[00:06.77]Nylon material was placed under the Orc's body for the trip.
[00:12.56]Holes had been cut for his nose, tail and fins.
[00:17.45]A big mechanical arm lifted him into a special container filled with cold seawater.
[00:24.97]This travel box measured eight-and.one-half-meters.
[00:29.49]A truck carried Keiko and his box to a nearby airport.
[00:34.43]From there, an American Air Force plane flew him to Iceland.
[00:39.86]Until earlier this month, Keiko lived in the floating cage in Klettsvik Bay.
[00:46.58]Animal experts watched him closely as he learned skills he would need to live free in the ocean.
[00:54.36]Keiko still needs to develop more Orc skills.
[01:01.68]For example, the bay is full of fish.
[01:05.18]Keiko hunts and kills fish, as he should.
[01:09.51]But he still is providing himself with only about half the food he needs to support his five-ton body.
[01:17.82]Humans give him the rest of his food.
[01:20.69]And sometimes he acts as though he were still performing tricks for the public in an amusement park:
[01:27.64]He brings fish that he has killed to his human keepers.
[01:32.13]Some experts say Keiko never can live complete free in the ocean.
[01:39.63]They say he is too old to learn all he needs to know.
[01:45.06]One official of a sea-park organization says that putting Keiko in the open ocean would be "a death sentence."
[01:53.82]But the president of the Ocean Futures Society says
[01:58.31]the whale has been able to learn and do everything his keepers have asked.
[02:03.90]Jean-Michel Cousteau says Keiko could be released into the open ocean later this year.
[02:11.68]Mister Cousteau also says this will happen only if Keiko continues to improve his skills
[02:19.39]and other conditions seem right.
[02:22.55]Ocean Futures will continue to watch over Keiko--- even if he is never able to leave the bay.
[02:31.64]He is living in Ocean water with other ocean creatures.
[02:36.29]So even if the barriers remain around the bay,
[02:40.37]Keiko is experiencing the most normal Orc life he has known in twenty years.
[02:46.32]Activists in several parts of the United States are working to free other Orcs.
[02:46.39]For example, some activists demonstrated about ten months ago at a sea park in the southern city of Miami, Florida.
[02:55.90]They were demanding that an Orc named Lolita stop performing in the park.
[03:01.91]They urged that she be returned to life in the sea, just, as Keiko has been.
[03:07.84]The Sea Park has refused to let Lolita return to the ocean.
[03:13.09]Some animal experts support the presence of Orcs in parks, if they are well treated.
[03:21.58]They say the animals' needs are provided for and their health guarded.
[03:20.58]They say the whales do not suffer the dangers of living in the ocean.
[03:25.91]And the Orcs are happy in their relations with human beings.
[03:30.25]But animal rights activists point to the fact that Orcs can swim as many as one hundred kilometers a day. |