‘Suffering, neglect, and death’ at Fort Worth mall aquarium, whistleblowers report
An “egregious and chronic failure to provide animals with basic care” led to the deaths of multiple animals at Fort Worth’s SeaQuest aquarium, according to former employees who denounced the systemic neglect to the animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
PETA has requested that the Tarrant County Criminal District Attorney’s Office conduct an investigation into the aquarium, which is inside Fort Worth’s Ridgmar Mall. A spokesperson for the Criminal District Attorney Phil Sorrells said the office has forwarded the information to the Fort Worth Police Department.
SeaQuest did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Three former employees “described a top-down organizational structure, where SeaQuest management consistently failed to address issues with animal enclosures that were negatively affecting animal health,” PETA said in a letter given to Sorrells on Monday.
The letter tells of two nurse sharks named Icarus and Achilles that “likely starved to death after extreme stress from inappropriate environmental conditions impacted these animals so severely that they stopped eating.”
A PETA press release included a link to a video of Achilles convulsing in an overcrowded tank on the night he died. He was housed with four other sharks and seven eels in a tank suitable for one nurse shark, the press release states.
PETA’s letter to the District Attorney’s Office also cites the deaths of dozens of marine animals in plastic bags, “likely suffocating to death,” while being shipped to Fort Worth in a U-Haul truck from a SeaQuest aquarium that recently shut down in Colorado earlier this year.
The press release also linked to video of the animals that likely suffocated during transport.
“The level of chronic neglect and unnecessary suffering at SeaQuest Fort Worth is criminal,” PETA said.
A police department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
PETA said that it contacted Fort Worth Animal Control with the allegations in June, but that the office “has refused to act, taking the absurd and patently false position that the state’s cruelty to animal laws do not apply to the animals at SeaQuest because those animals are owned by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA).”
Animal Control did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
PETA said that state law applies to all the animals in the SeaQuest facility and that the aquarium is legally responsible for the wellbeing of its animals.
“Contrary to Animal Control’s unfounded claim, the FDA is not running a roadside zoo in a shopping mall in Fort Worth Texas,” PETA said. “There is no legal basis for Animal Control to turn a blind eye to the animal suffering at SeaQuest Fort Worth.”
The allegations were not the first time SeaQuest found itself in hot water for failing to provide proper care for animals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture cited the aquarium in January for cramped and unsanitary conditions.
