Stingray dies in touch tank three weeks after SeaQuest aquarium’s opening in Folsom

A little more than three weeks after its grand opening, the controversial SeaQuest Folsom aquarium is facing further community backlash following reports that a stingray died while on display in one of its tanks.

SeaQuest Folsom General Manager Pete Mordwinow confirmed Thursday to The Bee that one of about 30 stingrays displayed in its touch tank died Sunday afternoon.

Mordwinow said that the aquarium does “life checks” in every tank each morning, and that the last check was performed around 10 a.m. The stingray was discovered dead around 3 p.m., Mordwinow said.

“It’s still under investigation how it died,” Mordwinow said. That investigation involves Palladio mall officials and SeaQuest employees, but not any outside agencies, he said.

“We treat our animals as if they were our own co-workers,” Mordwinow said. “We’ve been heartbroken over it here since Sunday.”

Captive stingrays have a life expectancy of about eight years, Mordwinow said, and it was not known how old the stingray that died was.

The stingray is the first death of a major display animal at the Folsom location since its Nov. 20 grand opening, Mordwinow said. He added that “a couple of small fish” may have also died, and that the business currently owns about 1,000 animals.

There were also deaths before the grand opening. Mordwinow said these were transition deaths while the animals were transported to Folsom and into the aquarium, and that transit mortality is common in the industry.

“We also had a number of rescue animals we were healing back to health,” Mordwinow said. “Unfortunately, some of those don’t make it.”

CEO Vince Covino was present for the Folsom location’s grand opening last month, and defended his private aquarium company in the face of controversy.

“I would say animals do better in an aquarium, because you have a perfectly controlled environment,” Covino told The Bee at the time.

SeaQuest Folsom opened two days before Thanksgiving at the Palladio outdoor mall. Offering feed and touch experiences with exotic marine animals, rare birds and other creatures, the aquarium was visited by hundreds of guests for its grand opening. Virtually every group included children.

About a dozen locals protested the grand opening near the mall’s main entrance, the busy intersection of Iron Point Road and East Bidwell Street.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) supported the protest and condemned SeaQuest Folsom in a news release.

SeaQuest Folsom was approved by the city earlier this year despite protests and concerns expressed at City Council meetings.

A Facebook group called “Stop SeaQuest Folsom” has been active for months. One of the protest group’s goals has been to make Palladio reconsider the tenant choice.

The Bee’s requests for comment from Palladio management on its choice of SeaQuest as a tenant have been declined or otherwise not returned since July.

The group on Monday announced a protest this coming Sunday, at 10:30 a.m., in response to the stingray death.

What makes SeaQuest controversial?

With a handful of locations opened since December 2016, the private aquarium company was already enveloped in controversy prior to the stingray death, mostly related to legal troubles associated with its other locations, and with the reported business practices of CEO Vince Covino and his brother, Ammon Covino.

As reported previously by The Sacramento Bee and another McClatchy publication, the Idaho Statesman, Ammon Covino in 2013 pleaded guilty to conspiring to buy stingrays and lemon sharks poached from the Florida Keys. According to court records, Ammon Covino violated parole multiple times, allegedly for attempts to illicitly re-enter the marine wildlife industry.

In an interview with The Bee this summer, Vince Covino denied that Ammon had any involvement with SeaQuest.

The Covinos owned and operated the Portland Aquarium until its 2016 closure.

In 2013, The Oregonian reported that Portland Aquarium employees had alleged that the deaths of about 200 animals in a four-month span resulted directly from cost-cutting business practices, or were otherwise easily preventable. Employees of SeaQuest Las Vegas, the brand’s first location opened late 2016, in 2017 made similar claims against Covino and management.

The Oregonian noted that 200 deaths among the aquarium’s approximate 10,000 animals would mean an annual mortality rate of 8 percent.

There appears to be variation among advocacy, activists and experts regarding animal mortality rates and what’s considered acceptable. Veteran aquarist Jay Hemdal in 2009 penned an article that estimated an annual mortality rate of between 6 to 8 percent may be typical for a public aquarium.

However, a representative for the Oregon Coast Aquarium told The Oregonian in 2013 that its annualized mortality rate was less than 1 percent. Numbers cited in various publications by animal societies, marine biologists, zoologists, aquarists and other experts seem to place the maximum normal annual mortality rate anywhere from less than 1 percent to about 12 percent.

Earlier this year, multiple news outlets including BBC reported that about one-third of the 4,500 marine animals at eight Sea Life centers across England died between 2015 and 2016, and that the Marine Conservation Society was reviewing its sponsorship due to that “disturbing” figure.

SeaQuest has five existing aquariums with three more in the works in Florida, Connecticut and Minnesota. The Minnesota location was announced earlier this week as a two-story aquarium at the Rosedale Center mall in Roseville.

This story was originally published December 13, 2018 at 1:59 PM with the headline "Stingray dies in touch tank three weeks after SeaQuest aquarium’s opening in Folsom."