16th August 2024

Chris Packham, Peter Egan, and Carol Royle are among 26 signatories of a new letter sent to Merlin Entertainments to demand they address the issue of penguin exploitation across their Sea Life brand. 

Earlier this year we launched a campaign and a petition in response to longstanding public horror at the manner in which Sea Life keeps penguins. The campaign centres around the dismal conditions a colony of fifteen gentoo penguins endures in the basement of Sea Life London Aquarium. They have no daylight, no fresh air, and just a pitiful pool of a few feet in depth.

Gentoo penguins are the fastest swimmers and the deepest divers of the penguin kingdom, so their natural abilities and instincts can never be satisfied in a captive environment, and certainly not in a miniscule basement. Sea Life, like all zoos and aquariums, likes to make out that their keeping of wild animals for display contributes to the species’ conservation - but their claims quickly unravelled when we pointed out that gentoo penguins aren’t even threatened in the wild. They’re actually classed as ‘Least Concern’ by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Experts agree that breeding penguins in captivity has no impact on wild populations, particularly as captive-bred penguins cannot be released to the wild. So it’s time to put a stop to the breeding of innocent animals to be put on display so that Sea Life, and its parent company Merlin Entertainments, can profit from their exploitation.

In the open letter, sent to Sea Life and published in the Daily Express yesterday, 26 respected figures from a variety of fields spoke up to defend penguins. You can read the letter below:

We are enormously grateful to all of the signatories, and to the Daily Express for helping to keep our campaign in the public eye.

You can help too!

Please sign the petition today to add your name to those demanding freedom for penguins!

Boycott all Merlin Entertainments attractions until they stop exploiting animals!

Adopt a penguin to help us continue our work for a world without cages!