by David Kirby
Exactly where the floating pen would float was still unclear. Iceland continued to resist the idea of any captive killer whale returning to its waters, so other venues were also being considered, including sites in Norway and the United Kingdom—five thousand miles of North Atlantic coastline had already been scouted.
Plans to push forward continued to be attacked by industry and many members of the scientific community. For one, although Keiko could be commanded to catch a live fish, he wasn’t that eager to forage for himself. Even foundation members were growing disheartened that he might ever make it on his own.
Brad Andrews from SeaWorld was disgusted by the entire spectacle. “I don’t think it’s fair and humane to the animal to try this operation just to make a few people happy,” he complained to the AP. Keiko was not appropriate for release, Andrews said. He had been “imprinted by humans” for too long.
But then, in June 1998 the Free Keiko movement received an unanticipated shot in the arm. The government of Iceland did an about-face on Keiko. The country’s chief veterinary officer traveled to Newport, Oregon, to examine the whale. He declared that medical tests showed no grounds for banning Keiko’s return home. Next, Icelandic prime minister David Oddsson sanctioned the US government for holding a resident of another country against his will. He demanded that Keiko be returned to Icelandic waters by September 19 or Iceland would commence civil action against the government of the United States.1
That month, the foundation announced the location for its floating sea pen: a well-protected cove made from the remnants of a volcanic crater rim in the Westman (Vestmannaeyjar) Islands, about eighty miles southeast of the capital. The site, surrounded by six-hundred-foot volcanic walls on three sides, was called Klettsvik Bay, near the town of Heimaey.
Again SeaWorld blasted the project. Brad Andrews said that schoolchildren around the world had been misled, and “maybe now’s the time to start telling them the truth—that they should find a companion for him and keep him where he’s at.” Keiko was headed for “an ocean pen where the weather conditions are ferocious. It’s cold, it’s miserable, it’s dark. There’s no contact with other whales. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”2
Naomi snorted with derision. “What an utterly stupid statement!” she said to a colleague. “Andrews lives in Florida. Of course he’s going to think that Iceland is miserable and dark. But to killer whales, and to a hell of a lot of Icelanders, it’s home.”
Meanwhile the Alliance of Marine Mammal Parks and Aquariums filed a complaint with NMFS alleging that the Keiko Foundation was about to “unfairly exploit” a loophole in the Marine Mammal Protection Act to send Keiko from the United States to Iceland.
SeaWorld and its allies were not the only ones opposed to the move. Some Icelanders were also trying to keep the whale out of their waters. One infuriated islander threatened to kill Keiko by feeding him poisoned fish. Who sent the threat to local media and why were unclear, though some people speculated the motive was envy. The Westman Islands were chosen over another site, the town of Eskifjördur (near Keiko’s and Tilikum’s capture site), whose residents were hoping for an influx of tourist dollars from the globe-trotting attraction.
In September of 1998, Keiko finally went home. He was flown aboard a US Air Force C-17 cargo plane, paid for by the foundation. It was the only aircraft in the world that could both carry the huge payload and land on a short runway. The eight-hour flight carried Keiko directly from Newport to the Westman Islands, with two in-flight refuelings. The plane suffered a major mishap upon landing and broke a wheel strut, sustaining a million dollars in damage. Neither the crew nor their precious cargo was injured.
As soon as he was lowered into his new pen, Keiko swam clear of the stretcher and instantly dove down into the chilly ocean—the first time he had been in the sea for two decades. He surfaced a full minute later, circled the perimeter, and vocalized with gusto. Though he returned to the edge to greet his human trainers who made the trip with him, Keiko seemed more intrigued by his new home than the humans. Within hours he began vocalizing with a pilot whale that swam into his cove.
The project veterinarian, Dr. Lanny Cornell, was astounded by the changes. He got choked up when talking about it. “As a veterinarian, Keiko’s medical supervisor, and a human being,” Cornell said, struggling to regain composure, “it can’t get any better.”3
That fall, when 135 mph, hurricane-force winds slammed the Westman Islands, Keiko proved naysayers such as Brad Andrews wrong in their predictions that the whale would founder in the dark, tempest-tossed Atlantic. Keiko not only rode out the storm with no problems, he began to spy-hop above the surface, letting his pectoral fins blow high in the air. He also breached from the water to get pelted by the salty spray.
The following spring, the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation partnered with the Jean-Michel Cousteau Institute to form a new group called the Ocean Futures Society. Jean-Michel, the son of Naomi’s idol Jacques Cousteau, said at the time that Keiko was “a locomotive, an engine pulling the education about marine mammals with it.”4 Naomi loved that: It turned SeaWorld’s entire raison d’être on its face. Clearly, keeping killer whales captive was not necessary to inspire and educate the public about the species.
Soon after arrival, Keiko’s trainers began introducing live Atlantic salmon into his pen. He appeared to be eating at least some of the fish because their numbers, and his hunger, declined. He chased smaller fish that entered his pen through the nets. Keiko also began making deeper dives and ever stronger breaches. His posture and body movements began to resemble that of an oceanic whale rather than a trained performer. He spent less time at the surface than he had in Mexico City or Oregon, and he extended his attention to what was going on beyond the mesh of his confines, rather than merely on the people caring for him.
In late 1998, Ocean Futures hired two former SeaWorld trainers as lead consultants on the project: Robin Friday, the former curator and director of animal training in Orlando, and Mark Simmons, the close friend and former roommate of Jeff Ventre and John Jett. The two men quickly declared that efforts to retrain Keiko in ocean-survival skills were failing. Keiko was still far too attached to humans to fend for himself in the wild, they said. Meanwhile, Ocean Futures staff was venturing out into nearby waters to observe killer whales in the area in the initial stages of a planned photo-ID study of local populations.
When Jeff Ventre got word that Friday and Simmons had flown to Iceland to work on the Keiko project, he didn’t know what to think. It sounded like an interesting place to be and, on the surface, a noble mission. He and Mark were still close. Was Mark really there to “free Willy”? Jeff e-mailed his friend Howard Garrett to alert him to the new development. Howie had flown to Iceland in October of 1998 to meet with the Ocean Futures staff and check on Keiko’s progress on behalf of the Center for Whale Research. Now, he was spending two years in Miami, still trying to win the release of Lolita (Tokitae) from the Miami Seaquarium.
Howie, who had come to know Naomi through their mutual work on captivity issues, e-mailed her at HSUS. “I have some inside information about the new managers of the project,” he wrote. “I can’t give you my sources, but their names are Robin Friday and Mark Simmons and they are 100% veterans of SeaWorld. They consider the entire Keiko project a misbegotten movie-inspired fantasy by Craig McCaw and an amateur attempt to do the impossible.”
Robin and Mark were “certain that they learned all that is worth knowing at SeaWorld,” Howie said. They have had “zero experience in studying wild orcas; and they have no doubt accepted the disdain and denial of the results of long-term [longevity] studies. This is the belief system that is now in control, and JMC [Jean-Michel Cousteau] apparently has complete faith in these individuals.
“So in effect, SeaWorld has taken over the Keiko project. I don’t think they take direct orders from Brad Andrews, but they are his apostles. Under his influence, Keiko will never see the open ocean unless he breaks out. The recent announcem
ent by Ocean Futures Society that Keiko’s chances of ever going free are 50/50 confirms my suspicions. They are trying to diminish hopes. To me this is a betrayal of the promise made to the children and the public, and to Keiko.”
Howie complained that the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation had tried to exclude experts on wild orcas, including Naomi, Ken Balcomb, Erich Hoyt, Paul Spong, and John Hall. Instead, they had relied on the opinions of “marine park employees.” But now Keiko was on the doorstep of freedom. It was imperative that experts on killer whales in the wild be allowed to participate in the next and final steps of his rehabilitation, Howie argued. “My hope is that enough of us can come together in the near future to dispel some of the myths promoted, however unwittingly, by Friday and Simmons and the entire industry, and convince JMC to announce that, barring some unforeseen setback, Keiko WILL be allowed to venture out in the open ocean, radio tagged and monitored of course and trained to come to a signal if he is hungry, etc., but that he will be given a chance to join up with wild conspecifics.”
Naomi commiserated with Howard but wrote back to tell him that neither she nor HSUS had any control over the situation. David Phillips at Earth Island Institute, which helped form the Keiko charity, had never been very responsive to HSUS suggestions (despite their million-dollar donation), and HSUS had no direct line of communication to Cousteau. Naomi passed the information up the chain of command, but she could do little else.
Besides, her plate was full. Over the past four or five years, Naomi had been busily engaged in an exhausting number of other marine mammal topics that had nothing to do with killer whales—and many of them had nothing to do with captivity.
For one, exposure to midfrequency sonar has been responsible for several stranding incidents since its introduction in the mid-twentieth century. Many beached animals have been found with signs of physical damage, including hemorrhage of the brain, ears, and other tissues, and air bubbles in their organs—not unlike the bends, an illness afflicting scuba divers who rise from deep water too swiftly.5 Sonar and other human-made noise, such as shipping, air guns, pile-driving, and navy detonation of bombs and live fire during exercises, can disrupt foraging and communication among cetaceans, reducing their ability to navigate and locate prey through echolocation.6 Naomi was working with environmental groups on improving the regulation of human-caused marine noise and minimizing its impacts on marine life.
Other issues and species that filled Naomi’s animal-protection portfolio included the spread of swim-with-the-dolphin programs, especially in the Caribbean; consumption of endangered salmon by seals and sea lions; dolphin-safe tuna laws; sea otters and their recovery in California; manatees and their protection under the Endangered Species Act; polar bear sport hunting and conservation; commercial whale-watching regulation; and pushing for a ban on the gruesome and antiquated global whaling trade once and for all.
By the end of the decade, Naomi had become a recognized expert on many of these issues, earning her an invitation to participate on the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 2000. The year before, in May of 1999, the Scientific Committee had its annual working meeting—where much of the world’s whale science gets done—in the Caribbean jewel of Grenada. Naomi flew down to the island as an observer, meaning she couldn’t actively participate. She was expected to sit in the back and keep quiet, something that never came naturally to her. She was literally sitting on her hands during much of the twelve-day meeting.
Naomi enjoyed the experience immensely, and not only for its lively scientific discussions and gorgeous tropical venue. A friend at the meeting, Mark P. Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, introduced her to a young cetologist from England named Christien Parsons. Chris had floppy brown hair, a dark goatee, and wire-frame glasses, dressed in sandals, T-shirt, and khaki shorts—and sported a friendly smile.
Chris, almost eight years younger than Naomi, grew up in a working-class family in southwest England. He graduated from Oxford in 1991 with a degree in zoology, then earned his PhD at Hong Kong University, where he studied the biology of dolphins in the local waters. After that, Chris spent a year teaching at a community college in southwest England. He then went to Scotland to take a job as scientific director for an environmental group called the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust. Chris was now a member of the UK delegation to the Scientific Committee, and this was his first meeting as well.
Naomi delighted in Chris’s humor, accent, and dedication to whales. She also thought he was cute. But Chris had a girlfriend back home. So, despite the romantic tropical venue, he and Naomi became friends but nothing more.
The following year, in May of 2000, Naomi got approval from HSUS to travel to Iceland for a site visit with Keiko. She flew from Dulles Airport to Reykjavík, then caught a local bus to the ferry terminal for a nausea-inducing boat ride to the Westman Islands. She arrived at Heimaey on Monday afternoon, May 15, and met with most of the Ocean Futures crew, including project director Jeff Foster and head behaviorist Robin Friday. Naomi was able to observe Keiko from a site overlooking the sea pen. She went there at least twice a day and spent about ten hours total watching Keiko. She also went out to the pen itself twice during her visit.
Despite Howie’s warning about Robin Friday and Mark Simmons, Naomi reported back to HSUS headquarters that she was “very impressed” with the operation. “It is very high end (that is, its infrastructure is excellent),” she wrote in a memo. “The crew seems to have good morale and seems positive about releasing Keiko (given the captivity industry background of most of them, this is a significant positive sign). If anyone can successfully release and track this whale, it is this operation. They are not doing anything by halves here.”
Naomi was also pleased with Keiko’s health. True, he still showed some negative behaviors, such as focusing on boats when he wasn’t supposed to, approaching people on the Ocean Futures vessels or the sea pen with his head up and mouth open, demanding food, “but only infrequently,” Naomi said.
Privately, however, Naomi did worry about the way that some Ocean Futures staff interacted with the whale, speaking to him out loud in baby talk, and making eye contact and physical contact with him when it wasn’t necessary. To wean him from humans, they needed to show Keiko more tough love.
By this time, Keiko was being allowed to swim out of his pen and move about freely in the cove that housed it. A net stretched across the mouth of the inlet prevented him from leaving the area entirely.
“For the most part, he is behaving fairly independently, keeping himself entertained by teasing birds and swimming around the bay, being stimulated by his daily boat desensitization and boat follow sessions, eating live fish about 20% of the time, and showing good health,” Naomi wrote back to Gaithersburg. “I believe he is as ready to be released as he ever will be. The Ocean Futures directors apparently concur.”
The staff was preparing to lead Keiko for his first “controlled walk” (allowing him to swim just beyond the net barrier blocking off the bay to get him sensitized to going through the gate), and the Heimaey harbor authority had given permission for that next step. “They hope to take him for a longer ‘walk’ out of the harbor and into the channel between the island and the mainland by Friday, when there will be a dynamite blast set off by the harbor authority to prepare for a pier extension,” Naomi wrote.
During that summer, the Ocean Futures team received a permit from the Icelandic government to begin taking Keiko out on “walks” farther into the open ocean, followed by a tracking boat equipped with an underwater recall system and equipment to pick up the radio signal from the whale’s tag attached to his dorsal fin. Keiko made forty sorties that season outside his cove and into the North Atlantic, covering a total of six hundred miles during those trips. On fifteen of his excursions Keiko and his party encountered wild killer whales. Keiko showed interest in them. The wild whales tolerated his presence, but didn’t express much desire to be with the lone strang
er, save for a few curious juveniles who swam over to check him out, before being recalled by their mothers.
At the close of summer 2000, the native Icelandic orca pods moved out of the area to follow the herring. Keiko still exhibited no desire to join the wild population. Once the weather turned foul, he was confined to his sea pen until spring 2001, at the whopping cost of $300,000 a month for the food, support staff, and research vessels.7
The following summer, Keiko completed a large number of successful ocean walks once again, including several interactions with Icelandic orca pods, but nothing lasting more than a few moments. On some days, Keiko would swim off by himself, away from the other orcas and the herring they were chasing. Robin Friday was gloomy about Keiko’s future. Keiko had failed to pass two key milestones needed for his release: He had not been seen interacting with any one pod consistently. Even worse, he had never been observed foraging on his own in the open water.
This was going to take more time.
The summer of 2001 sent Naomi back across the Atlantic to attend the IWC Scientific Committee meeting once again, this time in the somewhat shabby London suburb of Hammersmith, England. Chris Parsons was there and Naomi was surprised by how happy she was to see him. They had not communicated since meeting in Grenada two years earlier. Chris gave Naomi a warm hug.
“My,” he said to her, “your hair smells nice.”
Naomi felt a wave of attraction. For the first time, she wondered if something might come of this. From that day on, the two of them spent a good deal of time together, including every meal. They went off on lunches alone and sat together in all the meeting sessions, often laughing—too much, some of the others told them—at their own silly jokes. They discovered a mutual love for single-malt Scotch and geeky sci-fi movies and TV shows. Both were vegetarians. Naomi gave up all meat, poultry, and fish after a few years at HSUS; Chris had been a vegetarian since he was four.
