Dear Mayor Cava and Councilwoman Regalado,
We’re sure by now that you’re familiar with the situation at Gulf World in Panama City Beach, where local and state officials are currently taking action after the recent dolphin deaths. You may not know that the park is also home to a building partially condemned by the city, much in the same way that your county has condemned buildings at the Miami Seaquarium. Conditions at Gulf World are so discouraging that the park is now being inspected by the state Attorney General’s office and, under the leadership of Miami-Dade resident Rodney Barreto, who we consider a hero for his concerns about animal welfare, by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) as well.
We reached out to the two of you on multiple occasions. You had multiple opportunities to take heed of our concerns. You opted to brush those concerns aside. Meanwhile, in just a matter of weeks, a community and a state have joined forces to protect another park’s animals, staff, and guests from conditions paralleling what your own reports show to be happening at the Seaquarium. Things appear to work much more efficiently and officials are much more receptive if it’s not Miami-Dade County.
We know that the two of you made some sort of deal with The Dolphin Company and Friends of Toki on the care of the orca Lolita (AKA Tokitae). It’s been mentioned a number of times by the parties involved. You largely went silent on the remaining issues at the park, save for when a scathing report was released by USDA on the Dolphin Harbor animals. That was, of course, until after the orca died and you found it worthwhile to terminate the company’s lease on the park.
On 25 July 2023, we wrote a letter to Commisioner Regalado with the subject line: “Concerns over continued risks with whale and dolphin at Seaquarium.” On the same day, we received an automated response, stating that “A member of our team will be reaching out within 1-3 business days, to ensure that your inquiry is answered or routed to the appropriate department for a timely response.” This never happened.
On 1 January 2024, we sent a letter about the Seaquarium to then Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, with the Mayor and the entire Board of Commissioners carbon copied. We again received the same automated response from Commissioner Regalado’s office, and again no follow-through on their part. We also received a very similar automated response that same day from the Mayor’s office, also stating: “A member from appropriate departmental staff will be reaching out within 1-2 business days, to ensure that your inquiry is answered or routed to the appropriate department for a timely response.” As with Regalado’s office, this did not happen.
On 28 July 2023, we initiated a public records request with the Mayor’s office for the following: “….any and all documentation and communication between the MIami Seaquarium, Palace Entertainment, Parques Reunidos, Festival Fun Parks or their representatives, Charles Vinick, Pritam Singh, Diana Reiss, Roger Payne, Raynell Morris, Jeff Foster, Lori Marino, Ann E. Johnston, Travis Burke, Eduardo Albor, Concepcion Esteban, Robert Fine, or any other representatives of Friends of Toki/Friends of Lolita, The Dolphin Company, Dolphin Discovery, Controladora Dolphin, or MS Leisure and the Mayor regarding the killer whale known as Tokitae or Lolita and the Whale Bowl stadium and tank at the Miami Seaquarium.“
It has now been 607 days since that request was made and the file is still open without even a partial response. In that interim, we have received responses to three separate requests from your Parks, Recreation and Open Spaces (PROS) department in a timely manner.
On 21 June 2023, we filed an animal cruelty complaint for the treatment of Tokitae at the Miami Seaquarium with the county’s Animal Services department. Tokitae was living in a tank condemned by the USDA inside a stadium condemned by your own county’s Unsafe Structures Board, without any required protections under the Animal Welfare Act and without an Endangered Species Act license as required by law.
On 29 August 2023, we received our response:
Pursuant to the amended requirements of the Seaquarium lease, the County had engaged an independent veterinary team to conduct regular evaluations of Lolita and her care, as well as the care rendered to the other marine mammals at the Seaquarium.
Please feel free to directly contact the Friends of Lolita at 2600 Douglas Road, Suite 800, Coral Gables, Florida 33134, or The Dolphin Company through Ms. Alexa Login, their Public Relations & Communications Specialist, at (305) 365-2525 and/or ALogin@msq.cc with any additional questions you may have
Since the whale’s death from what’s on record as renal failure, we have received FOIA documentation from USDA, NOAA, and the FDA indicating that, beginning in February 2022, staff of the Miami Seaquarium (under the ownership of The Dolphin Company since 4 March 2022) and Friends of Toki had been frequently administering various medications that are recommended not to be used if the animal has a history of a compromised renal system. Such a history had been documented by park staff for years prior to the sale. When she died on 18 August 2023, the official cause of death as provided to NOAA by the park’s attending veterinarian was “renal failure.” When NOAA officials asked if she wished to change it to pneumonia, as that was the primary cause listed on the necropsy summary (the actual necropsy report itself has never been publicly released by The Dolphin Company), and renal failure was the third condition listed, the veterinarian responded that it needed to be listed as renal failure. We received this email conversation in a timely manner via a FOIA request, as some agencies tend to be much more productive than the Mayor’s office in such matters.
Of interest to us is that the shorings used to support the whale stadium structure in order to allow entrance and egress, and therefore access to the orca and a dolphin living within, were found not to be up to code when inspected by the Fire Prevention Division (a completely different issue with shoring compromise took place at Gulf World about the same time). The deadline for the permit application to be approved was 17 August 2023. Whether or not this had anything to do with the orca’s death the following day is pure speculation, but I’m certain the two of you most likely have a good idea as to such a rumor’s validity.
We do not know the specifics of the deal or deals made between you, The Dolphin Company, and Friends of Toki, but we’re not worried. The deepest, darkest secrets of political figures always tend to surface when least expected.
We question your ethics, and that of PROS Director Maria Nardi. One of our public record requests was for the applications of the top three candidates for Zoo Miami Director.
On 6 November 2023, we were sent two emails by a staff member of PROS in response to this request. Each email was sent within minutes of the other. There was no documented request to retract the first email, so we consider it as public record, though we won’t share the exact contents of the two documents that appeared exclusively in the first email and not in the latter in order to protect the privacy of the applicants, other than the top three candidates, whom we have already discussed on another post on this blog. We would not be surprised if a random resident of Miami-Dade County were somehow inspired to present what we are about to disclose to the Miami-Dade County Ethics Commission.
The first of the two documents was an internal email thread discussing how to handle the request. It is somewhat boring and inconsequential in the scheme of things. The second document is much more fascinating. It is a spreadsheet listing twenty applicants for the Zoo Miami Director position as of the end of August 2020. We were able to confirm the identity of each of the twenty, and they ranged from public service officials to wildlife veterinarians. Of the twenty, five of the names were spelled out completely with capital letters. We confirmed four of those to be current Miami-Dade County employees as of August 2020.
The fifth name in all capitals was WILLIAM ELGAR, who you ultimately hired as Zoo Miami Director. To the best of our knowledge, at the end of August 2020, Mr. Elgar was managing the pinniped collection at the Georgia Aquarium and was not actually on the Miami-Dade County employee payroll. We also noticed that on another document, which was comprised of People Soft printouts of the resumes of the top three candidates for Zoo Miami Director position, the proper job code was listed for the position when it showed – 009085, but the job opening code was different on Mr. Elgar’s resume than others. In fact, while the other resumes, and indeed even the spreadsheet of twenty applicants, properly listed 59163 as the job opening code, Mr. Elgar’s resume listed it as 60545.
On 7 January 2021, Ms. Nardi presented a laudatory letter of recommendation to Mayor Cava for the hiring of Mr. Elgar – a letter that mentioned his current position as Director of Zoological Operations at Georgia Aquarium, which was much shorter than his full title of Director of Zoological Operations – Animal Training – Pinnipeds. The recommendation letter failed to mention his simultaneous employment with Miami-Dade County, as listed on the spreadsheet.
Why Mr. Elgar, the then President of the International Marine Animal Trainers Association (IMATA) and an accreditation inspector for the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums (AMMPA), was listed as a county employee when candidates for the Zoo Miami Director position were still being vetted, we can only speculate about.
We tend to speculate that the county was planning to take over operation of the Seaquarium from the then owner Festival Fun Parks (DBA Palace Entertainment), and do so through the zoo. Festival Fun Parks needed to divest itself of the park. Funding which would have gone into infrastructure improvements and expansion of the Seaquarium had been diverted from the park in 2015 following the devastating aftermath of storms at a sister marine life park in France. This was followed two years later by extensive hurricane damage and then by the loss of international tourism during the Covid pandemic. At one point, the Seaquarium’s attendance and revenue figures were dropped completely from the financial reports of Parques Reunidos, Festival Fun Parks’ Spanish-based parent company, as they had dipped too low.
Mr. Elgar also had intimate knowledge into the operations of the park through his wife, a former Seaquarium trainer.
Our speculation continues that it was perhaps the devastating 8 June 2021 inspection, which was made public in September of that year, which caused the county to back out of any potential deal and led to immediate and rapid negotiations with The Dolphin Company. This was a great opportunity for The Dolphin Company, as it had originally attempted to purchase the park when bids were being taken by the Hertz family in 2013/2014 and had lost out to Festival Fun Parks. Ironically, when not selected in 2014 to purchase the Seaquarium, The Dolphin Company purchased Gulf World the following year, which leads us to where we are now.
With the exception of The Dolphin Company’s history in the parks and the documents received from PROS, the reasons for Mr. Elgar’s hire when not really a hire at all is simply pure speculation on our part. The truth remains your secret, and, as we stated above, secrets have a way of surfacing when least expected.
Mr. Elgar, who lacks extensive training and husbandry experience with orcas, is who you selected to review the care plan for Tokitae. And Mr. Elgar is the person you selected as the county’s subject expert on the Seaquarium, who spoke before the Board of Commissioners and told them that The Dolphin Company was the best choice to operate the Seaquarium.
Let’s look at Gulf World and see what the future has in store for you should you come to a settlement and allow The Dolphin Company to maintain operation of the park.
The maintenance, including life support systems, will deteriorate – this has already happened at Seaquarium under The Dolphin Company and will likely happen again.
Animals will die under mysterious circumstances – this has also happened at Seaquarium and, based on Gulf World, is likely to continue happening. Things are so bad that the person in charge of maintaining animal collection records for The Dolphin Company informed NOAA that she did not have a current and proper inventory of the company’s animals in the Florida parks and asked for the agency’s assistance. We have the emails.
There will be rapid turnover and drastic reduction of staff, including necessary experienced and specialized staff, such as veterinarians and veterinary technicians, maintenance technicians, and trainers, aquarists, and zoo keepers. Staff will not be paid on a timely basis, which will lead to greater attrition and, subsequently, turnovers or unnecessary reductions. This has already started at the Seaquarium.
Media and government agencies will not be able to reach park management. This has already happened at the Seaquarium. At Gulf World, phones are being slammed to end conversations.
Park advertising will be rapidly removed from the local market. This is happening right now in Bay County and the surrounding area.
The company will cancel its health insurance plan for its staff, leaving many in limbo. This is likely not so much intentional malice, but more likely part of the company’s continued failure to pay vendors and contractors. The following document shows the cancellation of Gulf World’s policy in October 2024.
If you think you’ll be able to just go in and seize the animals, be prepared for more court battles.
In 2015, $115 million in notes were sold to insurance companies Cigna and Prudential. The proceeds paid off the Gulf World purchase and the purchase of a park in Italy. While Seaquarium wasn’t purchased until seven years later, there is a provision in the note sale agreement that any future subsidiaries, such as MS Leisure – the Florida incorporated owner/operator of the Seaquarium and a subsidiary of The Dolphin Company – becomes an additional guarantor on the loan. Therefore, Cigna and Prudential are lienholders on the Seaquarium’s assets, including its animals.
When preparing the note sale, The Dolphin Company’s CEO Eduardo Albor asked Tradewinds, a Carribean timeshare company with which he had worked, to locate banks to conduct the transaction. According to court filings, Albor edged out Tradwinds ability to act as a middleman, instead dealing with the banks himself, and he failed to pay the contracted commission. Tradewinds won judgement in arbitration against The Dolphin Company in an amount between $4 to 5 million, depending on when you read this, and based on late fees. The judgement has yet to be paid and a federal judge recently ordered The Dolphin Company’s published assets, including trademarks, copyrights, and stock certificates be moved from a vault in Delaware to Florida state for a future action. Tradewinds is therefore a lienholder on the assets of the company’s four Florida parks, including the Seaquarium and its animals.
Within weeks of the sale of Seaquarium, MS Leisure was folded into a shell holding company recently incorporated in Delaware called Triton Investments Holdings, named for one of The Dolphin Company’s dolphins in Mexico, and in June and July 2022, $100 million in notes were sold by Triton to Sculptor Capital, used to finance the purchase of five parks in Mexico. MS Leisure was among the guarantors on the sale, and therefore, Sculptor is a lienholder on the Seaquarium’s assets, including its animals.
On 20 June 2024, Festival Fun Parks was awarded $1.2 million dollars by a Delaware state court over a missed payment on the sale of the Seaquarium to The Dolphin Company. The Dolphin Company has not yet paid this in full and Festival Fun Parks is seeking to garnish funds from the park’s checking accounts. It remains to be seen if this litigation will continue as Festival Fun Parks is in the process of being acquired by Herschend Family Entertainment. In the meantime, though, Festival Fun Parks remains a lienholder on the Seaquarium’s assets, including its animals.
So Mayor Cava and Commisioner Regalado, we wish you the best of luck moving forward with the Seaquarium.
And please keep in mind that the more we learn, the more we’ll share – because we believe that an educated public is the best kind of public to choose their elected officials.
Cheers,
Team ThemedReality/Shadow Warriors™
