by David Kirby
Instead of pride, Naomi felt a sense of urgency—and renewed energy—from Small and DeMaster’s data. The war she had engaged in was predicated mostly on the question of survival. By SeaWorld’s logic, all marine mammals should be thriving in captivity, and living even longer than in the wild, given the outstanding food, protection from predators and pollution, and medical care they enjoyed. But now Naomi had powerful evidence that the opposite was true.
Most important, she thought, if captive killer whales were dying off at 2.5 times the rate as their wild cousins, then how could captivity possibly be justified? (Later, Naomi would realize she had been naïve about the impact that Small and DeMaster’s paper would have on scientific and public opinion toward captivity.)
Meanwhile, good news was breaking on the Keiko front as well. He seemed to take to his new high-tech, 2-million-gallon tank almost immediately. The pool included a closed-loop, ionization filtration system that would prevent any contamination of the ocean, while still providing Keiko with real seawater—the first time he had experienced it in fourteen years. He quickly began frolicking in the cold brine and explored the deeper depths of his new 2-million-gallon “halfway house” in Oregon.
Aquarium staff wasted no time in working with Keiko on his aerobic reconditioning, mental stimulation, and husbandry procedures—including regular blood sampling to monitor his health. Keiko began eating more and quickly put on pounds. His vigor returned and his cardiovascular health and muscle tone were soon on the rebound. Best of all, Keiko began playing again—his lethargy had lifted like a dark fog and he was now exerting energy of his own volition, without any commands from trainers.
“Within six months, we began to see a profound change in Keiko’s energy level. And in his character in general—it was as though he rediscovered his own personality once he began to feel well,” Beverly Hughes, president of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, told the media. “He is beginning to act like a killer whale.” So far, she added, no one had observed anything that would “knock Keiko out of the running for release back to the wild.”
Keiko was a smash hit among people in Oregon, who came by the thousands to see the famous whale. No longer required to perform, he seemed to love spending his free time staring at the humans—and especially the children—who lined up to look at him through the underwater viewing windows. Keiko had also become a consumer rather than an object of mass entertainment. He liked watching TV shows and movies on a donated television set in the staff office, which had a large picture window visible from his pool. Vets at the aquarium prescribed television to help him maintain mental stimulation after all his adoring fans had gone home for the night. Keiko was interested in videos of other orcas, but his favorite seemed to be Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the only movie he watched in its entirety. He also showed interest in parts of Blazing Saddles and The Lion King, but reportedly turned his back on Free Willy.3
Officials began limiting Keiko’s time in front of the television screen to prevent him from becoming “an aquarium potato,” as the Associated Press put it in an April 1996 article, even though aquarium president Phyllis Bell said the odds of that happening were not great. “He loses interest; he doesn’t just sit there and watch it the whole time,” she said. “He’s not like us.”
Keiko continued to improve. By the end of 1996, the aquarium and the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation put out a joint press release celebrating Keiko’s remarkable recovery in just one year. Not only had he gained a thousand pounds, nearly all of his skin lesions had cleared up.
The year had been a smashing success for the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Attendance blossomed after Keiko arrived: 1.3 million visitors came through the door in 1996, more than double the year before. Clearly Keiko had not lost his magnetism; he was still big business.
By May of 1997, Keiko’s rehabilitation staff began releasing live fish into his tank regularly. At first, Keiko seemed to think he was playing a game of fetch. Instead of eating the fish, he would obediently return it to the trainers, even though that was the exact opposite of what they wanted him to do. Some people, such as Howard Garrett, said Keiko was behaving like any orca in nature would, by trying to share his food with others. Food sharing is a well-documented behavior among most killer whale populations.
Before long, however, Keiko caught and ate his first live fish. Encouraged by that, his team brought in two thousand live herring—the native staple for wild Icelandic orcas—to Keiko’s tank. Some of the herring he ate, some he presented to his trainers, and the rest he simply ignored.
Keiko’s weight continued to increase, and by summer of 1997 he clocked in at 9,620 pounds, an astonishing gain of nineteen hundred pounds (the equivalent of ten or eleven grown men) since arriving in Oregon.4 Naomi was thrilled with his progress and delighted that the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation staff was now beginning discussions about relocating Keiko to a bay pen in the North Atlantic, sometime in 1998.
Foundation members were growing anxious about getting Keiko out of Oregon. They charged that aquarium staff had failed to change the sand in the filter for Keiko’s closed-loop tank. The water was becoming rank and murky; Keiko was swimming in his own waste. By August 1997 he had contracted a respiratory infection and developed various parasites. Fortunately he responded well to treatment. Foundation staff replaced the filters and the tank water cleared up.
But tensions were clearly mounting between the aquarium and the foundation. In September, local media were receiving anonymous communiqués claiming that the aquarium was frantic over Keiko’s health. One source implicated the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation for trying to conceal that Keiko had been sick. But the foundation fired right back, accusing aquarium staff of fencing off and padlocking the water filters to prevent them from being changed. Aquarium officials countered that it was the fault of the foundation, which they alleged had postponed the replacement because of financial constraints.5
Suddenly, things weren’t looking so rosy along the Oregon coast. But the bickering only increased the foundation’s determination to get Keiko back into the ocean soon. The next month, foundation officials announced that Keiko was nearly ready for release, something that alarmed the aquarium. Officials there called for an independent evaluation of the whale to see if he truly was suited for reintroduction.
Before long, supporters of the Keiko release program were accusing aquarium management of trying to prevent Keiko from getting the health clearance necessary to let him ever leave Oregon.
Despite the open warfare—and perhaps because of it—media fascination with the ongoing saga never waned. Keiko became the centerpiece of an important, groundbreaking one-hour special on the captive orca industry that was being produced for the PBS investigative-journalism series Frontline. The special, called “A Whale of a Business,” included interviews with everyone involved in the long, bitter war over orcas in captivity—from SeaWorld’s Brad Andrews on the pro side, to Naomi Rose and others on the far opposite end.
It was hardly a flattering portrait of the billion-dollar industry.
“Frontline examines the money, power, and politics behind the captive marine mammal industry,” PBS announced before the show aired on November 11, 1997. Producer Renata Simone promised to “take a hard look at the industry behind the spectacle.” Viewers, she said, would encounter “a war between activists who fervently believe these animals should be free and corporations like SeaWorld where entertainment, image, and sales are the objective.” Caught in the middle was “a ten-thousand-pound whale named Keiko.”
The show was narrated by reporter Linden MacIntyre. “The consequences of releasing Keiko into the wild could be dire for him, but the prospect of his freedom raises even greater alarms in the billion-dollar industry that brought him here in the first place,” he began. “The marine zoo has become the hottest entertainment phenomenon since Disneyland, assembling the same elements of fantasy and kitsch. Nature, stripped of all that’s wild and strange, becomes almost human in scale, behavior, a
nd personality.”6
A bit later, the host confronted SeaWorld’s Brad Andrews, pressing him to concede that SeaWorld was little more than a “massive entertainment and amusement institution.” Andrews was unfazed and unapologetic. There was nothing to be ashamed of. “Businesses that survive are businesses that make money,” he said, stating the obvious. SeaWorld had no choice but to keep its visitors consistently amused. “You really have to impact that learning process on what they might learn about the environment, the animals, what they didn’t know, but you have to do it in a very fun and entertaining way.”
As Frontline pointed out, most of that fun and entertainment—and profit—was built squarely on the back of Shamu. John Hall, a former research director at SeaWorld, said the company had estimated that seventy cents on every dollar of total revenue was due to the presence of killer whales. The animals would be the driving force behind SeaWorld’s unbridled success heading long into the future. “If you wanted a strong cash flow to continue, you needed a steady supply of killer whales, especially if you’re expanding and building new parks,” Hall said. “You need whales to fill them up.”
Naomi took on the animal welfare issues posed by the whale business. “There’s just no way that a facility can provide for these animals,” she said. They had been stripped of their basic natural behaviors. “To put them into a concrete environment where there’s simply no variety, no texture, no substance, no depth, to the environment, why even use their echolocation? They know where the four walls are.”
The show did not shy away from the feud between the foundation and the Oregon Coast Aquarium. The general impression it left was of a desire, if not an outright effort, on the part of aquarium officials to keep the world-famous whale securely on their premises for his revenue stream.
Keiko had become a marketing phenomenon. “In his two years at the Oregon aquarium, there’s been a booming trade in Keiko products, a variety of consumables limited only by the fertile marketing imagination,” host MacIntyre said.
All that steady cash was alluring, and the aquarium was falling under its spell, Craig McCaw, the billionaire benefactor, complained to MacIntyre. “It is not in the aquarium’s interest for Keiko to be free … there’s a lot of money at stake,” he said flatly. “And we have felt that perhaps the aquarium was not doing everything it could to possibly bring about the release of Keiko to his highest level.”
Phyllis Bell, the aquarium director, hardly went out of her way to dispel viewers of that notion. “Well,” she answered, “it depends on how—if Keiko’s ready to be released or not. We always have supported their goal of releasing Keiko, if it was possible and if that was the best thing for Keiko.”
But then she showed her hand. “So if the best thing is not releasing him, then he’s welcome to stay here.”
The PBS special ended with lingering question marks. Would Keiko ever go free? Should he? And who would continue to pay for this ridiculously high-priced undertaking?
“He may one day return to the wild, but the wild may prove to be a lot more difficult to get to than anybody thought, and a lot more expensive,” MacIntyre said. But that would not be a problem for Keiko, he said, thanks to his “guardian angel, the billionaire Craig McCaw.”
McCaw assured MacIntyre, “If we fall short, I’m sure I’ll be able to find the money to make it happen. This will not be stopped for lack of money.” (No one, least of all McCaw, foresaw the looming high-tech bubble burst that would soon erase enormous swaths of personal fortunes.)
Money questions aside, SeaWorld stood firm on the proposed release of Keiko. “Keiko is not a good candidate,” Dr. Jim McBain, its director of veterinary medicine told Frontline. “He’s been dependent upon humans for his food, his interaction. He’s an animal that’s adapted to living in an oceanarium environment and has done so successfully for many years.” McBain said it made little sense to “try to somehow train this animal to then go and survive in the wild.”
Brad Andrews, meanwhile, insisted that no animal belonging to SeaWorld would ever meet the same fate as Keiko: “We’re not going to release any of the animals in our collection because they have been in our collection for long periods of time. We’re not going to put them at risk where they can die.”
When Naomi watched the program, she wanted to shout at the screen after Andrews spoke. If SeaWorld was truly opposed to putting killer whales “at risk where they can die,” she thought, shaking her head, it would never have condemned them to captivity in the first place.
For now, she knew it was time to get this whale back to Iceland, where he belonged.
25
The Salish Sea
After SeaWorld terminated Jeff Ventre—for kissing the hybrid Taima on her tongue—he ramped up his efforts to finish the premed credits needed to get into graduate school. Jeff not only wanted out of animal show business, he wanted to leave Florida.
The ex-trainer was yearning to get to the Pacific Northwest. The year before he was fired, Astrid van Ginneken had offered Jeff a formal invitation to visit the Center for Whale Research and volunteer for the Orca Survey project, Ken Balcomb’s long-running documentation effort, which had photo-identified every member of the Southern Resident orca community of Puget Sound and the San Juan Islands.
While still at SeaWorld, Jeff had hardly concealed his excitement at the thought of seeing wild killer whales. He boasted to colleagues at work about going to see the free-ranging orcas. It won him few allies in upper management. Jeff could not think of any member of the staff who had actually seen a killer whale in the ocean, except for a few senior officials such as Thad Lacinak, Chuck Tompkins, and SeaWorld Florida president Bill Davis.
After SeaWorld, Jeff moved into a three-bedroom suburban home just north of metro Orlando with John Jett and Mark Simmons. The house was on Peace Pipe Drive, adjacent to thousands of acres of pastures and pine forests waiting to be explored. Jeff, John, and Mark were all back in school. On several occasions, Jeff brought his buddies over to his parents’ lakeside home near Oviedo, and Mark once gave Jeff’s mom an exquisitely detailed pencil drawing he had done of a red-tailed hawk.
That June of 1996 Jeff headed off for adventure in Washington State, where he would spend the summer. In Seattle he was met at the airport by his old friend and colleague Carol Ray, who had quit SeaWorld back in 1990. After she left, Carol had embarked on an exotic adventure across the South Pacific and returned to Florida eight months later without a clue as to what she wanted to do next. She took some graduate classes and discovered a love and talent for linguistics, especially speech and language pathology. Near the end of her graduate program, she secured two clinical internships near Seattle and fell in love with the place and its tremendous outdoor opportunities: rock climbing, mountaineering, mountain biking, snowboarding, and backpacking.
Carol and Jeff spent a few days together catching up, reminiscing, and going out on the town for live music, fresh Pacific seafood, and frosty mugs of local microbrewery beer. The highlight was driving over the North Cascades into central Washington and catching a live concert at the Gorge Amphitheatre. Jeff had always loved the Pacific Northwest, and now he remembered why.
Eventually, Carol drove Jeff to the scenic port town of Anacortes, about two hours north of Seattle, where Washington State ferries departed for the San Juan Islands. It being the beginning of the high summer season, the dock area was packed with cars carrying couples, families, dogs, kayaks, and great expectations for fun and natural beauty in one the prettiest corners of the planet.
The San Juans are an archipelago of three main islands and several smaller ones situated in the far northern stretch of Puget Sound. The remnant of a primordial continent unrelated to North America, the chain is separated from the US mainland and the Cascade Range to the east by Rosario Strait. San Juan is the largest and most populated island, followed by Orcas and Lopez Islands. The names derive from early Spanish explorers who arrived in the area in 1791. Orcas Island, ironically, is not nam
ed for killer whales, but for Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, Second Count of Revillagigedo, Spain.
The islands’ beauty is legendary. San Juan Island is graced with meadows and farmland divided by thick stands of evergreen woods covering a few looming peaks. Protected by coastal mountains on three sides, its climate is drier and milder than that of nearby Seattle. The rocky coastlines are pocketed with dozens of coves and inlets, some with quaint villages clinging to their shores, with fishing and pleasure craft moored in the harbor. It is all reminiscent of Maine, save for the snow-covered peaks such as Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier that rise from the horizon.
The islands were originally home to several Native American peoples belonging to an ethnolinguistic group called the Coast Salish (SAY-lish). The entire area, stretching north to Johnstone Strait and south to Olympia, Washington, is now officially recognized by the United States and Canada as the Salish Sea.
Jeff’s ferry from Anacortes took about two hours, with a stop at Orcas Island, to navigate the sounds and winding channels that led to Friday Harbor, the main settlement on San Juan Island. He was invigorated by the cool Pacific air, the stunning scenery, and the abundance of wildlife: Porpoises, otters, seals, and sea lions populated the waters, while bald eagles and red foxes could be seen amid the trees and fields of the islands. Jeff fell in love with the Salish Sea before the ferry even landed.
From Friday Harbor it was about a twenty-minute drive past goat herds and expensive vacation homes to the northwest corner side of the island, between Smallpox Cove (the European disease wiped out many Salish people) and Smugglers Cove (named for its proximity to Canada and once-unguarded remoteness). There, on about an acre of cliffside property, stood Ken Balcomb’s large but down-home scientific headquarters.
