The Florida Keys’ marine mammal population recently saw three new additions and could increase by 11 in the coming months, courtesy of the shuttered Miami Seaquarium and Panama City Beach’s Gulf World Marine Park.
According to U.S. bankruptcy court documents filed Nov. 20, the Dolphin Company, owners of the Seaquarium since 2022, plans to transfer 73 dolphins, penguins, seals, sea lions, birds and reptiles to nine facilities across the U.S. – including two nonprofit facilities in the Upper and Middle Keys.
If current plans proceed unchanged, Key Largo-based Dolphin Life Inc. will add four male bottlenose dolphins to its pod: 19-year-old Zo, 23-year-old Aries, 32-year-old Ripley and 26-year-old Onyx.
Further down on Grassy Key, Dolphin Research Center will add two senior bottlenose dolphins – 49-year-old JJ and 39-year-old Samantha – along with two California sea lions in 14-year-old Raleigh and 21-year-old Clyde. For the first time ever, the center will also provide a home for three harbor seals: 15-year-old Cane, 20-year-old Ace and 33-year-old Baby.
In a separate transaction, Islamorada’s Theater of the Sea on Nov. 21 announced the addition of three former Gulf World dolphins – 39-year-old Sandy, 12-year-old daughter Capri and 9-year-old granddaughter Soleil – following a successful auction bid.
As legal processes are still ongoing, Dolphin Research Center media director Allie Proskovec told the Weekly the facility couldn’t yet discuss the details of the transfer, but clarified in a press release that the majority of animals adopted by the Middle Keys facility are elderly or have special medical conditions.
“Dolphin Research Center has a long history of welcoming marine mammals who need lifelong, specialized care,” said Rita Irwin, DRC’s president and CEO, in the release. “We look forward to opening our arms … and providing them with a forever home.”
According to multiple reports throughout 2025, several of the Dolphin Company’s animals spread across dozens of facilities were sold or auctioned, while others received no interested suitors – and that’s where the two Keys nonprofits stepped in.
Dolphin Life founder Art Cooper said he was contacted by a third-party group managing placement of the remaining animals at appropriate facilities amid the corporation’s mounting closures.
“(They) reached out to us and said, ‘If there are animals at the end of this process that still need placement, would you consider being a permanent home?’” Cooper said. “We said, ‘Of course we would.’ It wasn’t important to us which animals or which genders – we knew we may be asked to provide a home to the more challenging animals.”
Per the terms outlined in court documents, each facility will be responsible for the associated costs of the animal transfers, but the animals themselves will be donated, not sold.
The transfers come at the tail end of a series of marine mammal facility closures around Florida as parent corporation the Dolphin Company declared bankruptcy. While several facilities have already been or are set to be sold, including the Seaquarium, Gulf World Marine Park in Panama City Beach and Marineland Florida in St. Augustine, all but one will undergo redevelopment, forcing the sale or transfer of each park’s animals.
In May, Gulf World closed permanently following multiple animal welfare and building code violations – roughly two months after the Dolphin Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In late October, a federal judge overseeing bankruptcy proceedings approved the sale of the property to resort developers By the Sea Resorts.
Also approved in late October: the $22.5 million sale of the lease of the Seaquarium property, owned by Miami-Dade County, to development company Terra Group. The company’s proposal for the refreshed property includes a marina, a newly-accredited aquarium without marine mammals, an event space and retail and food vendors, among other items.
