Victory! SeaQuest Littleton, the slimy shopping mall aquarium in Colorado that doubled as a death trap for animals, is finally shutting down. Soon, the infamous animal-exploiting hellhole will no longer force animals into stressful interactions, put them and the public in danger, or confine them to filthy, dilapidated enclosures.

SeaQuest Littleton Was a Failure From the Start

SeaQuest Littleton has been racking up federal and state citations for dangerous and cruel incidents since it opened its doors in 2018. That same year, a heat lamp severely burned a sloth named Flash, over 250 trout died, a kookaburra reportedly drowned in a water bowl, and a patron stomped five birds to death. Furthermore, in less than a year, between June 2018 and April 2019, more than 40 incidents occurred at the facility involving injuries to humans, including those to a 4-year-old child who was bitten while feeding an iguana, an 8-year-old child who was bitten by a pufferfish, and an employee who was scratched and bitten by a wallaby.

Similar incidents continued even after SeaQuest Littleton’s state zoological parks license was suspended for two years in 2019. In September 2020, a wallaby named Ben drowned in a tank at the back of his enclosure. The facility was later cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for not providing a way for him to climb out of the tank. In July 2022, a Savannah cat bit a guest during a public interaction, resulting in the quarantine of all three cats at the facility for six months.

In 2023, federal officials cited SeaQuest Littleton for multiple incidents, including when half of the tail of a sugar glider named Luna had to be amputated after it became entangled in a piece of chain in her enclosure.

SeaQuest Littleton’s Closure Comes Too Late for the Animals Who Died There—but YOU Can Help the Animals Still Languishing at Shady Mall Aquariums

So far, PETA has stopped SeaQuest from opening locations in Florida, New York, and North Dakota, and in 2023, the company closed its Trumbull, Connecticut, and Stonecrest, Georgia, locations. While the closure of SeaQuest Littleton is worth celebrating, we’ll continue to keep the pressure on the chain’s remaining U.S. locations to stop its exploitation of animals held there and send them to reputable facilities.

Please never visit any SeaQuest location and encourage your friends, family members, and social media followers to do the same. Help pressure the remaining operations to send the animals to reputable facilities: