TIME EUROPE
September 11, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 11
Willy Won't He?
After years of preparation, killer whale Keiko, the star of Free Willy, may at last return to the wild — if he can only learn to shrug off humans
By HELEN GIBSON Heimaey, Iceland
STEVEN SINELLI-OCEANFUTURES.COM
Keiko, in Klettsvik Bay, Iceland
All day long, the silver helicopter alternately swoops and hovers over the waters around southern Iceland's volcanic Westman Islands. On a cliff-top, a retired Icelandic coastguard captain watches the ocean through binoculars, occasionally talking by radio to the Americans in the chopper. Both keep in touch with three small boats that tack around the islands like erratic beetles, changing direction abruptly, doubling back on themselves, then spending long periods in one spot. For the uninitiated, it's hard to make out what is going on. A drug-smuggling bust? A search and rescue operation? The filming of the next James Bond movie? The reality is odder still: all these humans are scurrying around in an effort to take a killer whale for an ocean walk and find him some of his own kind to talk to.
An extraordinary effort, but then again this is no ordinary cetacean. The 6.7-m, 4,500-kg orca with the droopy dorsal fin is none other than Keiko, the star of the 1993 hit movie Free Willy. In the film, Keiko plays a killer whale condemned to a sad life in cruel captivity until finally released to ocean freedom through the efforts of a small boy. The part came easily to Keiko whose own real life story paralleled Willy's, and the movie inadvertently made his plight known worldwide. Now, in an ambitious experiment, a dedicated team of scientists, animal behaviorists, trainers, divers and technicians want to make the fairytale screen ending come true. They are working to free Keiko from dependence upon humans and teach him to live again in the wild seas from which he was captured two decades ago.
The radio crackles with terse reports from the boat with the hydrophones, devices that listen to underwater sounds: "We have lots of vocalizations ... Keiko is looking at the wild ones ... they're just off our bow." All three boats are gathered near a circle of churned sea, where gannets are plunging like dive bombers into a shoal of herring. The birds take advantage of the work of the orcas, which round up the fish and force them to the surface. When eventually a pod with one juvenile, four females and five males — distinguishable by the length of their dorsal fins — leave the feeding ground, Keiko swims in line with them.
"It's like taking your kid to school for his first day and watching from the gate," says animal behaviorist Jeff Foster, who has worked with whales for 30 years and is one of Keiko's 18-member staff. But Keiko does not, Hollywood-style, swim off with his relatives into the sunset. Once again he returns to the boat and his more familiar human companions. MORE>>
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September 11, 2000
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ENVIRONMENT
Willy Won't He?
After years of preparation, killer whale Keiko, the star of Free Willy, may at last return to the wild — if he can only learn to shrug off humans
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