Animal rights protesters storm Cardiff TUI store over support for ‘orca prisons’

Stephen Price

Animal rights supporters in dinosaur costumes stormed the TUI Holiday Store in Cardiff today (9 June) to urge the travel giant to ‘get with the times’ and stop promoting ‘cruel and outdated’ marine amusement parks, where animals are forced to live in cramped concrete tanks of chemically treated water.

The protest, arranged by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) saw ‘dinosaurs’ carrying signs with slogans such as “TUI: Get Out of the Dark Ages. Drop Marine Parks!”, as well as “TUI: Your animal welfare policy is Prehistoric” and “TUI: Make Orca Prisons Extinct.”

PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner shared: “Today’s kind travellers have no interest in supporting the suffering of whales, orcas, and other dolphins who are confined, abused, and forced to perform demeaning tricks for human entertainment.

“TUI is the last major UK travel provider to continue promoting marine abusement parks. The company must evolve, or go extinct.”

@TUIUK support for marine parks is older than the mosquito in amber.
PETA “dinosaurs” stormed its Cardiff store to demand the travel giant stop promoting orca prisons.
Evolve or go extinct. pic.twitter.com/EChn8rbF8s

— PETA UK (@PETAUK) June 9, 2026

In nature, orcas and other dolphins live in large, complex social groups and swim vast distances every day in the open ocean.

But at marine amusement parks like SeaWorld and Loro Parque, they spend their days floating listlessly or swimming in circles in tanks comparable in size to a human living in a bathtub.

Around the world more than 3,600 whales, dolphins, and porpoises (collectively known as cetaceans) are held in captivity for human entertainment.

These complex, highly intelligent creatures are kept in restrictive, barren, chemically-treated pools and over-crowded tanks, or trapped in shallow sea pens.

Most die far short of their natural life span, and they often suffer from distressing health conditions that increase their misery.

They are made to perform repetitive tricks and display unnatural behaviours in front of crowds of tourists, often multiple times a day.

This cruel, confined existence is unimaginably different to their life in the wild. When free, marine mammals live in closely-bonded family groups, often swimming more than 100 miles a day and diving to depths of 300 metres.

Many captive cetaceans are further exploited by being forced to interact with visitors, swim with tourists or pose as ‘props’ for souvenir photos and selfies.

The incredible harm caused to captive marine mammals may not be immediately evident to holidaymakers, who may only be visiting for a few hours, but these animals suffer physically and psychologically in many ways such as premature death and reduced resistance to disease.

While tourists can influence real change, the responsibility for ending this exploitative and unethical industry does not lie solely with the public. PETA and other organisations strongly believe the travel industry and national governments must step up and do their part to protect these incredible creatures.

They say that travel companies and tour operators, across Europe and around the world, need to recognise that the public is increasingly rejecting the idea that keeping cetaceans in captivity is an acceptable form of entertainment, just as they have in the UK.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.

Following the protest, PETA has encouraged the Welsh public to boycott marine amusement parks and to urge TUI to stop supporting orca abuse, and join the growing number of major travel companies – including Jet2, EasyJet, and Virgin Atlantic – that have stopped promoting marine parks.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way” – points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, an orca is a dog is a boy.

For more information, visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

Tui has been asked to comment.