I recently visited Melbourne from Canberra and decided to check out the aquarium, curious to see what it was like. As I approached the ticket counter, I already had a sinking feeling in my stomach, as though I was doing something wrong. I began to empathize with the animals, imagining myself in their position. Would I want to live my life confined in a box, with no privacy, cramped into a small space, and stripped of freedom? In the human world, we call that jail.

As I toured the aquarium, my discomfort only grew. The more I saw, the sicker I felt. What truly broke me, though, was the sight of the penguins. Dozens of them were crammed into a glass enclosure, surrounded by puddles of urine. That’s all they seemed to do—sit and urinate, day after day. Their wings were clipped (even if it’s supposedly for health monitoring, it still felt deeply wrong). Penguins are meant to hunt, mate, swim, and thrive in their natural habitats, not languish in artificial conditions.

One penguin in particular caught my attention. It seemed to be in distress, pacing back and forth near the glass, tapping its beak against it, almost as if pleading to be let out. They all looked so miserable. Penguins, and no other animals for that matter, belong in an aquarium.

Please, let’s take action to close this place and free the penguins. They deserve to live the life nature intended for them.