We are pleading with Congress to take action so that The Dolphin Company’s marine mammals will be confiscated and removed to parks not owned or operated by The Dolphin Company until the conclusion of the Florida state criminal investigation and federal bankruptcy proceedings have been resolved.

We request a Congressional oversight hearing into The Dolphin Company’s Florida parks and a full investigation into the USDA’s failure to enforce the Animal Welfare Act and NOAA’s selective and inconsistent enforcement of the Marine Mammal Protection Act as it applies to captive marine mammals. Federal agencies must be held accountable for allowing systemic abuse to persist unchecked. The public trust depends on it. 

Background

In March 2025, the deaths of four dolphins in less than six months, coupled with viral videos of filthy, bright green water at Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City Beach, Florida sparked worldwide outrage. There were protests, a raid by local law enforcement and the state attorney general launched a criminal investigation stating definitively "we will not tolerate any animal cruelty.” 

The Dolphin Company, which is based out of Cancun, Mexico, operates 4 parks in Florida: Marineland Dolphin Adventure near St. Augustine, opened in 1938; Miami Seaquarium opened in 1955; Gulf World in Panama City Beach built in 1969; and Dolphin Connection in the Florida Keys, opened in 1990. 

Miami-Dade County has condemned buildings housing animals at the Seaquarium and the City of Panama City Beach has condemned a portion of Gulf World, including the sea lion stadium, with both deeming the structures not safe for employees or the public. USDA has cited both for crumbling tanks with poor water quality that are not safe for animals. Marine mammals at parks owned by The Dolphin Company have been dying at alarming rates. 

The Dolphin Company’s Florida parks are failing to pay employees, rent, vendors, and even the labs and medications essential for the animals' care. Workers Compensation policies at all four parks were cancelled for nonpayment, yet the parks continued operating without having this state mandated requirement. Despite having the ability to fine The Dolphin Company or revoke their license, the USDA has done little more than document the conditions at The Dolphin Company’s dilapidated facilities. NOAA has stated that it lacks jurisdiction over captive dolphins and defers oversight to the USDA.

On March 31, 2025, Gulf World's owners, The Dolphin Company, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in United States federal court, complicating confiscation efforts for the dolphins trapped in inhumane conditions at Gulf World. Despite numerous complaints to USDA, NOAA, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC), and numerous local, state, and federal officials, the dolphins continued to be subjected to suffering at Gulf World. On May 27, a fifth young dolphin died at Gulf World, likely from ingesting a large volume of foreign material. 

Due to bureaucratic red tape, it took five dolphins dying in less than 8 months to finally remove the dolphins from Gulf World. Four rough toothed dolphins were relocated to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. The seven surviving bottlenose dolphins were split between two other parks owned and operated by The Dolphin Company - Dolphin Connection and Marineland.

It is unconscionable that The Dolphin Company, which is under criminal investigation for the deaths of five dolphins in just eight months, is still being entrusted by the very agencies investigating it to care for the same animals it abused—merely shuffled to its other rundown, roadside locations. Instead of confiscating and removing the dolphins, authorities have handed the abuse victims right back to their abuser. This is not oversight—it’s complicity. 

USDA & NOAA: A Pattern of Impropriety with The Dolphin Company

The Dolphin Company has a well-documented history of evading legal accountability and leveraging the USDA to conceal misconduct. The Dolphin Company’s history of continuously passing inspections at Gulf World and the Miami Seaquarium demonstrates the USDA’s complete failure to enforce the minimum standards required under the Animal Welfare Act, and exposes USDA’s complete incompetence in regulatory enforcement for this licensee.

The Dolphin Company never should have been granted a license by the USDA to operate the Miami Seaquarium, which was required by the county before it would allow it to purchase the park. On February 1, 2022, the USDA admitted that the tank housing the Miami Seaquarium’s lone endangered killer whale—then the smallest tank in the world for the species—did not meet the minimum federally mandated dimensions, was leaking, crumbling, and was in desperate need of repair. The whale, Tokitae (stage name Lolita), had lived with dolphin companions since the 1970s, and without another killer whale since 1980. Both NOAA and the USDA allowed this, despite numerous aggressive events having been documented between Tokitae and the dolphins, making the animals incompatible—both violations of the Animal Welfare Act . 

Rather than move Toki within 60 days after her tank failed inspection, as required in the Animal Welfare Act, the USDA granted an exhibitor’s license to The Dolphin Company with  an important caveat: Tokitae and her tank would not be included—and the whale, which had been added to the Endangered Species Act listing for the wild population she was captured from—lost her only federal protection. 

NOAA never required the prior owners of the Seaquarium to obtain an Endangered Species Act permit for Tokitae, nor was it required prior to the sale to The Dolphin Company, despite Tokitae’s addition to the endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale listing in 2015 by the agency. The Dolphin Company, alongside its NGO partners—Friends of Toki, the sister organization of the Whale Sanctuary Project—and Miami-Dade County authorities, announced in March 2023 that Tokitae would be moved to a sanctuary. She was dead 5 months later and there was no sanctuary. 

Around the same time sanctuary plans were announced for Tokitae, the Seaquarium failed its sewer recertification, and raw sewage flowed into Biscayne Bay beginning in the spring of 2023. Following the bay currents, the contaminated water is sucked through the park’s intake pipes and pumped into the animal tanks. The month before Tokitae died, chlorine disinfection in her tank was stopped and poor water quality likely contributed to her death. 

In August 2023 NOAA coordinated a move for two Pacific white-sided dolphins from crumbling tanks at the Seaquarium to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. In September 2023, Toki’s tank-mate, a Pacific white-sided dolphin, was removed from the inhumane conditions at the Seaquarium and relocated to SeaWorld San Antonio. In December 2023 after mounting welfare concerns, three manatees were removed from the Seaquarium by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Manatee Rescue & Rehabilitation Partnership. In April 2025, Brookfield Zoo conducted an emergency transfer of one of its dolphins on loan to The Dolphin Company, due to what it considered serious welfare concerns. The zoo was so adamant on removing the dolphin that it provided NOAA with two different contingency plans in case the receiving facility was not immediately available. 

The USDA and NOAA’s blatant negligence in enforcing legal protections for captive marine mammals has led to one of the most egregious displays of marine mammal abuse—allowing The Dolphin Company to own one of the world’s most endangered orcas and keep it in a filthy, illegal, crumbling hell-hole.