London aquarium vows to move its penguin colony from the basement, after years of public pressure and campaigning
Sea Life London Aquarium also announced that it will permanently end its gentoo penguin breeding program.
Credit: Freedom for Animals
Fourteen gentoo penguins confined to the small basement of a London aquarium will be moved to a larger exhibit with natural light and more water space.
Transferred from Edinburgh Zoo in 2011, the penguins at Sea Life London Aquarium have been deprived of natural light and fresh air.
But now, Sea Life owners Merlin Entertainments has promised to create a new "enhanced home, with significantly enlarged water space, and natural light". In addition, they will stop breeding gentoo penguins at Sea Life London as well as at Sea Life Birmingham.
The major announcements come after years of mounting pressure from charities, the media, celebrities, and the public.
Freedom for Animals (FFA), the UK animal protection charity, was the first to raise awareness of the penguins’ plight, back in January 2024.
The enclosure offers “no daylight, no fresh air, and just a pitiful pool of a few feet in depth," claimed FFA in an open letter of August 2024, which was signed by experts and public figures including Chris Packham.
The enclosure is just 7ft deep, despite the fact that gentoo penguins are the deepest divers of all birds, who typically reach depths of 600ft. Furthermore, they are expert swimmers, whose speeds can exceed 20mph – but this is impossible in the current enclosure.
Furthermore, FFA argued that “conservation is categorically inapplicable to Sea Life’s gentoo penguin exhibit,” as the animals are not an endangered species. On the contrary, the gentoo penguin is listed as of ‘Least Concern’ on the IUCN Red List. Thus, the exhibit is “not conservation, but exploitation for profit.”
Sea Life London initially rejected the arguments, with a spokesman telling BBC News that the enclosure “provides an excellent balance of water and land for the penguins, which enables them to express their normal behaviors, and there is space for them to ensure they have sufficient privacy."
However, over the next year, a petition attracted more than 51,000 signatories, while the Express Newspaper and Born Free Foundation (BFF) officially joined as partners. The Children’s Parliament of the UK also announced their support.
In December 2025, Merlin Entertainments invited FFA, BFF, and PETA UK to the first stakeholder meeting to discuss the future of the penguins. Regular meetings between the parties have since been held. Following the most recent meeting in May, Merlin announced that it would merge the 17 penguins in Sea Life Birmingham with the London colony, to form a larger, single exhibit that has natural light.
While the campaigning charities maintain that other options still remain open for Merlin to consider – such as transferring the penguins to a facility with access to the outdoors – Merlin’s pledge to end its breeding program at both London and Birmingham sites was hailed by FFA as “a significant step forward.”
“At the heart of FFA’s philosophy is the belief that wild animals should not be bred into lives of confinement for human entertainment, so we welcome the commitment that no further Gentoo penguins will be born into captivity within Sea Life’s UK facilities,” said Laura Walton, Co-Director of FFA.
The new enclosure will be at either the London or Birmingham aquarium, with full details to be announced in September.
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Sea Life London Aquarium also announced that it will permanently end its gentoo penguin breeding program.