LaCava: Plan to End SeaWorld’s Fireworks Is ‘Complex’

After some nesting birds nearby died last year following back-to-back pyrotechnics for the Fourth of July, the most powerful person on the San Diego City Council said SeaWorld’s nightly summertime fireworks have got to go.

Almost a year later and Mission Bay is still booming night after night.

When asked what San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava’s done so far to make good on his promise, his office told me it’s complicated.

It involves cracking open SeaWorld’s lease and working with the city’s planning commission on changes to the SeaWorld Masterplan Amendment, a long-term planning document for the park which leases city property in Mission Bay. There’s a whole section describing fireworks displays at SeaWorld as an “integral part of the park’s evening experience.” Apparently, according to the amendment, the park’s hosted fireworks shows since 1968, four years after the park opened.

The City Council is waiting on the Planning Commission to take up SeaWorld’s planning amendment, according to LaCava’s staff. The Planning Commission didn’t get back to Voice of San Diego about when they’d be taking it up.

“The nightly explosion of fireworks this summer is a reminder that the frequency of this activity must be restricted,” LaCava said in an emailed statement. “Our collective goal must continue to be the activation of Mission Bay in a manner that protects the environment and does not impact surrounding neighborhoods.”

In the meantime, bird activists took it upon themselves to track fireworks activity both legal and illegal, over the July 4 weekend. Volunteers stationed themselves near preserves like the Kendall Frost Marsh and the San Diego River Mouth, recording 196  “bird disturbances” between the two locations. 

Bird disturbances, according to the San Diego Bird Alliance, include an array of behavior: Increased vigilance (feathers close to body and looking around), distressed behavior (increased vigilance plus alarm calls and chicks running), vocalizing on the ground or in the air, flushing (taking flight in groups) from the ground or the air and panic flight. 

The thousands of nesting elegant terns, part of the flock affected by fireworks last year, didn’t return to their 2024 nesting site on West Ski Island in Mission Bay, according to Andrew Meyer with the San Diego Bird Alliance.

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