bowl; and a child was bitten by an adult capybara and another guest was bitten by a sloth at the Fort Worth, Texas, facility. PETA asked the USDA to terminate SeaQuest’s license to exhibit animals after SeaQuest Littleton pleaded guilty to a criminal charge involving the unlawful purchase of wildlife.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview that fosters violence toward other animals. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.