KEIKO'S STORY

In 1979 Keiko was swimming alongside his family off the coast of Iceland. Happily chasing fish for dinner he was unaware of his impending fate, to be taken from the wild, captured to supply a facility in Iceland. From Iceland, he as sold onto Marineland in Ontario and again to Reino Aventura in Mexico City, a far cry from his cold Icelandic home. In Mexico City he remained, and it was here in 1992, Warner Brothers discovered him and "signed him up" to star in the movie "Free Willy". The movie was co-incidentally about a killer whale languishing in captivity, freed to the open ocean by a young boy and his family after the boy befriends the whale in the marine park.

Then Willy's fictional story became a reality for Keiko. Interest in the whale escalated after the success of the "Free Willy" movie, and media coverage highlighted the awful conditions the whale was living in and also his deteriorating health. Public interest prompted discussion between Warner Brothers, Reino Aventura and animal welfare groups to do what they could to give the whale the opportunity to return to the wild.

Talks were held with Oregon Coast Aquarium regarding the possibility of moving Keiko to a new pool at their facility. Thousands of concerned individuals, companies and NGO's donated millions of dollars to help start the "Free Willy/Keiko Foundation" formed to facilitate Keiko's rehabilitation and hopefully, his eventual return to the wild. In early 1996, when Keiko was moved to Oregon from Mexico, he was suffering from severe skin lesions, was considerably underweight (just over 7,000lbs) and had many health problems, but with care and treatment in just over a year his skin had cleared considerably and his weight had climbed to well over 9,000lbs.

In late 1998, Keiko was flown to a sea pen in his home waters in a bay off the coast of Vestmannaeyjar, Iceland. He was placed under the care of the newly formed Ocean Futures Society, (a merger of the Free Willy Foundation and the Jean-Michel Cousteau Institute,) whose job was to teach Keiko how to become a wild whale once again. Keiko responded well to his new life in the sea pen and began to show signs of diving, vocalising and was gradually taking more interest in his underwater home. By early 2000 Keiko was being taken on "ocean walks", encouraged to follow a boat from an opening in his sea pen to explore the open ocean but trained to come back to the boat when called. Keiko interacted with wild orcas for the first time since his capture, and by mid 2001 Keiko was interacting more freqeuntly. It was a slow process, after all nothing was known of the whereabouts of Keiko's family, and the window of opportunity available for him to interact with the wild orcas passing through these waters was small. It was not a question of "will Keiko return to the wild?", it was simply a question of being patient and allowing the whale to take his own time to get used to being free, and be accepted into the close-knit orca community.

Keiko was fitted with a transmitter and encouraged to explore the open ocean further. Things looked positive, Keiko was swimming freely, catching his own food. But in Autumn 2003. he swam into a harbour in Norway where began to interact with the public, this could be his downfall - it was imperative that his contact with humans was minimised, to ensure his adaptation to life as a wild orca. Keiko was led away from the harbour to a new site along the coast - a site that was more remote and would limit the amount of admirers that began to flock to see this amazing whale. At this point the question of whether Keiko would ever be truly free was being voiced - but for the moment at least he was where he should be - in the wild, in the ocean - a place of natural beauty that he was removed from - now all he needed was to find his family. Living for over 20 years in captivity, Keiko was robbed of the opportunity to learn from his mother how orcas' live in the wild, we are sure that, given time, Keiko would have learned all the lessons he needed to be free. But time was not on his side.

At the age of 27, on the evening of 12 December 2003 after the onset of a sudden bout of pneumonia sadly Keiko died. He was buried on 19 December and was honoured by the children of Halsa, the village where he died, when they each brought stones to build a memorial to remember this beautiful whale.

When Keiko died the captivity industry wasted no time in condemning all involved in attempting to rehabilitate this animal and release him back into the wild. In reality, the blame for Keiko's untimely death lies squarely at the door of his captors. No blame should be aimed at those who tried to give Keiko his freedom. If he had been left in the wild, with his family where he belonged, his story would have been very different. Let's just hope that Keiko has become the ambassador for many more orcas to be given the chance of freedom - or better still, that people involved in capturing these animals for profit have learned they should not be taken from the wild - that is the true lesson Keiko has taught, at the cost of his life.