Visit to Tropical World

As primary research, I visited Tropical world which is a small zoo/aquarium. I hadn't found too many bad reviews unlike other aquariums such as Sea Life, so I was expecting it to be relatively ethical, however the visit proved it to be the opposite.

When arriving at Tropical world you are to buy a ticket at reception and enter straight into the butterfly room. The way this was handled was very shocking for myself as there was absolutely no discussion about how you should behave whilst in the there. There was no one to tell us to not tap on the glass of the aquarium, to not feed the animals anything they can't eat, to be careful not to drop rubbish, to not use flash photography, etc. And because of this I noticed many awful things through out the experience that were entirely unethical. Even though there were signs telling people not to do some of these things they weren't very prominent and I didn't see any star throughout the whole experience. There were many children there when I went, more than adults, so they were bound to do things that will disturb and upset the animals, yet no one but the parent was there to tell them not too. If one of the crowd wanted to, they could have easily taken one of the animals out and done taken them, fed them something, abused them, let them loose, etc. which has  huge concern. I was almost confused about the lack of staff and wondering how they got by. There were fish tanks with no top, allowing anyone to reach in and take a fish out. There were rat traps everywhere which is a concern not just for the animals. Cages were dirty, many of the animals looked scared and like they wanted to leave, and many cages seemed too small for them.

I took many images to document this. This was a highly useful experience in showing the issues with aquariums and zoos and how badly they can be maintained.

Info for the fish had broken off.

Dirty tank.

Dirty tank.

Sign explaining the do's and don'ts, tucked away with very small writing. This was definitely ignored by everyone, meaning no one had any of this knowledge on how to treat the experience.

Evidence of rat traps throughout:

Rubbish on the floor which one of the birds could have picked up.

Dirty tank.

Close up on the amount of dirt on the tank. 

This barrier was put in place but it didn't indicate what it was trying to prevent - you could get as close as you liked to the ant farm.

Discoloured tail of snake - is it injured or is this normal?

Monkey seemed terrified, all alone in its enclosure in a very loud environment full of screaming children.

Meerkat kept trying to escape. 

Children were banging and tapping the glass barrier constantly.

Despite the small sign, children were still walking on the wall.

Another dirty tank. 

Enclosure for the alligator who was all alone and hardly moving. No doubt it is lonely and bored.

Many hand sanitisation areas were broken throughout. 

Rubbish found inside the alligators cage, thrown in through the netting. 

Coins inside the alligators cage, clearly have been there for a while the to the rust.

More rubbish found inside the alligators cage, including a babies dummy. 

Despite this sign, there were hundreds of coins in the pond both old and new.

The netting around the alligators enclosure.

The ridiculous amount of coins in the pond that clearly do not get cleaned out due to the rust on them.

Some kind of plastic found. 

Wooden knife found on edge of the fish pond.

A lot of waste at the bottom of the tank.

Open fish tank. Any child or adult could easily reach in and take a fish or poison the tank etc.

I also took images of the fish as despite the bad experience and constant worry, I still found myself mesmerised by the way they behaved and looked. I would like to research them further.