I was still allowed to take photographs of the animals, I just had someone accompanying me for most of my visit. To be more specific, I made it about 1/3-1/2 of the way through the aquarium and was making a point to mainly photograph the horrible "exhibits", but when I reached a certain area a member of staff spotted me doing so and immediately started asking if I had any questions. Soon after, a second member of staff approached me and asked if I needed anything. Both times I had no apart from one question about the contents of a tank that was unlabeled. The whole time I was in the area at least one of the two employees kept their eyes on me. Not long after, I attempted to photograph a row of small mammal/reptile enclosures when a woman approached me claiming to be the "manager of birds and reptiles" or something to that effect. She asked me if I needed any help, but then stuck with me after I said no, instead asking me questions about my visit so far and my interests as a person. I'm pretty sure they thought I was a zoo-anti, which kind of says a lot about them that they suspect anyone photographing their facility to be an anti and have a system in check to vet them. I stuck around the area for a while because there was a lot I wanted to photograph and I figured she'd eventually leave me alone but she never did, so eventually I tried moving on and she followed me through the aquarium. I tried ending our conversation multiple times but she always started it back up again. She spent much of her time telling about how great SeaQuest were. She pointed out a couple animals they claims they rescued and she claimed they were better than traditional institutes because they allow people to get closer to the animals and give them a lot more room to roam than zoos do (they literally have multiple goats and wallabies in pens so small they can't take two steps in any direction, and they had a kookaburra in a small parrot cage). At one point she even claimed that their aquarium was better than Bronx (I was wearing a Bronx shirt at the time), saying that Bronx was bad because they keep a Jaguar in a small cage (Bronx doesn't have any Jaguars atm and there haven't been any big cat cages at the zoo since before I was born). Towards the end I started just blatantly showing that I like zoos and that I'm knowledgeable on animals, even more so than here on several instances, which eventually convinced her I was safe and she went off to do her duties. I did go back and walk around the place one more time, but was much more careful about my photography and decided not to stay too long as I didn't want to get confronted again.
This is only the second time I've been confronted by zoo staff, the first was at Space Farms in NJ. One of the owners saw me walking around with a camera and taking notes of the animals present so she came up to me and asked what I was doing. She was a little rude at first, but after I explained I was taking notes of the animals present she became nicer and didn't bother me for long.
~Thylo
