Pedro Roberto Lavia was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1941. He began his career as a 17-year-old entertainment entrepreneur when he opened with his brother an amusement equipment factory. In his entrepreneurial mission, he created innovative projects for artistic animation in more than 15 countries in Latin America and later in 4 countries in southern Europe.

In 1988 he started what would become the most emblematic project of his career, an entertainment park, which has since become the 7th best theme park in Europe and the 24th in the world.

In 2004, he took over the Presidency of the European Association of Aquatic Mammals (EAAM) as the first "Portuguese representative" to receive such a distinction in the then 33 years of life of this organization.

In 2014, he received in Orlando (Florida, USA) the career award of the International Association of Marine Mammal Trainers (IMATA), which for the first time in the history of this important and charismatic world organization, was attributed to a citizen of non-US nationality.

Pedro Lavia is today a huge source of inspiration for all Zoomarine employees and, above all a visionary who always projects the development of his theme park in the future with a 5-year time horizon.

The Publituris Portugal Travel Awards Career Award 2019 awarded to Pedro Roberto Lavia, Founder and President of Zoomarine Algarve, for its prestige, was the last prize to be awarded at the 2019 event, which was attended by the biggest personalities of tourism, namely AnaMendes Godinho, Secretary of State for Tourism and Luis Araújo, President of Tourism of Portugal.