Ammon Covino
Appearances
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
And that door opened one hour a day to take a shower. That's it. So you put somebody like that in that kind of environment, it's really difficult. And why? Why do that? What did I do? I bought a fish from a guy who lied about catching it. I paid for that animal. I paid for it. I filled up permits twice for it. And...
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
What he did then is entrapped me to buy two animals, a stingray and a shark, while he didn't have a fishing license on permit. Legally, he lied about it, and then he baited me to it, and the federal government told him how to do it. Oh, we're going to get this guy.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Well, what I didn't want to do is I didn't want to get the guy in trouble that had sent it to me. Number one. Number two, there was two sharks that were coming and another one was on its way. And I said, cancel that shark. I certainly don't want a second shark to come illegally. That's what was told.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Well, it's not a bite, right? Let's be real, it's not a bite because it's not considered a bite unless it breaks the skin.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Let's bring this out too. Are you ready for this? This is great. In my stipulations for probation, it said these words. You cannot buy, sell, transport, or exhibit fish. Or animal wildlife. Those are the four things. I didn't do that. I didn't buy, sell, transport, or exhibit animals.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
I was building a facility that would potentially hold animals or could hold animals in the future. But apparently... That is not against the probation violation.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Absolutely not. Okay. They don't need me. The place has been running itself for years and years and years. I haven't been involved. I prefer to be at home listening to my music, chilling with my family, watering my plants, picking strawberries. That's what I do. I don't interact with the aquarium nor do I care.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
I'll tell you why. Because my name, Ammon Covino, had been smeared all across the country. And I talked to a PR company that says, there's really not much you can do about it. You can't really get rid of those sites. They're smear sites and whatever. So what I did was...
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
What I did was thought, well, what better opportunity than to get my name out as Ammon Covino with a shark being stolen by a baby cart. So when they search Ammon Covino, that bumps up higher. So they don't see, oh, this guy is PETA hates him. And he's this horrible person. So I took that as an advantage to be able to lower my name on Google searches. That's why I did that.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
So it's really frustrating. It's frustrating to be treated unequal. If I really cared one shit about it, I'd sue the federal government and I have a leg to stand on. If I gave two shits, I'd spend time doing that. But I'm not going to. It's in the past. It's done. It's gone. It's buried. It's done. I've been mistreated by lots of people my whole life.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
In fact, I talked to the... Ah, it doesn't even matter. This stuff's all shit. It doesn't even matter. It's all in the past. What else you got for me?
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
This year, I told more than 2 million people, don't cut the fins off a shark. I've taught children to smile with their mothers and their fathers as they're able to touch a stingray for the first time in their life and feel it and know, hey, these animals aren't bad. I've touched them. They're pretty cool. In fact, I like the way they touch, Mom.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
That's a memory that's a core memory that teaches responsibility of what to do with the world. What have you done?
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
I think there's a lack of animal interaction with humans on this planet. It's just the world getting out of balance and the oceans getting out of balance. We have millions of people a year go through our aquariums. Millions. more than any other aquarium in the country, period. And when you have that kind of volume and you're teaching people, these are animals we should love.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Well, was the animal being harmed, right? That's the first thing. Second thing is, the parameters of the water are perfect. He had to dig his hands all the way to his shoulders to get the fish out. It's not designed to do that way. Those sharks and all those fish have a way to get away from people if they don't want to be touched.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
In fact, if you want to touch one of the animals, they have to come up to you because the animals need to feel safe. And that's what we try to create there at the aquarium.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
kids would come from schools and school groups and school buses and it was just i couldn't believe it i was like this is out of control and so i started setting up little exhibits through the aquarium little octopus exhibit here's mantis shrimp all kinds of different things that we would set up sea horses starfish and we noticed real quick that people would come in look at all the animals and leave and then the cash register wasn't opening right
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Who's selling you fish? But when I started charging a dollar per head, we made $1,800 in one week. And I thought, oh gosh, this is a real good way to do it.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
My brother just wanted to be a reality star or something, and they just kind of did a couple of videos. I think he spent about half a million on production of doing stuff. Not the kind of thing I like to watch, necessarily. And I thought, I'm not going to do that. That's crazy. Last thing I want to be is on a TV show in front of anybody.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Challenge it to anybody who says that keeping a lemur specifically in captivity and not touching them would be better off in the long run than someone that did it and touched them. They're wrong. Dead wrong. Period. Math doesn't show that. It doesn't work. It's just because they're ignorant of it. That's all. Simple as that.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
And if I had to make a case in a debate standing next to somebody who said the other was, I'd win every time.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
So the public aquariums and the public zoos in this country have, I think, a responsibility to fix what the horrible people on this planet do by destroying environments for animals.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
No, you don't. I don't have a list of citations. You know what the USDA inspector said to us? You're one of the best facilities in the state of Texas. You're better than the Dallas Zoo.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
They've told us in person now what are the citations for. Read them.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
First of all, that's wrong. We have vets that know that's not what happened. The diet that was given was an approved diet by USDA vets. Period. They signed off on it. They signed off on it. And then USDA comes out and cites me for feeding the animal wrong diet. I said, well, look, guess what, Mr. USDA inspector? You're wrong. It's not that you're dumb.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
You just are ignorant of it because you haven't researched it. I'm sure you have lots of stuff you do, but what you don't know is... is what a giraffe eats. That's what you don't know. Unfortunately, sometimes other people that are experts know more than the people that are vets that are hired by USDA.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Some people have a higher level of intelligence than others, and some people have a higher level of study than others. They just don't understand. It's simple as that. They just don't have the comprehension to understand it. They're ignorant of it. I'm not saying they're stupid. They're just ignorant when it comes to animals. I've been dealing with animals my whole life.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
I've got pictures of me with babies when I was a baby injured bird when I was five.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
The animal activists, they don't have a clue how to love an animal. They have no clue at all. In fact, I had one of the people from PETA sit down in the car with me and I said, hey. you know, what's the problem? We love these animals. We care for them. And she says, well, really, it's kind of a free way to get it checked, and I like to be able to say I'm supporting something.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
And she says, to tell you the truth, I like your aquarium, but I'm a single mom. I used to be a stripper. That's what I did for a living. This is easier for me. And then she pulled out her phone and started scrolling the pictures of a deer that she had as a pet that was sleeping on her bed next to her dogs. And I thought, okay, well... What are you doing?
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
Why do you have a deer in your house, on your bed? What's going on with that? So there's no organization from top to bottom. They lie to people.
Big Time
Missing Helen: Part 2 | 11
When you deal with the federal government, they kind of do things dirty, because that's how they are a little bit. All they're trying to do is put someone in jail. I spent two years, 23 months, in federal prison lockup. 18 of those months were in maximum security. I didn't break the law. I did it straight as an arrow. Christian kid, right? And they put me in a cell that was a 10 by 8.