Atlantica - 01.06.2001, Page 40

38 A T L A N T I C A
Last year, Keiko made six ocean
swims – day trips out to the fierce, wind-
capped North Atlantic. Trained to follow
a small, orange-coloured, rescue-type
vessel, Keiko travelled sixty miles from
his pen. Tracking was made possible by
transmitters attached to his dorsal fin.
“He made contact with two whale
pods, but it didn’t take,” recalls Horton.
“When we turned the boat around to
return to Klettsvík, he was right behind
us. We’re hoping this year it will work.”
Keiko exited his pen on 23 May, and
Horton is hoping for a happy Hollywood
ending. He wants to see Keiko disappear
in the company of an accepting whale
pod, or even better, his original whale
family, which was last sighted in the
vicinity 15 years ago. Out in the wilds,
Keiko could live to be sixty.
MOVIE STAR
Will Keiko ever be able to cut it in the
wilds? Only Keiko knows the answer. His
long, strange trip began in 1979 when
he was a two-year-old calf captured off
the coast of south Iceland.
One year later, Keiko (which means
‘lucky one’ in Japanese) was sold to
Marineland in Ontario, Canada, per-
forming with six orcas. In 1985, Keiko,
described as ‘timid’, was purchased by
Reino Aventura, a Mexico City amuse-
ment park. There, for more than ten
years, Keiko starred in five daily shows,
the gruelling schedule made worse by
his life inside a small, overheated tank
amongst sea lions and bottlenose dol-
phins.
As things happen, producer Richard
Donner (Lethal Weapon) learned of
Keiko and fashioned a tale about a boy
and a whale, starring Keiko. The movie,
Free Willy, was released in 1993. The
story, a tear jerker about a 12-year-old
troubled boy who sets a whale ‘free’
from an unscrupulous aquatic park, was
a box office smash. In the final scene, an
animated model of Keiko jumps over a
breakwall to freedom in the open sea. At
the end of the movie, a phone number
in the United States was displayed for
movie-goers who wanted to free Keiko.
So began the adoration of Keiko, an
animal who magically endeared himself
as a favourite pet. An estimated 300,000
fans worldwide clamoured for Keiko’s
freedom, fuelled by a LIFE magazine
story decrying Keiko’s sorry state of liv-
ing. He was pathetic: underweight, men-
tally dull, suffering from respiratory
problems and covered with ugly, warty-
looking lesions. His muscles were atro-
phied from his confinements, his dorsal
fin had fallen and his teeth were worn
down from chewing the sides of his con-
crete pool.
That’s when the Free Willy Keiko
Foundation stepped in: vowing to reha-
bilitate Keiko, rejuvenate his dulled
instincts and set him free in the North
Atlantic. The foundation raised USD
7,300,000 in donations from the public,
the movie’s producer, Warner Brothers,
and Seattle cellphone billionaire, Craig
McCaw.
THE WHALE WORKS OUT
In 1996, the foundation, having taken
charge of Keiko, leased a new facility at
Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport,
KEIKO
“Keiko captured the hearts and minds
of millions of children around the
world when they learned that Free
Willy’s happy ending was fiction.“
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