The Clearwater Marine Aquarium was riding expansion plans coming into the new decade, buoyed by rising attendance and revenue.

And then came the death of its star attraction — a world-famous dolphin named Winter with a prosthetic tail and movie credits.

A string of other dolphin deaths, a voyeurism scandal and 2024’s hurricanes further hurt the aquarium’s reputation and ticket sales.

Four years after her death, the aquarium is still figuring out how to reinvent itself and survive after the loss of Winter. Its search comes as the city of Clearwater grapples with how to draw visitors to its quiet downtown, where entities connected to the Church of Scientology have snapped up prime real estate and left it fallow.

The aquarium is maintaining its focus on rehabilitation and to better highlight the challenges sea animals face, including those from humans.

“In order for us to be sustainable, we need the continued support of the community‚” said Chief Executive Officer Joe Handy, who took the job after Winter’s death. “We need people to come visit and better understand what we do to be a differentiator in the aquatic community.”

Could the church, which has had a knotty relationship with the aquarium, play a supporting role?

An underdog aquarium turned Hollywood hit

From its inception in 1972, the aquarium struggled financially. It was on the brink of bankruptcy in the early 2000s.

The property was originally a water treatment plant. And for years, it maintained that holding tank ambiance.

Then came Winter.

In December 2005, she was a two-month-old bottlenose dolphin caught in crab-trap line off the east coast of Florida. The line badly injured her tail, which she lost to necrosis, or cell death.

The Clearwater Marine Aquarium was the only place in the state that would take her in. Despite the odds, Winter survived and learned how to swim with a prosthetic.

Winter exemplified the aquarium’s mission of rehabilitation. Its staff saves injured sea creatures, helps them heal and releases them back into the wild.

Former CEO David Yates, who joined the aquarium two months after staff rescued Winter, used his media savvy to capitalize on Winter’s rescue and recovery. He pitched her story to news outlets and movie producers.

Warner Bros.’ “Dolphin Tale” movie — starring Winter alongside Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jr. and Ashley Judd — pulled in $19.1 million in domestic sales in its opening weekend in 2011, according to Box Office Mojo. A sequel was released in 2014.

Visitors flocked to Clearwater from around the world to see the little dolphin that persevered. Her story resonated with adults and children with disabilities. Travel sites heralded the aquarium as “the home of Winter the dolphin.”

Winter’s popularity helped the aquarium pay for an $80 million expansion, which first opened in July 2020. Leadership built out a dolphin habitat with five connecting pools, added nearly 200,000 square feet of guest space and expanded its hospital and education areas.

Annual attendance peaked around 600,000 on average after Winter joined the aquarium.

In 2021, before Winter’s death, former board chairperson Paul Auslander said in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times that the aquarium was “at its strongest financial condition in our history.”

Winter’s absence

Winter died in November 2021 after battling a gastrointestinal abnormality. Her death devastated her supporters and caretakers.

“It was such an emotional connection,” said Thomas Orr, an aquarium board member since 2008. “I just remember bawling my eyes out. I wasn’t expecting that, that it would hit me that hard.”

Annual attendance dropped from 463,000 in 2021 to 318,500 in 2022, according to information from Visit St. Pete-Clearwater.

Total revenue in 2022 came in at $23 million — a roughly 40% drop from what it reported in 2018 — and it was operating in the red, according to an audit report.

On top of the financial hurdles throughout the past five years, the aquarium has faced internal turmoil.

Auslander said a group of performers was “accidentally and unintentionally” filmed while changing clothes in 2020. During an investigation of the incident, the vice president of operations and zoological care resigned.

There was also a string of dolphin deaths from November 2021 to March 2023 that prompted an independent review.

A panel found that there weren’t any water quality or environmental issues that contributed to the dolphin deaths. But it gave more than 60 recommendations to improve a range of issues, including noise levels and air quality.

Hurricane Helene caused millions of dollars in damage to the aquarium, said Kathy Perrott, the aquarium board’s chairperson. Its original structure is at ground level, and 4 feet of water flooded its pumps and engines.

In January 2025, the aquarium placed some staff on temporary furlough and its leadership took salary reductions.

Still, Perrott said the aquarium’s numbers are improving, although officials declined to provide more recent financial information beyond saying they were profitable for four of the months from January to July 2025.

Perrott said the summer rush of visitors and some refinanced debt payments have helped.

And the aquarium remains a Top 10 tourism activity, along with the St. Pete Pier, Dalí Museum, Chihuly Collection and Sunken Gardens, according to a survey of nearly 5,000 Pinellas County visitors.

New leadership, new ideas

Yates stepped down as chief executive officer in March 2020 to focus on public speaking and film production. Since then, the aquarium’s leadership has struggled to find its footing.

Russ Kimball, CEO of the Sheraton Sand Key Resort and member of the county’s Tourism Development Council, said he couldn’t speak to the aquarium’s finances.

But he said it remains worthy of investment — it’s an important asset on the beach.

“Tourism itself is challenging these days,” Kimball said. “It’s not just the aquarium, it’s all of us.”

In March, Pinellas County commissioners approved $6 million in tourist tax money for habitats for sea lions and otters at the aquarium. The project will revitalize the oldest part of the aquarium, a two-story pool area called the Winter Zone.

“You’ve got to show there’s going to be a return,” said former Visit St. Pete-Clearwater CEO Steve Hayes. “I don’t think they would’ve funded it if the results weren’t there.”

Hayes said after Yates left, and before Winter’s death, the aquarium was discussing how to move its branding beyond one dolphin. One idea was expanding its focus to manatees.

The aquarium in 2021 announced plans — during a year of record manatee deaths in the state — for its Manatee Rehabilitation Center.

Handy, who was president of the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, is building off this groundwork. He joined the aquarium in 2022. He said he wants to show the consequences of human behavior on the environment and on animals.

In February 2023, the aquarium announced a multi-year $32 million fundraising campaign called “Rising Tides” to fund revitalization and expansion projects. It paused the effort after the 2024 hurricane season but plans to resume it.

Staff are hoping to bring in California sea lions, which, similar to manatees, suffer from algae blooms. Currently, staff care for more than 2,000 animals, including four shark species, dolphins, reptiles, amphibians, fish, Great white pelicans and otters.

In November, staff welcomed three sea cows to its Manatee rehabilitation center, which has been closed for over a year because of hurricane damage.

“We’re not just the Winter Aquarium,” Handy said. “We want to highlight the animals in our world’s ocean.”

Still, Winter remains always in the background.

The aquarium now has a Tales of Winter the Dolphin exhibit with memorabilia from the films. It also showcases her prosthetic tail models and the animatronic Winter used in the movies.

Mended ties with Scientology

As a part of its evolution, the organization is in talks with the Church of Scientology to become a community partner.

“We look for local support,” Handy said. “We have to look at who’s in our area, who can benefit from development and infrastructure and building up our community.”

In the past two years, the church has supported two of the aquarium’s fundraising events with table sponsorships.

That’s a departure from prior interactions.

From 2015 to 2017, the church sought to acquire a small piece of waterfront aquarium property. But the aquarium held off because, it said, it wanted to let the city finish a larger waterfront redevelopment plan.

The church originally offered $4.25 million for the land — then upped the bid to $15 million two years later. It offered to pay for a multimillion-dollar downtown revitalization and brought in Scientology celebrities, including actor John Travolta, to pitch the idea.

In April 2017, the City Council unanimously voted to purchase the aquarium’s 1.4-acre property instead, for $4.25 million.

Days later, when Pinellas County commissioners were set to vote on $26 million in tourism money for the aquarium, the church campaigned against the request. It scrutinized the aquarium’s finances and ethics in a complaint shared with legislative leaders and officials around the state.

The Church alleged that the aquarium was receiving routine grants from the city of Clearwater and it submitted “frivolous, speculative and unsubstantiated financial projections” to back the county funding request.

In the years since the attempted aquarium land purchase, limited liability companies associated with the church have purchased scores of downtown properties in Clearwater. Most of the buildings remain empty, and city officials are still struggling to activate the downtown and bring in tourism even as city centers across the country enjoy a resurgence.

Sarah Heller, a Scientology spokesperson, said the church has supported the aquarium for years and disputed the characterization of its actions in 2017 as a campaign against the aquarium.

In a letter, Heller wrote that the church had “questioned the (aquarium’s) motive” in refusing to sell and predicted correctly that the plot of land would go unused by the city.

“Since then, CMA (Clearwater Marine Aquarium) has undergone a change in leadership,” Heller wrote. “Today, under Joe Handy’s direction, the Aquarium is focused squarely on its charitable mission. We have a constructive and positive relationship with CMA’s executives.”

Handy said he remains confident in the aquarium’s future, in part because of its resilience.

“We’re always in the business of rescuing, rehabilitating and releasing animals. That’s who we are,” Handy said. “That’s our DNA, and we’re not wavering from that.”

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