by David Kirby
Now he had crossed the line, Naomi fumed. It was one thing to critique her math, it was quite another to repeat the tired ocean-as-dark-and-scary-place mantra. “Their life here is different from in the wild,” he wrote, then added, without any proof whatsoever, “But it is not worse, and in many ways it is better.”
Finally, the letter blasted HSUS for trying to divert badly needed funds for research and habitat conservation into a naïve and extremely costly quest to free a few whales. That was money that would no longer be spent on “a couple of ‘sound-watch’ boats in Puget Sound to intercept and advise boaters on the proper ways to whale watch in order to stop harassment, or to fund a study of the effects of pollution on orca calf mortality in that same area, or to clean up and restore a Pacific Coast salmon stream, or to monitor the alarming rise in heavy metals and other toxins found in wild killer whale tissue.”
In other words, HSUS was doing nothing to make the ocean less dark and scary for killer whales. Naomi wondered what Marine World had done—and spent money on—in that regard as well, especially when it came to conserving killer whale habitats in the wild. She suspected it amounted to little.
Naomi was bruised but hardly down and out. Fortunately, her superiors supported her efforts 100 percent. Besides, they could hardly reprimand her for using statistical calculations taken right from the HSUS’s own playbook.
HSUS decided to let the whole thing blow over. Naomi vowed to take up the longevity argument again one day, but only with statistical analyses that were conducted by those with expertise in the field and reviewed by peers. Naomi was a behavioral biologist; statistics were not her forte. And right now, she had a lot of other work to do.
19
Free Willy
Long before Tilikum maimed and killed Dawn Brancheau in 2010, the world’s most famous killer whale was unquestionably Keiko, the fifty-eight-hundred-pound male and international star of the Warner Bros. movie Free Willy. Keiko and Tilikum had remarkably similar stories. The records were sparse, but it appeared that Keiko had been captured sometime around 1979, a few years before Tilikum, along Iceland’s rugged eastern coast. It’s conceivable, though we will never know, that the two whales belonged to the same pod.
Keiko had been captured by a local fisherman aboard the Gudrun, the same vessel that had taken the female orcas Kenau and Gudrun a few years earlier. Like the infant Tilikum, young Keiko was abruptly snatched from his family. Men who captured Icelandic killer whales employed two favorite techniques for distracting the animals long enough to encircle them in purse seines. Both Tilikum and Keiko were surely captured in one of these ways.
The first method was to trail herring fishermen and wait for them to close their nets and haul the fish aboard. The orcas knew that a generous portion of live herring would spill from the net as it was lifted from the sea. An experienced killer whale hunter, with precise timing and a good shot of luck, could deploy his own net and surround the unsuspecting whales just as the herring boat steamed away.
The other technique was to purchase seven hundred to nine hundred pounds of fresh herring and spread it out on the water like chum as a pod approached. When the whales gathered for the meal, the seine nets would be tightened around them.
The infant Keiko, just like Tilikum, had been lifted in a canvas sling, placed on a boat, floated to another part of Iceland, then trucked to another location—either Saedyrasafnid Aquarium, where Tilikum went, or possibly a private zoo in southern Iceland. There was no documentation of the movements. Anti-captivity activists called this practice “hiding” or “laundering” whales that were caught in excess of capture permits.
The youngster was named Kago.
Ultimately, like Tilikum, he was sold to a theme park in Canada—in this case Marineland Ontario, where he was shipped in 1982. There, the calf was put in a tank with five older and more aggressive killer whales. They began beating him up relentlessly—slapping him with their flukes, bumping and ramming his flanks, raking him with their teeth, much like the domination that Tilikum had suffered at SeaLand.1
The new whale would not learn show behaviors and demonstrated little interest in taking part in the performances. “He was kind of a weak animal,” recalled Angus Matthews, who was director of Marineland at the time. “His stimulation and attention span was kind of waning. He didn’t deal with stress well at all.” Kago was so stressed-out that Marineland ended up stowing him in a small tank inside a warehouse, where he spent most of his time while in Canada: alone and indoors without fresh air or sunlight. His living quarters were so wretched that grotesque lesions began to sprout on his skin.
In 1985, an amusement park in the far southwestern section of Mexico City—a Six Flags–style attraction called El Nuevo Reino Aventura (New Adventure Kingdom)—bought the orca for a reported $350,000.
The calf arrived amid much fanfare and desperately needed a name change: Kago in Spanish sounds like “I shit.” The whale was rechristened Keiko, the female Japanese name for “blessed child.”
But Keiko wasn’t all that fortunate. He was kept in an extremely small pool along with a rotating number of bottlenose dolphins. Built for dolphin shows, the tank was ninety feet long, forty-three feet wide, and less than twenty feet deep. The water, warmed by the tropical sun to temperatures reaching eighty degrees, was unfiltered Mexico City tap water mixed with chlorine and giant sacks of table salt. He was not in prime health. Keiko’s skin infection, most likely from a papillomavirus, doctors said, was getting worse.
But Keiko, warts and all, became staggeringly famous in Mexico, especially beloved among children. He learned new behaviors and performed five shows a day. He started reproducing the sounds of the dolphins that shared his tank, especially a bottlenose named Ritchie. The two grew close and often played together. Keiko even began imitating the murmur of the pool pump and the wails of police sirens screeching outside the park.
He was by all accounts a sweet, gentle, and even compassionate little whale. One day a caretaker’s baby son fell into the pool. Keiko raised the child up to the surface and gingerly deposited him on the walkway before any humans noted the danger (the touching scene would be included in the movie Free Willy).
Keiko grew fast. By 1991 the owners of Reino Aventura realized he was quickly outgrowing his tank. His immune health was deteriorating and it looked as if Keiko might die if not relocated to a better situation. The owners even offered to sell him to SeaWorld. Naomi found some of the internal memos—delivered anonymously to HSUS headquarters back in 1991 and put in the files—in which SeaWorld officials asked for funds to buy Keiko.
SeaWorld wanted two males: Keiko and a second bull born in captivity at Marineland Ontario. “The acquisition of two male killer whales will improve the SeaWorld long-term breeding program and increase the genetic diversity of SeaWorld’s whale population,” said the unsigned memo, which was addressed to Busch Entertainment Corporation, part of the Anheuser-Busch beverage conglomerate, which bought SeaWorld in 1989. “The whales are trained and should be adaptable for use in SeaWorld shows.”
The memo warned that members of the public would be allowed to make written comments on the import permit and that SeaWorld would be required to respond. A public hearing might also be called and “protests from some animal activist groups can be expected.” The author recommended approving the purchase of the Reino Aventura whale for $1.2 million, plus an additional $500,000 for transportation, permit fees, legal costs, insurance, and so forth. The Canadian whale had a price tag of $850,000, plus $500,000 in costs.
SeaWorld Orlando had just lost the male Transient Kanduke and desperately needed fresh sperm. That’s when Tilikum killed Keltie Byrne and was put up for sale by SeaLand. When Tilikum became available, SeaWorld abandoned its plans to buy Keiko. Better to buy a proven stud, even one with a murder rap, Naomi imagined was the thinking, than to buy one with a potentially contagious skin disease.
Then Warner Bros. came calling. The studio had spent nearly a year searching
for an orca to play the role of Willy, and an aquatic park to film in. Their first choice had been SeaWorld, followed by the Miami Seaquarium, but both places turned them down after learning that Willy is freed at the end of the movie. SeaWorld officials called the script irresponsible and reportedly told Warner Bros. they would agree to a deal only if the title character was sent to a superior captive facility at the end of the film.
The producers discovered the hapless Keiko alone and confined to a tiny tank in a second-rate facility. He was the perfect whale, and Reino Aventura the perfect location. As luck would have it, the park was about to close for major renovations, making it easier for Warner Bros. to film there, while also giving Keiko something to do in the interim. Reino Aventura’s owners agreed to the filming. Naomi assumed that the owners knew the fictional park would be portrayed harshly. But they also must have known that Keiko would have to be sent somewhere else sooner rather than later. Perhaps they thought that making him famous would help him find a better home.
Keiko proved to be an adept and cooperative actor, and the camera loved him. He reenacted the baby-rescue scene like a true professional. Everyone believed that he enjoyed the attention, the lights and the crew, and the retaking of shots. When it was over and workers began to dismantle the set, Keiko seemed to sense there would be no more film acting. On the last day of shooting, he breached from the water repeatedly, something he had never before done without being given a signal. Keiko doused the crew, perhaps sensing that the excitement was about to wrap up.
The whale became an overnight sensation and international movie star (though many shots were done with an animatronic body double). Free Willy was a surprise hit, not only domestically but in Europe and parts of Asia as well.
Not surprisingly, SeaWorld hated Free Willy. “Its curators are steamed at the film’s depiction of an animal theme park as an inhumane cesspool,” film critic Richard Corliss wrote in Time magazine. Jim Antrim, SeaWorld San Diego’s general curator, complained to Corliss that the movie was not a “fair portrayal” of the reality of public display. “The trainer seems to be feeding the animal an inferior type of fish and often walks by the animal in an uninterested manner,” he said in what Naomi thought was an odd critique. SeaWorld also scoffed at the “miraculously rapid” bond that developed between human and whale in the film, and the “malicious” depiction of the park’s owner and staff—and the visitors who bang on the glass walls so loudly that it sends Willy into a desperate frenzy.
In late summer, when US reporters went to Reino Aventura to have a look at the famous whale, their stories about his poor health and substandard housing shocked the American public. Though he seemed spritely in the movie, Keiko had grown listless and stopped eating properly. His immune system was weak, he suffered from ulcers and digestive distress, and his muscles had lost tone. His skull and rib cage were showing. Keiko was sluggish and unable to hold his breath for more than three minutes. The high altitude and Mexico City’s noxious and notorious air pollution were not helping matters. Keiko would have to be moved if he was to survive.
Even as the movie was opening, a plan had already been developed to relocate Keiko from Mexico City to a facility where he could be nursed back to health. There was even talk of rehabilitating the whale and releasing him to his native waters of Iceland.
Warner Bros. and Free Willy’s executive producers, the husband and wife team Richard Donner and Lauren Shuler Donner, of Lethal Weapon fame, took the first steps toward getting Keiko out of Mexico. The Donners were firmly in the anti-captivity camp. “If I had my druthers,” Richard Donner told Time magazine, “these places wouldn’t even exist.”
The Donners contacted Kenneth Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research on San Juan Island and one of the fathers of modern orca photo-identification techniques, along with Mike Bigg and his Canadian colleagues. Ken had since emerged as one of the leading authorities on wild orcas.
Ken went to work on a formal plan. He proposed that Keiko be flown to the Bahamas, where Ken had found a sea pen location at a private research center that was willing to help reintroduce Keiko into the ocean. The plan included a comprehensive “rehabilitation and reintroduction” package that would slowly lead Keiko out into the sea regularly behind a ninety-two-foot research vessel Ken had secured for the project. Ken wrote that the US Navy had successfully taken captive orcas out into the ocean for extended periods, periodically calling them back to the ship with underwater tones. Keiko would also learn to forage for live fish and learn other skills needed to survive in the wild.
Eventually, the team would slowly head north in the ship, with Keiko following behind, all the way to Iceland. Ken figured the thirty-three-hundred-mile journey would take about a month and half, assuming that Keiko traveled at sustained speeds of about three miles per hour. Once he was in Iceland, the town of Eskifjördur had already agreed to “adopt” Keiko if needed and to construct a fence across their fjord, with a gate so that Keiko could come and go.
Every attempt would be made to locate Keiko’s Icelandic family—including DNA samples and acoustic comparisons of distinct pod calls—and reunite him with his pod. Another possibility was that Keiko would become a “rogue” or solitary whale. This was acceptable as well, Ken said. “The major point is that many more options and enrichments to his life will be available to him than could ever be made available in captivity,” Ken wrote. “If perpetual maintenance is to be his fate, we will ensure that it is in a natural healthy seawater environment with as much enrichment as possible.”
Scientists and vets working for the industry pooh-poohed the plan as unrealistic and dangerous for Keiko. But that didn’t stop the momentum to free him.
Ken had been contacted by an experienced whale and dolphin activist named Ben White. Ben was working freelance with several groups including the Animal Welfare Institute, In Defense of Animals, and The Corky Project, whose goal was to free Corky from SeaWorld and return her to her Northern Resident pod, the A5s. Ben suggested assembling a scientific working group to develop a protocol for the rehabilitation of captive whales in general, and another group of environmentalists and animal protection groups to form a coalition to support Ken’s Mexico-to-Bahamas-to-Iceland proposal. Ken loved the idea. When he and Ben approached Naomi for her support, she jumped at the chance. HSUS would act as coordinator for all communications with Reino Aventura.
Even as all of this was happening, another group, Earth Island Institute, had formed a partnership with Warner Bros. to fight the international whaling industry, especially in Norway, which was undermining a 1986 international ban on commercial whaling. Earth Island Institute, based in San Francisco and run by Dave Phillips, was a grassroots outfit founded in 1986 to promote conservation, preservation, and restoration of the earth’s ecosystems.
At the end of Free Willy, theatergoers were shown a special announcement asking for help to stop the hunting of whales. “You can personally help save the whales of the world by calling 1-800-4-WHALES,” it said. The number was run by Earth Island. Within weeks, more than three hundred thousand people had called. Most of them wanted to know about the fate of Keiko. “Please save Willy,” many of them said.
By that time, Naomi had struck up a friendly relationship with Earth Island Institute’s Mark Berman, an indefatigable activist known to send out dozens of faxes a day to his network of anti-captivity allies. People called him the Faxinator.
Mark told Naomi that most of the calls to the toll-free number were coming from people wanting to know when the “real” Willy would be set free.
It seemed pretty obvious what to do next: HSUS, Earth Island, the Center for Whale Research, the Fund for Animals, and other groups would join forces to persuade Reino Aventura to let Keiko be rehabilitated and reintroduced into his native waters. Naomi would see what kind of funding HSUS might be able to contribute. Mark Berman would see if the toll-free number could be used to raise funds from the public.
Meanwhile, SeaWorld was trying t
o brush off the implications of the popular movie and its anti-captivity message. Naomi was interviewed by WJR radio in Detroit, along with SeaWorld’s Jim McBain, though the format did not allow them to interact with each other. McBain said he hoped the movie would encourage people to come see orcas at “good, clean facilities” such as SeaWorld and stressed that the park in Free Willy was completely fabricated. The film was having zero negative impact on ticket sales, he noted.
McBain insisted that it was unrealistic to expect that a captive killer whale could ever be released. They were “too dependent” on people; they would die if returned to the wild. To even mention release was tantamount to denying the value of what the animals offered as “ambassadors for their species.” Naomi loathed that term when used to describe animals in captivity. Human ambassadors drive hard bargains to negotiate treaties, trade deals, and other tangible items that benefit their homeland. And, of course, ambassadors come and go as they please.
McBain insisted that SeaWorld’s ambassadors “help people care” about whales in the wild and let them know what a nasty place the ocean had become, with all its pollution, boat traffic, and drift nets.
Naomi was undeterred by the usual rhetoric. She, Ken Balcomb, and Ben White pushed ahead to convince Reino Aventura to let them have the whale. Toward the end of the summer, they achieved significant progress: At the prompting of Mark Berman at Earth Island Institute, the park’s director general, Oscar Porter, agreed to a meeting in Mexico City, on August 31, 1993. Ken invited Busch Entertainment to send a representative to the meeting and told Warner Bros. about the release plan for Keiko.
Ken, Naomi, and Ben, along with Kate O’Connell, US representative from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, who spoke fluent Spanish, flew down to Mexico City and headed out to Reino Aventura to meet with Oscar Porter and his team.
