Shopping mall aquarium survived just six years
DENVER, Colorado––The site of the Mile High City was last an enduringly successful habitat for marine species circa 100 million years ago, when the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains hosted duck-billed dinosaurs as part of the Western Interior Seaway.
That reality, however, has scarcely discouraged developers from trying to establish aquariums in Denver and surrounding suburbs, at high risk of extinction.
SeaQuest Littleton, one of 15 “interactive” aquariums opened around the U.S. since 2011 by the brothers Vince and Ammon Covino, most of them based in shopping malls and many of them failures, closed on February 4, 2024, after just six years in operation at the Southwest Plaza mall.
(See The SeaQuest empire, the Covino family, & who is “The Codfather?”)
Denver Zoo & Downtown Aquarium Denver to the rescue
The Denver Zoo and Downtown Aquarium Denver scrambled to accommodate the stranded animals.
The Denver Zoo “took in nearly 130 animals,” reported Jacob Factor for the Denver Post on February 18, 2024.
“Many of the animals — which included a keel-billed toucan, red-necked wallabies, African pancake tortoises and a New Guinea blue-tongued skink — are new species to the Denver Zoo,” Factor mentioned.
What Factor did not mention is that none of these animals are normally found in aquatic habitat, let alone fake aquatic habitat a mile above sea level in a shopping mall. They were at SeaQuest Littleton, like most of the animals at most roadside zoos, to maintain the illusion of novelty that keeps the rubes paying admission.
The Downtown Aquarium Denver took in about 70 animals from the former Seaquest Littleton.
Colorado’s Ocean Journey
SeaQuest Littleton, if properly run, might have been seen as a hands-on response to the Downtown Aquarium Denver, opened in June 1999 as Colorado’s Ocean Journey, after nearly a decade in development.
Founded by Bill Fleming and Judy Petersen Fleming, better known for books on puppy and kitten care, Colorado’s Ocean Journey was originally to have been a nonprofit dolphinarium.
That scheme ran into protest orchestrated by the Denver branch of Animal Rights Mobilization, a descendent of the early animal rights group Trans-Species Unlimited headed by longtime local activist Robin Duxbury.
The “No dolphins in Denver” campaign gained momentum amid the hoopla surrounding the 1993 release of the film Free Willy!
Fishy dealings
Dolphins were dropped from the Colorado’s Ocean Journey long before the facilities were actually built, at cost of $93 million, partially funded by the sale of $57 million in bonds and also partly by loans received from the federal department of Housing & Urban Development.
If that sounds a bit fishy, you will not be the first to have that thought.
The opening day menagerie reportedly included two California sea otters, three river otters, and two Indonesian tigers with a swimming pool.
Sold for 15¢ on the dollar
According to Wikipedia, Colorado’s Ocean Journey “had two guest experiences: one about the Colorado River and another about the Kampar River in Indonesia,” neither location habitat for see otters.
“The Ocean Journey aquarium was not able to make payments on its high construction debt, and filed for bankruptcy in April 2002 with a $62.5 million debt,” continues the Wikipedia entry. “Landry’s Restaurants, Inc. purchased the facility in March 2003 for $13.6 million,” Wikipedia says, or a little less than 15¢ on the dollar.
After adding “a full-service restaurant, bar, and ballroom” in 2005, Ocean Journey reopened as the Downtown Aquarium Denver, and has now survived for nearly 20 years.
SeaQuest does not offer an interactive experience with a T-rex, but might if it could.
(Beth Clifton collage)
185 Animal Welfare Act violations
While the Downtown Aquarium Denver has mostly stayed out of controversy, despite a drive-by shooting just outside on February 14, 2024, SeaQuest Littleton was mired in controversy––like the entire Covino family chain of aquariums––since even before it opened.
The 15 Covino aquariums, plus one that never actually opened in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had among them racked up 87 citations for alleged Animal Welfare Act violations in just nine years when ANIMALS 24-7 last looked at their record in September 2019.
Since then, the Covino aquariums have among them amassed 98 more alleged Animal Welfare Act violations, according to The Covino Family, an online rap sheet maintained by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA].
A pig named Yelp
Few if any Covino facilities have been in trouble more often than was SeaQuest Littleton, beginning with the deaths of more than 250 trout en route to the facility.
Just three days after SeaQuest Littleton opened, a visitor on June 5, 2018 “kicked and stomped on birds in the aviary,” according to PETA, “resulting in the deaths of five birds and injuries to others. In addition, a sloth bit an employee on her arm while she was attempting to move the animal to a crate.”
Iguanas bit or scratched visitors and staff at SeaQuest Littleton on at least 15 occasions, according to the PETA rap sheet.
Also injuring either visitors or staff were a horn shark, a tortoise, an Asian water monitor, a a cockatoo, a lorikeet, a pacu, a tegu, a Burmese python, a bamboo shark, and a pig named Yelp.
40 injuries to humans in under a year
And the list went on.
Altogether, according to PETA, “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.”
On June 23, 2018, recounts PETA, “Colorado Parks and Wildlife cited and fined SeaQuest for unlawful importation and possession of a two-toed sloth and failure to obtain a zoological park license for the animal.
Capybaras
“SeaQuest was also issued warnings for the unlawful importation and possession of two capybaras. Officials found the sloth and capybaras in the basement of a SeaQuest manager’s home. Ten days after SeaQuest was told that [the sloth and capybaras] were not to be moved to its facility until a license had been issued, officials found all three animals on display.”
Ordered to close the interactive aviary where the five birds had been stomped on June 5, 2018, “SeaQuest stored approximately 80 parakeets in an underage teenager’s garage,” PETA continued. “The teenager’s family then advertised them on Facebook as being available for free, and most of the birds were given away in a hardware store parking lot,” in alleged violation of a Colorado Department of Agriculture cease-and-desist order.
A sloth named Flash
Only a month after SeaQuest Littleton opened, the Colorado Department of Agriculture in July 2018 hit SeaQuest with a cease-and-desist order for operating without a valid license.
The most publicized series of incidents at SeaQuest Littleton in 2018 resulted in misdemeanor cruelty charges brought against SeaQuest Littleton bird, reptile, and mammal manager Ashleigh Belfiore, after a sloth named Flash twice suffered serious facial burns, apparently from a heat lamp, and SeaQuest failed to call a veterinarian to treat the injuries.
Belfiore was acquitted on October 2, 2019.
The sloth meanwhile was transferred to another Covino aquarium in Roseville, Minnesota. Biting a visitor during a hands-on “encounter” on July 1, 2019, the sloth had not been vaccinated against rabies, and was quarantined for 30 days by order of the Minnesota Department of Health.
Wallaby drowned
After receiving a USDA citation on October 22, 2019 for improperly housing two rabbits with a toucan, and for failing to maintain in good repair an enclosure holding two wallabies, “In September 2020,” recalled PETA in a statement celebrating the SeaQuest Littleton shutdown, “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.”
Colorado Parks & Wildlife on October 8, 1991 “issued SeaQuest a criminal citation for unlawfully purchasing and possessing a snapping turtle. The business was also issued five warnings for illegally possessing Russian tortoises, a painted turtle, a yellow-bellied slider, and an ocellated skink,” PETA mentioned.
Wildlife trafficking
These charges were of particular note because Ammon Covino already had a history of involvement in wildlife trafficking, originating with the Covino brothers first venture into the aquarium business, as cofounders of the Idaho Aquarium.
The Idaho Aquarium, three years in development, opened in Boise in December 2011––the same month in which another cofounder, Christopher Conk, and his ex-wife Deirda Davison, pleaded guilty to trafficking in smuggled coral.
For that offense Conk was sentenced to serve six years on supervised probation.
Ammon Covino escaped prosecution on that occasion, but in September 2014 pleaded guilty in federal district court in Key West, Florida, to illegally conspiring to acquire eagle rays and lemon sharks from the Florida Keys.
Parole violations
Ammon Covino was sentenced on those charges to serve a year plus a day in prison, followed by two years of supervised release.
A nephew, Peter C. Covino IV, was sentenced to serve 100 days of home detention for obstruction of justice, in connection with seeking to destroy records pertaining to the case.
Eventually released on parole, on conditions that included “an agreement not to buy, sell or possess fish or wildlife,” according to Katie Terhune of KTVB-Boise, Ammon Covino was arrested for parole violations in Texas in late October 2015 in connection with activities at Covino aquariums in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and Portland, Oregon.
More trouble
A federal judge returned Ammon Covino to prison for 30 days in February 2016, and again in November 2016, this time for eight months, after he “was involved in opening two [more] SeaQuest aquariums,” PETA said, one of them in Layton, Utah, the other in Las Vegas.
For the 2021 alleged trafficking incident, however, SeaQuest Littleton escaped with a plea bargained fine of just $250.
Trouble at SeaQuest Littleton continued.
The Colorado Department of Public Health on July 16, 2022 imposed a 180-day quarantine on three Savannah cats kept at SeaQuest Littleton after one of them bit a child.
Warnings and citations for allegedly poor maintenance of fish, tortoise, rabbit, sugar glider and duck habitats followed between August 2022 and November 2023.
Borrowed money improperly
Vince Covino, meanwhile, has had legal issues including a fine of $5,000 levied by the Idaho Department of Finance in March 2017, reported Cynthia Sewell of the Idaho Statesmen, “for failing to disclose a previous securities disciplinary action while selling nearly a million dollars’ worth of membership interests in SeaQuest to investors.”
Vince Covino “was registered in Idaho as a securities broker/dealer from January 1998 through December 2011,” Sewell explained, “when his registration was suspended for 30 days after the securities industry’s self-regulation body, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, ruled that he had borrowed money improperly from a client to buy a home.”
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It all makes this reader wonder what protection animals, including our own species, have against the greedy, avaricious, heartless, soulless, cruel, and yes, terminally stupid. Additionally, when we who care have as a source of “factual” information, an organization long known for all of the above, who do we actually trust?
Sharing, with gratitude.