Victory: AAA Northeast Ends SeaWorld Ticket Sales

Move Comes After More Than a Dozen Local PETA Protests

For Immediate Release:
August 6, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Following a vigorous PETA campaign that kicked off with a life-size crying, chained inflatable orca outside AAA’s Upper West Side office in July 2018, AAA Northeast has confirmed that it has stopped selling SeaWorld tickets.

Members and supporters of PETA and Protest SeaWorld NYC demonstrated outside AAA Northeast’s Manhattan club more than 18 times in the past year, including the day the policy was made. AAA Northeast (encompassing clubs throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island) now joins a growing list of travel-industry leaders—including AAA Arizona, AAA Washington, and Virgin Holidays as well as United, Alaska, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, Sunwing, and WestJet airlines—that have cut ties with SeaWorld.

“No decent business should want to be associated with an amusement park that’s still breeding dolphins and riding them around like surfboards in circus-style shows,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “AAA Northeast made the right call in cutting ties with SeaWorld, and PETA is calling on AAA branches that haven’t yet done so to follow suit.”

In nature, orcas may swim as far as 140 miles in a day and bottlenose dolphins may swim up to 60 miles a day, dive to depths of nearly 1,500 feet, and maintain dynamic relationships within a large social network. At SeaWorld, 140 of them are squeezed into just seven small tanks and can’t escape attacks from other frustrated, aggressive dolphins. At SeaWorld’s annual meeting in June, PETA—which owns stock in the company—urged its fellow shareholders to stop allowing trainers to stand on dolphins’ backs and faces, which (as detailed in a new veterinary report) may damage their hearing, strain muscles and joints, and exacerbate the injuries caused by confinement to the cramped tanks.

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 is calling on AAA National to stop promoting SeaWorld.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.