 Keiko Makes Another Friend
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Aug. 22, 2003 — Keiko, the killer whale star of the "Free Willy" movies, refuses to return to the wild and will likely spend a second winter in a Norwegian fjord near his handlers despite a five-year re-adaptation project, they said Thursday.
Keiko, who settled in Taknes Fjord in western Norway in November after his release from Iceland last year, will be dependent on his handlers for at least another seven months.
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"The next good opportunity (for Keiko to return to the wild) will be at the end of February, beginning of March when the herring comes closer to the Norwegian coast to spawn," one of his handlers, Thorbjoerg Valdis Kristjansdottir, told AFP.
The orca could then choose to join the pods of killer whales that normally feed on the herring.
Efforts to get Keiko to follow the herring and link up with the whales earlier this year foundered when the herring failed to come close enough to the coast for his handlers to lead him to them.
"Let's not forget that Keiko has spent over 20 years of his life in captivity and it's a long and gradual process. You don't run before you walk, you don't walk before you crawl," Dane Richards, another handler, said.
"We don't have a deadline. We present him with opportunities and it's up to him to seize the good one," he added.
Keiko, 26, spent 22 years in captivity, mostly in water theme parks and starring in the "Free Willy" movies. In 1998 he was transferred from the United States to Iceland to begin a $20 million program aimed at returning him to the wild.
When he was released in Iceland, he swam 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) and settled in a fjord in Norway — paradoxically the only country in the world that defies an international ban on commercial whaling, though only minke whales are harpooned.
Keiko has remained largely dependent on his team of "guardian angels" who follow his every move in the wild and often feed him the 40 to 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of fish that he requires each day.
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