Atlantica - 01.06.2001, Qupperneq 38

36 A T L A N T I C A
“If Keiko does not go wild this summer,
we will find another location where he
will be safe and well taken care of,” says
Hallur Hallson, publicist for Ocean
Futures. “We will move Keiko to anoth-
er site in Iceland or Ireland.”
The organisation, headed by Jean-
Michel Cousteau, son of famed
oceanographer, Jacques Cousteau,
spends a staggering USD 300,000 a
month maintaining and retraining the
twenty-two-year-old, black and white,
10,000 pound, 21-foot long cetacean.
Despite all this, Keiko, captured at the
age of two years old, has shown no
predilection to becoming a predator. He
depends on human beings to feed him,
preferring the dead herring tossed into
the bay to live fish. While many believe
the attention given to Keiko is wacky
and reeks of money, Ocean Futures
believes Keiko could revolutionise
marine science. If he succeeds, Keiko
will be the first orca to return to the wild,
and it will pave the way for other orcas
to be freed from captivity.
“Keiko is being given the opportunity
to be a wild whale again,” says
Cousteau.
Cousteau’s enthusiasm is not shared
by others in the marine community. “I
shudder at the thought,” says Dr.
Gregory Bossart, a University of Miami
veterinarian who studied Keiko. “Often,
because of Hollywood, we tend to forget
the cruelty of nature. It’s very competi-
tive, and only the strong survive.”
“PEOPLE GET IN THE WAY.”
The dire scenario predicted by critics –
Keiko being slaughtered by gangs of
killer whales as he bravely attempts to
join a pod, then washing up on a beach
– is unlikely to occur, mainly because
the big guy doesn’t possess the where-
withal to go native. By all accounts,
Keiko, who spent nearly twenty years in
show biz and living in cramped marine
park aquariums, prefers his spacious
floating seapen inside Klettsvík, the pic-
turesque inlet ringed by 800-foot-high
volcanic rocks and rollicking seabirds.
“We want Keiko to leave,” says Jim
Horton, who’s been on the project one
year, “but it’s up to Keiko.”
Jim Horton, an American animal spe-
Photos Michael Agel
Keiko, the killer whale star of Free Willy, has left Iceland’s
Klettsvík Bay. But nobody knows if he can live on his own.
Ocean Futures Society, the environmental group that owns
Keiko, is gambling millions of dollars that the world’s most
famous whale can survive out of his sheltered cove and
swim this summer into whale bliss. But so far, after two
years of rehab and six test runs out into the deep, Keiko
has failed to swim free. Roberta Ostroff reports.
Swimming
Free
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