Keiko's love of children
puts his life in danger
Wednesday 11th
The film star whale's frolics
with fans have exhausted him and there are fears for his lifeSkaalvik
Fjord, Norway - Sunday September 8, 2002
A dark shape bobbed on the
surface of the water as the sun slipped behind the Blue Mountains
in Norway last night. Then the object moved, twitching its tail and
sending water into the sky. On the shore, men, women and children
cheered. Keiko, the world's most famous killer whale, was alive.
But for how long? In the latest chapter of an extraordinary story,
the 33ft orca has made a remote Norwegian fjord into what could prove
his final resting place after a journey involving thousands of miles,
endless controversy and a taste of Hollywood stardom in the 1993 hit
film, Free Willy.
Keiko, who has spent all but
two of his 24 years in captivity, arrived in Skaalvik Fjord last week,
frolicking in waters surrounded by jagged mountain peaks. By yesterday
he was less energetic, prompting fears that the latest attempt to
reintroduce him to the wild would end in his death.
'He is very listless,' said
Colin Baird, the Icelander in charge, as the mammal lay motionless
in the water. 'It is all very depressing. He will start wasting away
soon.'
Keiko has redeveloped a 'captive
mentality' after people started swimming with him last week. The threat
to his welfare forced the Norwegian government to announce an unprecedented
emergency ruling yesterday that made it an offence to swim within
25 yards of Keiko or to feed him. Ministers feared a public relations
disaster if the health of the world's most famous sea creature declined
in waters where it is legal to kill whales.
As concern over Keiko's health
mounted throughout the day, it emerged that the actress Brigitte Bardot
was urging Norway's Crown Princess Mette-Marit to intervene to ensure
the whale was removed from contact with people, who have caused him
problems for much of his life.
Since slipping into this narrow
fjord after almost 70 days in the wild, Keiko has again been revelling
in human contact, unravelling the biggest attempt to rehabilitate
a creature into the wild. So far, it has cost 3 million.
The fears over his health -
the whale has stopped feeding because he apparently believes people
will provide him with fish - come 24 years after Keiko was captured
by a trawler off the Icelandic coast in 1978. He had a brief career
on show in aquariums in Iceland and Canada before going to an amusement
park in Mexico City.
There he stayed, without contact
with any other member of his species, for 11 years in unsuitably warm
water that was only 12ft deep and at an altitude of 7,000ft. Keiko's
health deteriorated and lesions covered his skin.
After his appearance in Free
Willy, the story of a boy fighting to liberate a whale from an aquarium
where he was exploited by unscrupulous showmen, more than a million
people wrote to demand that Keiko be set free. A huge global fundraising
campaign was set up.
Eventually, in 1998, he was
flown to Iceland's Westman Islands in a United States Air Force transporter
plane at a cost of 6m. There, efforts began to reintroduce him to
the wild. After more than 60 unsuccessful attempts to reunite Keiko
with free orcas, many people began to doubt whether he would forsake
the company of humans for the call of freedom.
Seven weeks ago, however, Keiko
finally disappeared from his ocean pen,
the size of a football pitch, and joined a pod of wild orcas. They
embarked on a 1,000-mile journey across the Atlantic. Tracking devices
reveal that Keiko dived to depths greater than 150ft in pursuit of
food such as herring.
His apparently successful integration
into the open sea went wrong when he saw a fishing vessel off the
Norwegian coast and followed it into Skaalvik Fjord.
Within hours, Keiko had befriended
groups of children playing in the water, and within days crowds of
them were swimming alongside the killer whale, whose species are seen
as fearsome predators in the wild. Some even climbed on his back for
free rides.
This triggered fierce criticism
from conservationists, who claimed the children's parents were 'irresponsible'.
Mark Berman, assistant director of the Free Willy/Keiko fund, said:
'This is a 12,000lb whale. Would they let their kids ride on the back
of a brown bear in Yosemite National Park?
'Someone could have got hurt.
Keiko doesn't know his own strength. These people are making a big
mistake.' Contact with humans has already made the whale losing its
hunting instincts.
Yesterday Baird, his keeper,
revealed that plans are under discussion to move Keiko so that his
rehabilitation can continue at a secret location in Norway, far away
from the human adulation the whale craves.
Experts point to another potential
danger. Winter is approaching and Skaalvik is only 80 miles from the
Arctic Circle, so fears are mounting that Keiko could be held captive
again - this time by ice - as the surface water of the fjord freezes
in the coming weeks.
One Norwegian whale expert
has already warned that Keiko has little chance of surviving the winter
in the cold western fjords of Norway, and might have to be shot. At
24, Keiko has already outlived the average captive whales, and is
nearing the 30-year life expectancy for male wild orcas.=20
While holidaymakers have started
arriving in the fjord to see the celebrity mammal, some local people
were yesterday less sympathetic, saying the whale is a nuisance because
he disturbs the local salmon. 'He must go away,' said Tormed Venvik,
a fisherman. 'We need to clean this mess up.' There are fears that
someone might even try to shoot Keiko.
Whatever happens, few people
crowding the shores of the fjord last night believed that they would
witness a repetition of the ending of Free Willy, when Keiko leaps
over a breakwater and disappears into the ocean.
Scenes from the life
of a star of the seas
1979 Keiko
born in Atlantic off Iceland.
1978 Captured
by commercial trawler and kept in an Icelandic aquarium.
1982 Transported
to MarineLand in Ontario, Canada. Develops skin lesions.
1985 Sold
to Reino Aventura, an amusement park in Mexico City, for
70,000. Kept in poor conditions.
1993 Makes
screen debut in Free Willy - followed by revelations that Keiko is
ill because of confinement. Outcry prompts film-makers Warner Bros
to look for a better home for him.
1994 Free
Willy Keiko Foundation formed with around 7m with the aim of returning
him to wild.
1996 Keiko
finally arrives at a new 5m custom-built tank in Newport, Oregon,
where he experiences seawater for the first time in 14 years.
1997 Learns
to hunt and eats live fish.
1998 Flown
by US transporter plane to a special sea pen in Iceland.
2002 Finally
freed, he swims 1,000 miles to Skaalvik fjord in Norway.
( Source : www.observer.co.uk
)
