Marineland Dolphin Adventure Parent Files for Bankruptcy and GM Resigns, Raising Concerns for Town’s Future Finances

Marineland Mayor Gary Inks announced what he described as “concerning news” at the town’s commission meeting Thursday evening: “It’s apparent that Discover Dolphin has filed for bankruptcy. That is the parent organization of our project here, Marineland Dolphin Adventure, here in town,” he said. (The parent is actually the Dolphin Company.)

“We’re not exactly sure what that means with regards to their Florida attractions, but it can’t be much of a positive sign,” Inks said. “So we have great concern.”




The Dolphin Company is a Mexican company that owns over two dozen dolphinariums. It bought Marineland Dolphin Adventure for $3 million in 2019 from the Georgia Aquarium in 2019. Inks was the general manager there at the time, and was not retained.

Felicia Cook was general manager of Dolphin Adventure until the end of January, when she resigned. She had gone months without getting paid, as had other employees, according to Flagler County’s tourism director, Amy Lukasik. News reports have pointed to similar issues at other subsidiaries of the Dolphin Company.

The Dolphin Company itself in a statement on Wednesday disputed that it had filed for bankruptcy. It had started a process “to restructure its financial liabilities under the protection and supervision of a Mexican court specialized in financial debt restructure process,” the statement read. “This process is NOT A BANKRUPTCY FILING but a mechanism provided by Mexican laws to facilitate an agreement with the main creditors, protecting the interests of other suppliers, employees, and customers, as well as the company’s assets for its benefit.”




Scott Spradley, a Flagler Beach attorney who specializes in bankruptcies (and who chairs the Flagler Beach City Commission), said the Dolphin Company is essentially describing bankruptcy proceedings under court supervision.

“The process described may not be a bankruptcy in the traditional sense,” Spradley said. “But the principles described in the press release suggest a mirror image of Chapter 11 reorganization in the U.S., which focuses on reorganizing debt under court supervision with the goal being to keep the business afloat.”

Dolphin Adventure is the economic driver in Marineland and accounted for almost a third of the town’s property tax revenue of $127,000 in 2024. The town has an overall operating budget of $172,500.

The company was billed $105,600 in property taxes in 2014, $43,700 of it for Marineland. It pays its bill in quarterly installments. But the last time it paid an installment was on July 1, 2024. Three installments are unpaid. The company paid all its 2023 installments between June and July 2023.




Cook did not return a call this morning before this article initially published. “She has said to me on and off for months that she had a lot of concerns because a lot of employees and her were not paid, on and off,” Lukasik said. Cook was a member of the county’s Tourist Development Council, an advisory board to the County Commission that meets quarterly. Local government and local tourism industry representatives sit on the board.

Cook attended the last meeting on Jan. 15 but did not allude to any issues, or if she did, she did so only obliquely: “Welcome to 2025,” she said. “I’m glad November and December are gone. So ready to move on.” Lukasik said Cook “had gone months” without a paycheck, as had others at the company, and stayed as long as she financially could. One employee who had been there decades couldn’t keep going without pay and left. She’d been told that the company was surviving by “robbing Peter to pay Paul kind of thing, but that the animals continued to be well taken care off.

For all its storied history, “it’s always been a struggle up there,” Lukasik said, at least after its early years, when it was the chief tourist attraction in a Florida still more natural than theme-parked.

The Marineland attraction was established in 1937 as Marine Studios by a trio that included Ilya Tolstoy, grandson of the great Russian novelist and a U.S. Army colonel and conservationist. The WPA Guide to Florida in 1939, when admission was $1 and operating hours were daily between 9 and 6, described it as “a cream-colored concrete aquarium, pitted with tempered glass portholes, and resembling a stranded Caribbean cruiser.”




The attraction was designed as an immersive experience in an “oceanarium” for visitors interested in sea life. “Through the portholes visitors see porpoises, sawfish, sharks, giant green turtles, shrimp, the manta (devilfish), and numerous common food fish. Brilliantly colored tropical fish swim in sea gardens of coral and algae, while penguins brought from Robbin Island off the African coast paddle on the surface.” Its immense tanks became sets for many movies before it turned into a dolphin attraction.

But gone are the days of nine-hour operations. The attraction currently is open only 15 hours a week: on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and only from 9 to 2, “which is a concerning sign,” Marineland Marina Manager Eric Ziecheck said.

“The Miami Seaquarium has been a thorn in their side almost from day one,” Ziecheck said, referring to the dispute that led to Miami-Dade’s aborting a lease and evicting the Miami Seaquarium, a Dolphin Company subsidiary, from its Rickenbacker Causeway location. “They’re still fighting it in court.”

Plenty of uncertainty remains.

“So things are changing here in the attraction, and we’re doing our best to try to find out what that means and how solid they will be able to perform,” Inks, the Marineland mayor, said. “Moving forward, we think that the Florida operations might be separate from the Discover Dolphin bankruptcy filing. We’re just not sure at this time.”

The Dolphin Company’s Eduardo Albor, in the statement, asserts that the company “continues and will continue to welcome new guests to all its parks, habitats, and business centers in Mexico, the United States, Italy, and the Caribbean, with the same commitment and dedication with which it has welcomed more than 21 million guests over the years.”