MIAMI (AP) — The Miami Seaquarium, an old-Florida style tourist attraction that gained international attention as the filming location for the 1960s television series “Flipper” and thrilled generations of tourists with trained dolphin and orca shows, has closed its doors.
Sunday's closure of the park that opened in 1955 was celebrated by animal rights activists who had lobbied for decades to free the marine mammals inside. Located across a causeway from downtown Miami and overlooking Biscayne Bay, the park was beloved by those who grew up visiting the landmark, but plagued by persistent animal welfare complaints.
Last year, the aquarium's parent company received an eviction notice for the waterfront property it leases from Miami-Dade County. Local cited a “long and troubling history of violations." The action followed a series of federal inspections that found multiple problems, including unsafe and structurally deficient buildings.
For years, families hoping to make cherished memories at the attraction have had to weave around the animal rights protestors stationed on the sidewalk outside, equipped with signs, bullhorns, rosary beads and incense.
In recent years, activists focused on the fate of Lolita, an orca whale held captive in a shallow pool for more than a half-century. She died just as caregivers were preparing to move her to a natural sea pen in the Pacific Northwest.
Efforts to redevelop the Seaquarium site are already in the works, with plans for a new “accredited aquarium” with no marine mammals, as well as a research center, shops, restaurants and a publicly accessible baywalk.
FILE - Tennis players Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France, left, Feliciano Lopez of Spain, center, and Andreas Seppi of Italy, right, touch a dolphin during a photo opportunity, March 19, 2013, at Miami Seaquarium in Key Biscayne, Fla. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, file)
FILE - In this photo taken Aug. 6, 2014, manatees swim at the Miami Seaquarium in Key Biscayne, Fla. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, file)
FILE - Visitors exit the Miami Seaquarium, March 7, 2024, in Key Biscayne, Fla. (AP Photo/Marta Lavandier, file)
NEW YORK (AP) — A surging stock market and a flurry of deal making padded the profits of Wall Street's two big investment banks, which both saw a double-digit jump in profits in the fourth quarter.
Goldman Sachs's net earnings rose 12% from a year earlier, posting a profit of $4.62 billion, or $14.01 a share. Meanwhile Morgan Stanley said it earned $4.4 billion, or $2.68 per share, compared to a profit of $3.71 billion, or $2.22 per share, compared to a year earlier.
Wall Street has been bolstered by the Trump administration's deregulatory policies, which has led corporations to seek out mergers and acquisitions, as well as the surge of investor interest in artificial intelligence companies and those who stand to benefit from the mass adoption of technologies like ChatGPT.
Fourth-quarter investment fee revenues over at Goldman were up 25% year-over-year and Morgan Stanley saw a 47% jump in revenue in its investment banking division. Both banks said their investment fee backlog, which is a signal of how much deal making is still pending that banks are working on, increased significantly in the fourth quarter.
Goldman and Morgan's results reflect the strong earnings out of the other big banks that reported their results this week. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup all saw jumps in fourth-quarter profits, but their results were dampened by the ongoing tensions that Wall Street is having with the White House over the issue of the independence of the Federal Reserve and President Donald Trump's interest in capping credit card interest rates at 10%.
Along with a strong investment banking performance, Goldman Sachs also agreed to sell off its Apple Card credit card portfolio to JPMorgan Chase last week, effectively exiting its brief experiment in consumer banking. The bank sold the credit card portfolio at a discount to JPMorgan, a sign of how desperately Goldman wanted to exit the business and put the Apple Card behind it.
This story has been corrected to show that Morgan Stanley's investment banking revenues rose 47%, not 22%.
FILE - Electronic signage is shown at Morgan Stanley headquarters, Thursday, March 4, 2021 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 13, 2016, file photo, the logo for Goldman Sachs appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
