Author: Captured killer whale doomed by misguided rescuers

ATLANTA – Controversy still surrounds the fate of the killer whale Keiko, who was the star of the feel-good 1993 movie “Free Willy.”

That movie climaxed with a fairy-tale leap over a jetty, as Willy escaped into the wide ocean and swam off into the sunset.

When it was revealed that the real Willy actually lived in a cramped, substandard Mexican aquarium, children broke open their piggy banks to help fund a $20 million effort to free Keiko and return him to the wild.

But the whale’s release in 2002 was a disaster, according to a new book, “Killing Keiko: The True Story of Free Willy’s Return to the Wild,” by Mark Simmons.

Simmons, a former Sea World trainer, was the technical adviser and trainer of Keiko for “Free Willy,” and led the animal behavior team in Iceland that worked toward Keiko’s freedom. He walked the 5-ton orca through months of exercise and behavioral management in a bay pen in the North Atlantic, overseeing a regimen intended to prepare Keiko for life in the open ocean.

Simmons said the operation was hijacked by organizations seeking a “Hollywood ending.” Simmons said he and his partner, Robin Friday, separated from the project in protest. The Humane Society of the United States and the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation oversaw the operation, and for them “it was release at all cost,” Simmons said in a recent interview. “The decision was never made in the best interest of Keiko.”

As a result, a frightened, lonely whale was sentenced to hunger, dehydration and death, he writes.

After his release, Keiko made his way from Iceland to the fjords of Norway, where he sought out human companions and where children could be seen swimming with him and climbing on his back. He never joined other orcas, but lived under human care in Taknes Bay until his death of pneumonia on Dec. 12, 2003.

Keiko was medically fragile from the start, Simmons said. The whale never demonstrated that he could navigate or that he could catch fish, and he never learned to prefer the company of whales.

‘’He never spent more than 20 seconds at any given time with a pod of wild whales before he would depart in one random direction or another,” he said.

This was an insurmountable problem for a whale who was kidnapped as a child and whose chief company was humans. Greg Bossart, chief veterinarian at the Georgia Aquarium, said that when he first met Keiko in Mexico City, “I remember him putting his head in my lap and wanting his tongue scratched. That was the first red flag.”

This whale, deeply attached to humans, is probably not a good candidate for a life in the wild, Bossart thought at the time.

A differing view is offered by David Phillips, director of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, who claimed Simmons was fired from the Keiko project because of conflict with the head veterinarian. (Simmons strenuously denies being fired.)

Phillips said Keiko came a “humongous” distance from his concrete pen in Mexico City to the waters of the North Atlantic, which counts as a “fantastic success.”

‘’Did he make it into his home pod and swim off into the sunset? Of course, he was not able to do that,” Phillips said. But Keiko was able to “live out his life in Norway.”

Phillips also directs the Earth Island Institute, which considers SeaWorld and other aquariums (including the Georgia Aquarium) part of the “marine mammal exploitation business.”

Such groups have exerted pressure on aquariums to release cetaceans. That pressure increased last year with the production of “Blackfish,” a film that examined the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau while handling killer whale Tillikum.

The Georgia Aquarium and its collection of beluga whales are also subject to that pressure. “Blackfish” fans and others criticized the aquarium’s application last year to import an additional 18 belugas into the country. That application was turned down by the National Marine Fisheries Service; the aquarium filed a legal complaint seeking a reversal.

Simmons and Bossart both have managed the release of animals into the wild, and it is a complex process, they said. Orcas, in particular, are social animals, and for survival must join a group.

The introduction should be a positive experience for both the newcomer and the wild whales he might join, but because of misguided efforts by those in charge of Keiko’s release, the whale’s first contact with other orcas was traumatic, Simmons writes in his book. Keiko was introduced to a pod ruled by an aggressive, larger male. The wild whales also had been harassed by Free Willy-Keiko Foundation researchers using cross bow-style biopsy devices to harvest DNA material, the book says.

‘’That was a setback almost more than his rehabilitation could possibly handle,” Simmons said. “Imagine the very first time you step in an airplane you’re in a crash.”

Simmons said “it’s no secret” that he’s in favor of well-run zoos and aquariums, but he said the most important goal he hopes to achieve with the book is to encourage animal rights activists and those who work with captive animals to stop fighting and begin cooperating for the welfare of all animals – in the wild, and in human care.