Below, please find a statement from PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman in response to today’s announcement from the Miami-Dade County Mayor’s Office that the county intends to terminate the Miami Seaquarium’s lease over “multiple and repeated instances of animal welfare violations”:

After a years-long PETA campaign that included lawsuits, celebrity ads, letters to county officials, and lively rallies, including this month at the Miami-Dade County Mayor’s Office, along with a decade of weekly protests by local activists, the county has finally announced that it is moving to revoke the Miami Seaquarium’s lease, marking the beginning of the end for this animal prison. PETA has champagne on ice and is preparing to celebrate the day the animals are finally freed from the dilapidated concrete tanks where Lolita and so many others lived and died in misery. We urge Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and the county commissioners to act swiftly to shut the Miami Seaquarium down. The animals are ready!

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.