PANAMA CITY, Fla. – State and federal agencies are currently investigating Gulf World Marine Park, yet the park is still operating and open to the public. Katie Bashore is a local of Panama City Beach who has been advocating for the animals on social media. She recently visited Gulf World and said the conditions are unacceptable and change needs to happen now. “The park is just quite literally falling apart, the animals, all but I would say a couple of them, in my eyes, were suffering,” said Bashore. Algae floating in the water and dirty structures were some of the things Katie says she saw during her visit to Gulf World Marine Park on May 15th. “There were several parts of the show that were interactive with the audience, of course, and the dolphins were splashing the water onto the audience, which I thought was very concerning as well. It was still very much dirty and not up to what I think a standard should be of a marine park,” said Bashore.

This is not the first time Katie visited the park to see conditions first-hand, she also went two weeks ago, and says things looked even worse then. “It seems that they’re trying to clean off those ledges, but the algae is still free-floating everywhere in the pool, so appearance-wise, if you were to look at before and after pictures, it does kind of look better, however, I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes,” she said. Katie said she saw about 50 guests at Gulf World on Thursday, about double the size of how many she saw during her visit two weeks ago. She hopes the park’s parent company takes accountability for the animal trainers and animals. “I’d love to see the trainers get a lot of support from the community as far as their love for the animals. I would like to see the Dolphin Company ultimately relinquish their power over the animals to be given to entities that can properly care for them,” said Bashore

Katie is leading a peaceful protest outside of Gulf World this Saturday alongside the worldwide organization ‘Empty the Tanks’ from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. She says about 80 people showed up to the last protest, and she hopes to see even more come out to advocate for the animals this week.

Earlier this week, NewsChannel 7 confirmed the Florida Department of Environmental Protection executed a search warrant at the park. They’re working with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to look into the park’s conditions.