[00:07.47]On March Third, Keiko the whale pushed open a door and swam out of his floating cage.
[00:15.07]In doing so, he gained the most freedom he has known since he was a baby.
[00:21.11]He can now move around in all of Klettsvik Bay, in the Westman Islands off Iceland.
[00:28.16]The Atlantic Ocean bay is the size of about twenty-two soccer,football fields.
[00:35.50]It has land on three sides and the open ocean on the fourth.
[00:40.36]Barriers keep Keiko from going into the ocean.
[00:44.43]But the bay gives him far more space than his last home, which was a floating holding pen.
[00:51.54]Keiko's new world has a natural shoreline and natural bottom with rocks.
[00:57.57]Other sea creatures live in the bay.
[01:00.55]The release of Keiko into Klettsvik Bay is part of the first attempt ever
[01:06.66]to return a killer whale to the wild after years in captivity.
[01:12.15]His owner, the Ocean Futures Society,wants to increase scientific knowledge of the social activities of Orc whales.
[01:21.97]Orcs are the black and white mammals sometimes called killer whales.
[01:28.66]But there is no evidence that they have attacked humans.
[01:32.32]They probably got their name because they are among the best hunters in the oceans.
[01:38.01]Keiko brought pleasure to many people when he played Willy the whale in the 1993 movie, "Free Willy. "
[01:47.28]He also appeared in a second movie about Willy.
[01:51.57]Keiko became famous.
[01:53.74]But he was living in bad conditions in an amusement park in Mexico.
[01:59.35]His health was poor.
[02:01.73]Some experts said he would never recover enough to live in the cold ocean waters where Orcs normally swim.
[02:10.19]It took years, but Keiko has proved those experts wrong.
[02:15.24]Keiko had human help in returning to his home waters.
[02:21.40]People from all over the world made it possible for Keiko to be released into the Atlantic Ocean bay.
[02:30.23]The organization, Ocean Futures Society, is training him to survive total freedom in the ocean.
[02:38.35]The society was formed last year.
[02:42.25]It joined a Keiko support group, the Free Willy Foundation, with the Jean-Michel Costeau Institute.
[02:50.19]Jean-Michel Costeau is a leading environmentalist and ocean expert.
[02:55.99]The new organization was established to protect the oceans and the creatures who live there.
[03:03.20]Keiko the Orc probably started life very near the place where he is today.
[03:09.62]He was born in about 1978 in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland.
[03:16.60]While still a baby he was captured in fishermen's equipment.
[03:21.25]He was taken to an aquarium in Iceland so people could see him.
[03:26.65]At age four or five he began training as a performing whale.
[03:31.83]He did tricks for the public at a park in Ontario, Canada.
[03:37.05]There he developed skin problems caused by a virus. The sores on his skin remained for years.
[03:45.57]The Canadian park sold Keiko to an amusement park in Mexico City in 1985.
[03:53.38]There his keepers would throw playthings at the whale which he would return to them.
[04:00.30]He ate dead fish provided by his keepers.
[04:03.96]Representatives of Warner Brothers film studios saw Keiko perform.
[04:11.43]They chose him to appear as Willy in "Free Willy."
[04:16.34]The story is about a young boy who saves an Orca whale from a sad life in an amusement park.
[04:23.68]The public loved the movie.
[04:26.34]Keiko became well known.
[04:29.01]Yet the actor whale was not living a good life.
[04:32.85]He was extremely thin.
[04:35.28]The water in his container pool in Mexico was not seawater.
[04:41.00]It was too warm for an Orc, and it did not cover his skin. His sores were getting worse.
[04:48.81]His teeth were broken from biting the edges of his pool.
[04:52.88]He acted sad.
[04:55.24]Luckily, a story in a magazine told the public about Keiko's living conditions.
[05:03.07]Warner .Brothers and an American businessman gave 4,000,000 dollars to establish the Free Willy Foundation.
[05:11.93]Its goal was to return Keiko to the sea.
[05:15.64]An animal protection group, the Humane Society of the United States, also gave a million dollars.
[05:23.53]A second film about Willy was produced as a video.
[05:28.70]Each video contained a request to send money to move Keiko to a better home.
[05:36.22]Children and adults from all over the world answered the appeals.
[05:41.68]The Mexican amusement park said it would give Keiko to the people wanting to help him.
[05:48.73]By 1996, there was enough money to move the whale to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.
[05:56.60]The special zoo for creatures that live in the water is on the Pacific Ocean in the northwest United States.
[06:05.04]Keiko now lived in a pool of ocean water.
[06:10.29]It was built especially for him. Many animal doctors worked to improve his health.
[06:17.42]Keiko gained more than one-half a ton during his first year in Oregon. "
[06:23.27]By the next year live fish were placed in his pool.
[06:27.89]The goal was to help Keiko learn to catch and eat live fish, like a normal Orc.
[06:35.83]His skin sores improved.
[06:38.08]Finally, they disappeared.
[06:40.67]After eighteen months in Oregon, Keiko had gained more than a ton.
[06:47.04]He had learned to eat live fish.
[06:49.94]The Free Willy Foundation decided he was ready for a return to the icy ocean where he was born.
[06:58.17]The next step for Keiko was the move to Iceland. |