Two years after bird bodies washed up on Mission Bay shores following a barrage of fireworks shows, SeaWorld San Diego says it will switch to using mostly drones instead.
Voice of San Diego first reported that elegant tern adults, chicks and damaged eggs had washed ashore Kendall-Frost Marsh Reserve days after SeaWorld and Discover Mission Bay set off over 500 pounds of explosives on July 4, 2024. Upon taking over as San Diego City Council president, Joe LaCava declared war on pyrotechnics.
“When I became council president I realized I had a louder voice to make that change,” LaCava told Environment Reporter MacKenzie Elmer during a Friday interview. “You were really the first one to hear me say this and made a big deal about it.”
On Thursday, SeaWorld and LaCava announced that the marine life entertainment business filed a permit application with the California Coastal Commission to launch large-scale drone shows for two years. The commission votes on the application April 15.
Under the permit, SeaWorld would be able to do 110, 15-minute-long drone shows with up to 1,000 illuminated drones above Mission Bay in a year. Right now SeaWorld is permitted to put on up to 150 fireworks shows per year lasting between 6 and 20 minutes.
The company wouldn’t be allowed to do any more drone or firework shows up to its permitted amount of 150. For example, if SeaWorld launched its maximum permitted number of 110 drone shows in one year, it could still do 40 fireworks shows, according to SeaWorld’s application to the Coastal Commission.
But those fireworks shows leave a lot of debris and other pollution in the water afterward, a lot of which doesn’t get cleaned up despite requirements the company do so. A number of environmental groups sued SeaWorld San Diego over its fireworks pollution under the Clean Water Act. The parties were in settlement talks as of April 7 and the judge issued a stay on the case until July, federal court records show.
LaCava said he’s interested in working with SeaWorld to limit the number of drone or fireworks that the company could do overall under proposed changes to the company’s masterplan.
“We want to have an option to go at something greatly reduced from what they’re allowed now,” LaCava said.
The councilmember also attributed a change in SeaWorld San Diego’s leadership to progress toward limiting pyrotechnics. He didn’t know who managed the park before Tyler Carter, the new park president, called him up about the issue.
“The new leadership at SeaWorld has been such a game changer,” LaCava said.