The busy California animal attraction that vanished overnight

It’s a story that sounds too bizarre to be real. Marineland of the Pacific, a theme park-style aquarium attraction, had been entertaining families for three decades. There were celebrity appearances, spectacular animals and even an underwater wedding. Marineland was, to many, as beloved as Disneyland. One day, it shuttered, with no notice. 

The public was outraged. Employees described it as “like a murder.” And the animals’ fates, except for the park’s most famous residents, were murky at best.

Aquariums had been around for about a century but were relatively new in California; the first in the state opened in 1923 in Golden Gate Park. But the $3.5 million ($42 million today) Marineland of the Pacific in Rancho Palos Verdes was bigger in size and ambition than anything California had seen before: The two enormous tanks held a record 1 million gallons, making it the largest oceanarium in the world when it opened in 1954. It was unique in that it showcased re-created marine habitats with many species coexisting as they did in the ocean, rather than individual tanks for individual types of sea life. 

Marineland also featured performances by trained animals like seals and porpoises, as well as a swim-through “Baja Reef” aquarium where guests could dive in and explore in rented bathing suits and snorkel gear. It was a destination unto itself, set against sweeping views of the Pacific from its perch on bluffs of Portuguese Bend. It was considered by many to be the first theme park in the state, with a hotel and restaurant on the property and around 5,000 wild-caught sea creatures from nearby waters at its launch. 

“Never before has anyone been able to view as complete an undersea exhibition as in the artificial seas contained in the massive concrete and steel tanks which hold well over a million gallons of water,” the Venice Vanguard wrote in 1958.

What made Marineland of the Pacific more like a theme park than a traditional aquarium was its sense of showmanship. At its launch, a young girl advertised as “Alice in Marineland” opened the park not by cutting a blue ribbon but a fishnet. Hollywood touches were everywhere. Celebrities made appearances — like Elvis Presley and Jayne Mansfield, who posed in a bikini for a photo op with Captain Winston’s Seal Circus and even gave one of the seal performers a kiss. To celebrate the park’s first birthday in 1955, Marineland devised a huge birthday cake to be served underwater to its aquatic stars. “The cake, concocted by the Marineland crew, is made of delicacies of the sea including silvery fish, pink shrimp, squid and seaweed, held together in a smooth cake batter of flour and water and agar,” the Gardena Valley News and Gardena Tribune reported. 

Marineland’s initial stars were Squirt and Bubbles, two trained pilot whales who performed tricks in a daily show. In 1958, the Los Angeles Mirror reported that they were the only two whales in captivity in the world. They performed in the Sea Arena that was added in 1958, which could seat 3,000 spectators and had a stage around the same size as the Hollywood Bowl’s.  

In the early days, Marineland caught many of its animals directly from the Pacific Ocean. (The practice is largely banned now.) Not all of them, though. The attraction’s owners arranged a swap with Marine Studios, its Florida counterpart. Two pilot whales would make their way east, in what the South Gate Press described as “the first transcontinental whale airlift in history,” while six bottle-nosed porpoises headed west. 

“After being established at Marineland,” the San Pedro News-Pilot reported in 1962, “they will be trained to be stars in the world's only three-ring sea circus and one of their first assignments will be to appear on ‘Marineland Carnival,’ a television special scheduled for Easter Sunday evening on the CBS network.” The trip took around 20 hours coast to coast. Actor Lloyd Bridges, who was then starring in a popular show called “Sea Hunt” and who was slated to appear in the special along with Rosemary Clooney, greeted the dolphins at the airport. 

It was far from the only star turn at the attraction. Shows like “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “The Munsters” and “The Lucy Show” all filmed there. Lucille Ball even dove into the dolphin tank in the 1965 episode of her show, swimming with the mammals in her signature comedic style.  

In 1967, Marineland hosted the West Coast’s first-ever underwater wedding, when Jack Tyree and Corna Day married in the park’s oval tank. They exchanged their vows via a “special communications system,” the Daily Breeze reported at the time. Tyree was a professional diver and Day was a stuntwoman; they wore wet suits that had been tailored to look like a tuxedo and a wedding gown. 

Some years, Marineland was bringing in 1 million guests a year — but its popularity would ultimately lead to its downfall. Ten years later, a bigger, splashier version would open not so far away. “Attendance at the park slumped after San Diego’s Sea World opened in 1964 and has seesawed since,” the Daily Breeze wrote in 1981.  

The original investors sold the park in 1971 to Hollywood Park Inc., which in turn sold Marineland of the Pacific to Taft Broadcasting Co. and the Kroger grocery company in 1977. The two companies changed the attraction to Hanna-Barbera’s Marineland, adding the animation company’s cartoon characters like Scooby-Doo and Yogi Bear into the mix. It changed hands again in 1981 before ultimately being purchased in 1986 by SeaWorld’s parent company, which was also publishing house Harcourt Brace Jovanovich’s theme parks division. 

Marineland’s most valuable asset was its killer whales, Orky and Corky, who had been at the park since 1969. Orky, as the only breeding male in captivity at the time, had been named the most valuable marine exhibit by the Guinness World Records in 1981, with an estimated value of $250,000 (nearly $900,000 today). 

HBJ publicly claimed that, by buying Marineland, it was adding to its theme park portfolio and intended to keep it going; the company already owned SeaWorld in San Diego. But behind the scenes, the plans were different. 

Like Marineland, SeaWorld’s biggest draw was its orcas, starting with Shamu in 1965, but it struggled to keep them alive. “SeaWorld needed orcas,” the LA Times wrote in 2023. “Five had died in one two-year space, and when one dead orca was carried out of the park in the 1980s, The Times said that the trainers were under orders to shake the dead orca’s fins so that anyone who happened to see it would think it was still alive.”

Increasing awareness of the horrors of wild capture led to a ban in Washington state in 1976, forcing the park to pivot to Icelandic waters for orcas like Tilikum, the subject of the 2013 documentary “Blackfish.” But there was a solution closer to home. Orky and Corky were still healthy years after their capture. Officials decided the pair would be moved to San Diego, effectively killing the Los Angeles attraction. 

On Jan. 19, 1987, leadership announced an unusual closure for “maintenance” the following day. On Jan. 20, without any notice whatsoever to the public or most of Marineland’s employees, the two whales were removed from the park under the cover of night. According to accounts from witnesses who were there and who shared them on the podcast “LA’s Own Marineland,” the scene was horrific. When Orky was removed from the tank, Corky, in extreme distress, tried to force herself into the lift with her mate. 

Trainer Gail Ollie had worked at Marineland since 1978 and was there for the removal. She said that she heard vocalizations from the pair that she hadn’t heard in her nine years working with the whales. “That particular event, I’d say, was extremely stressful for the animals,” she recounted on the podcast.

“I heard the stress calls were gut wrenching, that they were just horrific,” Ed Cappell, Marineland’s group sales manager, said on the podcast. 

HBJ’s explanation to employees was that Marineland would continue to operate with an enhanced pilot whale show and an emphasis on smaller marine life and conservation. The park, HBJ assured them, would stay open. It did not. 

The company sent notice that the park would permanently close on March 1. It didn’t make it that long. Marineland’s last day was Feb. 11, 1987. Leadership claimed that the abrupt closure was due to three bomb threats being made against the park. Per the podcast, local police had no record of those threats.

Employees were notified on the day of the closure. Three hundred people lost their jobs, and many lost their pensions. Just as the whales had vanished overnight, so too did the park itself.

“We were all duped,” Jim Roope, Marineland’s director of live entertainment, said on the podcast. “We were all told one thing, and then something else happened. And so when I say it felt like a murder, I mean, it really, really felt like something was taken away from you in an instant, in a tragic way.”

In the following months, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich would claim that it moved the orcas over safety concerns about the size of their tank at Marineland; the facilities were widely acknowledged as being out of date and in need of renovation and refurbishment. But the company also acknowledged there had been a communication breakdown. “We were poorly prepared,” HBJ vice president Peter Jovanovich told the Daily Breeze in April 1987. “We had six different people talking to the press. One person would say one thing and another person would say another.” 

The public outcry was massive. Around 50,000 people signed a petition trying to keep Marineland operating. In May 1987, the company sold Marineland’s remaining assets to a developer. The sale price was $1 million above what HBJ had paid around four months earlier and included a caveat that the park could not be reopened under any circumstances. At the time, HBJ officials told the Daily Breeze that ownership “just didn’t work.” 

According to HBJ, all the remaining animals went to SeaWorld in San Diego. On the podcast, Bryant Winchell, who had founded the group Citizens to Save Marineland, was quoted as finding that claim “highly suspect.” Trainers on the podcast also said that they worked until April or May, dividing up the animals and sending them to various locations to be rehomed. 

In 1989, HBJ sold SeaWorld and its other theme parks. The company eventually donated $3 million for a marine life rehabilitation center in San Pedro as a make-good to the community. In 2016, SeaWorld ended its orca breeding program and now places an increased emphasis on conservation in its parks.

Shortly after the park closed, the oceanarium tanks and stadium seating were torn down. What was once the Marineland Restaurant, then the Catalina Room, continued to host banquet functions like weddings until 2004. Parts of the property were used by Marines for training, and movies like “The Aviator” and “Pirates of the Caribbean” used the area for filming, but largely, Marineland sat abandoned and decaying for the better part of two decades. 

The shuttered park became a public nuisance and an eyesore. As the LA Times said in 2006, “Vandals repeatedly tear down the plywood nailed over the windows of about 20 remaining buildings, mostly decrepit one-story wood structures from the 1950s, hidden behind overgrown ficus and 5-foot-high fennel.”

Developers purchased the property in 2006 and turned it into the luxury Terranea Resort, which still operates on the property today. The hotel honors the property’s early history: There’s a Marineland Ballroom, and the hotel has a Catalina Restaurant, an homage to the original.