(Excerpts from article in The Guardian, Feb. 10, 2024, and link to full article)
The Guardian
By Melissa Hobson
Thirty years after the film (Free Willy) highlighted their plight, thousands of whales and dolphins remain performing in entertainment parks
Anyone who grew up in the 1990s may well remember this movie scene: a 3.6-tonne orca leaping to freedom over a harbor wall and swimming off into the sunset with his family. It was the closing scene of Free Willy, a film that captured the hearts of a generation, telling the story of an orphaned boy racing against time to free a killer whale from captivity before the creature is destroyed.
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The environmentalist David Phillips, director emeritus of the Earth Island Institute, was asked to visit Keiko in Mexico City to see if he could help. “His dorsal fin was all folded over; he had this papillomavirus on his skin; he was really, really underweight,” he says.
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He is proud that Keiko left Mexico City – where he is convinced he would soon have died – was returned to his home waters, became able to feed himself and made it to Norway. The International Marine Mammal Project notes that eight captive orcas died in SeaWorld facilities during the time Keiko was in the care of the FWKF.
