GetYourGuide, a global travel company, sells tickets to entertainment venues allowing turtle encounters, profiting from the abuse of one of the world’s most iconic animals.
(This blog post is part of a series that draws from World Animal Protection’s recent Making Memories Misery report.)
While many animals are exploited for entertainment, most people don’t realize that turtles are often victims of the entertainment industry. One such venue, the Cayman Turtle Farm, is the only large-scale turtle farm in the world and confines thousands of endangered green sea turtles to be killed for meat and used in tourist encounters.
Now called the Cayman Turtle Centre (CTF) to be more “tourist-friendly,” the venue sells encounters with terrified turtles, as sick and stressed turtles bite and maim each other.
Like other animals used for photo opportunities, turtles are consistently mishandled by tourists who simply have not been trained to handle wild animals (as rehabilitators are!). Visitors hold, kiss, and hug turtles continuously and are also allowed to swim and stand inside tanks and pools.
When handled, turtles are prone to panic, intensely flapping their flippers, which can fracture and detach claws. Tourists have dropped turtles as they panic, causing serious injuries such as a broken shell or even death.
Watch our 2014 video of the Cayman Turtle Centre’s turtle interactions:
World Animal Protection has been exposing the Cayman Turtle Centre (CTF) since 2012, calling on the Cayman Islands Government to improve the horrific conditions turtles endure there and transition into a true sea turtle rehabilitation center, one that fully protects the animals in its care.
World Animal Protection was in talks with the Cayman Islands Government about the horrific conditions of the Cayman Turtle Centre, though they ultimately failed to act on some of the most serious animal welfare concerns we had outlined, such as overcrowding, introduction of infectious diseases into the wild, and illegal poaching of wild sea turtles.
Originally, the Cayman Turtle Centre was releasing captive-born turtles into the wild despite clear problems with disease and poor animal care at the facility. It was forced to suspend this program in 2013, only to resume the controversial program once again.
The CTF deliberately tried to cover up the deaths of more than a thousand turtles caused by a disease outbreak in 2015, despite the threat it posed to public health. Another catastrophic disease outbreak occurred in 2014 and killed 1,268 turtles. The outbreak was found to be of Clostridium, a bacteria that can cause serious human health issues, and killed more than 15 percent of the turtles on the farm between April and July 2014.
In 2015, the Cayman Turtle Farm was named one of the world’s cruelest wildlife tourist attractions by researchers at the University of Oxford and was named one of the top ten cruelest wildlife attractions by World Animal Protection in 2017. That same year, TripAdvisor stopped selling tickets to the venue after World Animal Protection’s campaign collected more than 558,000 signatures globally.
The turtles remain confined to small tanks that disallow them from engaging in natural behaviors—such as diving, exploring, foraging for food, and otherwise interacting with the ocean’s environment—causing these turtles to develop behaviors not seen in turtles living in the wild. Captive turtles at CTF have been found exhibiting frenzied feeding, hyperactivity, boundary exploration, and congregating in large numbers at the water’s surface, indicating stress.
A former employee stated:
“All you could see was this frothing bed of turtle heads coming up to the surface. They were constantly fighting to get to the surface to breathe. All the turtles you could see had injuries and bite marks from the others that were stacked on top of each other.”
Places like Cayman Turtle Centre continue to thrive despite animal cruelty for one simple reason: tourism operators continue to promote them as fun and appealing activities, encouraging visitors who are likely unaware of the cruelty animals are forced to endure to see these attractions as acceptable.
One of those tourism operators who continues to promote animal abuse is GetYourGuide, which sells guided travel tours, tickets to tourist attractions, and excursions around the world. Our survey of GetYourGuide’s offerings, exposed in our Making Memories Misery report found that the company continues to sell some of the worst captive wildlife venues in the world, exploiting a wide range of species, including dolphins, elephants, non-human primates, sloths, and alligators in addition to turtles.
GetYourGuide is no stranger to profiting from cruelty, as the venue continues to rake in profits from Miami Seaquarium—a venue so cruel that the county of Miami-Dade recently terminated Miami Seaquarium’s lease due to animal welfare concerns—and venues who have ties to the cruel and heinous Taiji dolphin hunts.
World Animal Protection, along with PETA and Welttierschutzgesellschaft (WTG) recently protested GetYourGuide in Berlin, where the company is headquartered, with over a dozen supporters joining us.
In addition to the protest, World Animal Protection launched a billboard near the company’s headquarters calling out GetYourGuide, and a mobile LED billboard vehicle circulated throughout Berlin as GetYourGuide employees arrived for the company’s flagship Summer Summit’s all-staff gathering.
Both consumers and the travel industry have the power to stop the wild capture, captive breeding, and continued exploitation of animals for entertainment venues. It’s up to us as consumers to boycott GetYourGuide until it removes cruel wildlife entertainment venues and implements a progressive animal welfare policy.
Take action now and demand that GetYourGuide remove its sales of wildlife entertainment venues, including those participating in turtle encounters.