The Good Whale: New Podcast About Keiko the Orca
By Harriet Alexander, From The Times, UK
A new podcast unpicks whether it was the right decision to rewild Keiko, who ‘acted’ in the film and died more than two decades ago
Michael Jackson sang Will You Be There as the credits rolled and a generation of weeping children left the cinema. Determined to be there for Willy the killer whale, they went home, picked up the phone, and dialed the number from the silver screen: 1-800-4-WHALES.
The 1993 blockbuster Free Willy whistled to the top of the box office with a tale of friendship between Willy and his young tearaway trainer, Jesse, who coaches the orca to leap out of his cruel pen and swim away into the ocean sunset, escaping death at the hands of the dastardly aquarium owners.
What happened next is a story even more remarkable than the film. A worldwide campaign was launched to free the “actor” Keiko from his aquarium home in Mexico. Battling intense logistical and political problems, Keiko was ultimately returned to his native Iceland and released, where he lived freely until his death in 2003. To this day he is the only captive orca ever returned to the wild.
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David Phillips, the wildlife executive credited with leading the mission to set Keiko free, maintains that the whale’s story is one of triumph, with lessons that still apply.
“I was involved with every piece of that story, from beginning to end,” said Phillips, founder of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation. “It was just so impactful to me and to so many people; it’s a fine story. At the same time, there’s the duality of it being a timeless story, with an urgent part.”
Phillips was not aware of Keiko’s existence when the film premiered. A graduate in biology from Colorado College, he had begun his career with Friends of the Earth before co-founding the California-based activist group Earth Island Institute. By 1993 he was specialising in marine ecosystems and habitat preservation, campaigning to end commercial whaling.
The Earth Island Institute’s whales hotline was intended to allow people to support conservation efforts in general, but the 400,000 people who rang the number after the film’s release were demanding the freeing of the actual Willy.
Phillips was asked by Warner Bros whether there was any way Keiko could be freed, and so began the seemingly impossible task of convincing the Mexico City owners to hand over their cash cow — captured in Iceland in 1979, at the age of about two, and having spent a decade in captivity. No one knew if it could be done.
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Phillips is adamant that moving Keiko from Mexico extended his life.
“Every captive whale would do better outside of concrete tanks,” he said.
“And it was multiple steps of success. It was a huge success to get him from Mexico to Oregon. It was a huge success to get him from a captive concrete tank in Oregon to his natural waters in Iceland, near where he was born. He’s able to go out and follow a boat and swim into the wild. It’s not a failure.
“What our hope was, which is really threading a very small needle, would be that we could locate his family pod. We were not able to do that, but it doesn’t mean that it was a failure.”
Colin Baird, a Canadian marine biologist who managed Keiko’s five years in Scandinavia, told the 2010 documentary Keiko: The Untold Story of the Star of Free Willy: “The idea of Keiko swimming of into the sunset the day he was released with his family was a bit romantic perhaps. But watching him out in the ocean socializing with other orcas for the first time in 25 years was fantastic.”
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“Keiko has really been a trailblazer in changing of public attitudes about whales and dolphins being held in captivity,” said Phillips. “Every captive whale is the right candidate. There is no bad candidate for getting out of captivity in a concrete tank at an amusement park.”
Read the full article. THE TIMES, UK
WHAT YOU CAN DO:
Sign our petition to the French government to retire Wikie and Keijo to a seaside sanctuary.
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The International Marine Mammal Project, with support from caring people like you, successfully rescued and released Keiko, the orca star of Free Willy, back to his home waters in Iceland. This monumental effort was fueled by the tremendous passion and generosity of individuals who truly made a difference. Now we are working to save the last two captive orcas in France, Wikie and her son Keijo, languishing in a tank in Marineland Antibes, Time is pressing. Please donate to help bring mother and son orcas to The Whale Sanctuary Project’s new seaside sanctuary in Nova Scotia. They deserve richer lives, free from the misery of concrete tanks and performing for food. Thank you!
