Sneak Peek At Woodbridge Center Mall Aquarium

WOODBRIDGE, NJ — On Monday morning, Patch was taken on a behind-the-scenes sneak peek tour of the new SeaQuest aquarium, aiming to open the week of Thanksgiving at the Woodbridge Center Mall. We also interviewed the aquarium's owner and CEO, Vince Covino, and he addressed some of the controversy that has popped up at his other aquariums across the country, most of them located inside malls or other shopping complexes.

The aquarium is called SeaQuest and it is located on the ground floor of the mall, right next to the Lord & Taylor, which is in the process of going out of business. (As Patch reported, the Woodbridge Lord & Taylor will close its doors for good on Christmas Eve; its final day of business is expected to be Dec. 24, 2019.)

The shuttering of his next-door neighbor doesn't seem to be a damper to Covino, who has a cheerful, can-do attitude and says he anticipates half a million visitors a year to his aquarium. The price point for tickets is $16.95 for adults, $12.95 for kids and children 2 and under are free. Those ages 55 and up and in the military are $14.95. The aquarium is scheduled to open the week of Thanksgiving for season pass holders, and will open to the general public the week after.

"We are going to bring so much traffic to this mall," said Covino, who lives in Boise, Idaho and flew out to the East Coast to oversee construction.

"I started doing this because I was tired of paying $100 a ticket to take my wife and six kids to the zoo or to an aquarium. Thirty minutes later they'd be bored and ready to leave," he continued. "My kids like to touch and interact with animals. I figured if I could open an aquarium that allows them to do that, they would want to stay for hours. Turns out millions of kids are just like my kids."

Aquariums-inside-malls is a hot trend lately: The still-unopened American Dream megamall in North Jersey will also have an aquarium inside, run by rival aquarium-operator SeaLife. An escape room opened earlier this year at Woodbridge Center.

"With malls today, you have to offer stuff you can't buy on Amazon. It's as simple as that," Covino says.

However, what sets his business apart, he says, is that children and visitors will be able to touch, interact with and feed the fish and animals — they will even offer snorkeling in the shark and sting ray tanks once the aquarium is fully up and running.

"See this open door here?" He opens the door to a pen that will hold Bengal cats and kittens, which visitors can enter. "You'll never see an open door like this at SeaLife."

Responding to criticism

It's a business angle that's garnered Covino some criticism at his aquariums elsewhere in the country. For example, at the Woodbridge mall Covino plans to have a parakeet exhibit where visitors can enter and have as many as a dozen parakeets sit on their shoulders while they hand-feed the birds.

Except when he offered something similar at his Littleton, Colorado SeaQuest, the local Fox affiliate investigated. The TV news station said they witnessed so many birds being allowed out to be fed at once that small birds were in danger of being stepped on by hoards of children and their parents. Reporters also found an escaped lizard running loose on the floor.

The news station investigated after their Colorado location failed two animal safety inspections by the state.

"They had multiple backrooms where they were keeping birds and animals that had unsealed concrete floors, as well as areas where Macaws were tearing into drywall. All three Macaws were in makeshift cages that all had violations...," wrote a state inspector. "I have concerns regarding the parakeet/lorikeet/finch enclosures as they lend themselves to potentially dangerous situations for birds."

Speaking with Patch on Monday, Covino addressed that — and other controversies — head on:

"Anytime we let the birds out, we have two experienced bird handlers with them. That was true in Littleton and that will be true here. At no time were the birds in danger of being stepped on," he said. "Our staff has been working with birds for decades. They knew what they were doing."

Woodbridge Center is SeaQuest's first aquarium in New Jersey, but the company's ninth across the country: Covino opened the first SeaQuest in Portland, Oregon and other locations soon followed in Utah, California, Las Vegas and Connecticut. A SeaQuest at The Galleria in Fort Lauderdale will open in a few weeks.

In that same report, one woman told a reporter that SeaQuest had mall security kick her out after she told the staff she noticed a python needed water. This petition was started to prevent SeaQuest from opening in Lynchburg, Virginia.

"Colorado has an additional state agency that failed us, whereas we have passed all the federal and state inspections in New Jersey. We've passed all our other inspections elsewhere in the U.S., too," Covino said. "What's a shame is that our aquariums get millions of people a year to fall in love with animals. Kids and visitors leave here more educated about wildlife and with a deeper appreciation for the Earth and our environment. That's what people should be focusing on. I mean, have you ever held or interacted with a threatened species? That's what you'll be able to do here."

As to the python, he said that his staff checks on their snakes twice a day, in the morning and in the evening.

"So if a snake looks dehydrated, it has gone several hours without water — not several days," he said.

It's not just fish at SeaQuest: The aquarium will have pygmy goats, baby pigs, exotic breeds of porcupines, sloths, otters and kinkajous (a small tropical rain forest mammal). All the fish, birds and wildlife has been inspected by a veterinarian and the Woodbridge location has passed multiple inspection tests by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the New Jersey Division of Fish & Wildlife, he said. Covino said he has both federal and state permits to operate and keep the wildlife.

"The bottom line is any animal kept in captivity will have better health than animals in the wild. Our animals are all inspected by vets regularly," Covino said. "Safety is our number-one priority for our animals, guests and team members."

Covino founded SeaQuest with his brother, Ammon Covino, who in 2013 was sentenced in Florida federal court for conspiring to bring illegally harvested rays and lemon sharks into the state of Florida.

Covino acknowledged it, and said his brother has served his time and is out of prison.

"He helped me in the beginning and I have a lot of respect for my brother," he said. "But he is no longer part of SeaQuest. He does not work for the company."

Soft opening planned for Thanksgiving week

Currently, the Woodbridge mall location is under construction. But Covino promise to open the week of Thanksgiving for season pass holders and the week after for all other visitors. Season passes are currently being sold for a fifty-percent discount: $30 per adult and $20 for each additional family member. Pass holders can come an unlimited number of times throughout the year. There is also a room for birthday parties inside SeaQuest.

Once inside SeaQuest, visitors will walk through a tour of many different habitats: An Iceland room featuring sturgeon and rainbow trout; an Egyptian desert with a fossil dig site; a fantasy cave section with bio-luminescent jelly fish; a Mayan jungle aviary and a shark lagoon.

Get ready for some big snakes at the Woodbridge Center SeaQuest: They have a 13-foot reticulated python, a nine-foot red-tailed boa and an emerald tree boa. Guests and children will be allowed to feed, handle and interact with all the snakes; the larger of the two are rescues.

"We rescue a lot of abandoned animals," said Covino. "The same thing with the macaws on site. They were rescued. People buy exotic birds like macaws and don't expect them to live 80 years. Or they buy a boa and don't know what to do when it grows to thirteen feet and only eats rabbits."

Most of other animals have been purchased. Covino remarked offhandedly he's spent millions acquiring animals for his facilities.

Learn more here: https://woodbridge.visitseaquest.com/

First Patch report: Aquarium Coming To Woodbridge Center Mall