An open letter to William Elgar, Director of Zoo Miami and President of IMATA

Dear Mr. Elgar,

We don’t know each other, though I suspect we may have met during one of the IAAPA zoo and aquarium sessions. Professionally, I write gushing articles for a trade publication on the attractions industry. This includes the design and operations of zoos and aquariums. On my personal time, I blog critically about the industry. Like many industries, the zoo and aquarium community is fallible, which is why I am thankful that organizations like the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums, the International Marine Animal Trainers Association, and the Association of Zoos & Aquariums exist to protect animal welfare within these institutions and to fight corruption.

I am not writing you as someone who was an aviculture intern at Sea World (the spelling at the time) during high school. I am not writing you as someone who participated in over thirty cetacean necropsies while a pre-vet in college. I am not writing to you as a former husbandry volunteer at the San Francisco Zoo, nor as someone involved in the rescue of pets and livestock during natural disasters, nor as a representative of any publication, including those I write professionally for and my own blogs and social media.

I am writing to you as a private citizen and a former resident of Miami-Dade County.

In your dual role as Director of the AZA accredited Zoo Miami and President of IMATA, you spoke before the Board of County Commissioners in 2021, as an expert witness, encouraging the County to approve the transfer of the Miami Seaquarium to The Dolphin Company.

According to the IMATA website, more than 30% of your organization’s accredited facilities are owned or invested in by The Dolphin Company or its subsidiaries. I have no reason to doubt that it is in IMATA’s best interest to maintain the high reputation of its member parks and their owners.

Weeks before the death of Tokitae, the Miami Seaquarium’s sole killer whale, you wrote in a letter to IMATA members, which was publicly shared by the organization, about a meeting that took place three months earlier between IMATA leadership and Miami Seaquarium management. This tells me that you and the IMATA leadership cared deeply about Tokitae and her welfare. The portion of your letter entailing the meeting was shared on my social media.

As the Chair of the IMATA Accreditation Committee, I am certain that you made sure the Whale Bowl, though not included in the USDA license, was included in the accreditation investigation and decision for the Miami Seaquarium as a whole, with the condition of the tank and safety risk to staff being taken under consideration. As you are certainly aware, as a high ranking official within Miami-Dade PROS and the county’s expert witness on the Seaquarium, the division for which you work was cited by the Miami-Dade County Unsafe Structures Board for unsafe conditions at the Whale Bowl stadium, while the tank itself was cited by USDA APHIS as being in need of repair and for not meeting minimum AWA size requirements for a female killer whale prior to its exemption by the agency from the park’s license.

I am therefore asking that, as you are obviously someone who, as seen by your actions, was concerned for the well being of Tokitae and the Pacific white-sided dolphin Li’i, that in your multiple capacities as PROS official, the county’s expert witness on the Seaquarium, the director of an AZA accredited institution, and the President and Chair of the Accreditation Committee of IMATA, you request the Mayor initiate an investigation into the circumstances leading up to the moment of Tokitae’s death, including an independent engineering assessment of the Whale Bowl and life support systems to determine if they played any role in the death. Per the lease between Miami-Dade County and the Miami Seaquarium, the Mayor, at her discretion may have the facility investigated by two representatives from AZA accredited facilities, impendent from the county. I highly recommend this course of action and that the investigators not come from Alliance or IMATA accredited facilities, as Seaquarium is not AZA accredited, but is accredited by the other two.

Thank you for taking this into consideration. I know you will do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Joe Kleiman