Danish scientist: Keiko the killer whale never really became free
The attempt to return Keiko the killer whale to the wild was doomed to failure. Keiko achieved fame in the Free Willy series of movies. He had been too long in captivity away from wild whales, and was too closely tied to humans. This is the conclusion of Danish biologist Malene Simon and the co-authors of a new scientific article published in Marine Mammal Science.
Malene Simon lives in Greenland and is attached to the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources. She is a PhD student at the Department of Biological Sciences, Aarhus University, and followed Keiko during the last attempt to release him. Keiko was approximately 26 years old when he died in a Norwegian fjord in 2003, after plans to set him free among wild killer whales had been abandoned.
Malene Simon’s studies very clearly show that, even though we humans feel fascinated by the thought of releasing wild animals that have been in captivity for many years, this does not necessarily lead to a happy ending for the animal. “We feel that the best situation for Keiko was the open enclosure in Norway, where he had plenty of room and was fed and trained by the people he was attached to,” says Malene Simon. The report contradicts the statements made by the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation in 2003, where Keiko’s release was described as a success.
The project to set Keiko free was launched following enormous public pressure in the wake of the Free Willy movies in the 1990s, and the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation received substantial funds from all over the world in support of the project. Keiko was captured off the coast of Iceland in 1979 when he was about two years old, and he subsequently spent many years in a dolphinarium in Mexico in the company of dolphins, but with no contact with his fellow species. In 1993, he became famous all over the world in the role of Willy, in the first of three movies about a killer whale that is set free. Towards the end of the 1990s, a large-scale programme was initiated to prepare Keiko for a life in the wild. He was moved to Iceland via the USA, and trained to follow a boat out on the open sea. In 2002, while Malene Simon was working on her dissertation on wild killer whales, she helped to fit radio transmitters and measuring equipment on Keiko and to process the data collected. Keiko spent almost a month among wild killer whales in Iceland. It turned out that, even though Keiko came close to the pod of wild killer whales, he lacked the social behaviour necessary to become part of the pod, and he stayed in the background. In august 2002, Keiko swam from Iceland to Norway, and scientists tracked him via satellite. When he got to the Norwegian coast, he once more turned to human company and the attempts to release him were finally abandoned. He spent the rest of his life in a Norwegian fjord, where he was fed and looked after.
The fact that the Keiko project failed does not necessarily mean that it is impossible to set a whale free after being in captivity. “If Keiko had been younger and used to being with other killer whales instead of being so attached to humans, giving him a new life in the wild would possibly have succeeded,” says Malene Simon. In her opinion, the most important conclusion in the report, however, is that for this type of project to be in the best interest of the animal, funds must be allocated to monitoring it once it has been set free, to enable intervention if any difficulties arise. “Without the data we received via Keiko’s monitoring equipment, we would not have known that he did not follow a normal pattern of behaviour when diving for food,” she says. “If it is impossible to allocate sufficient resources for monitoring, a better alternative can be to let the animals remain in captivity.”
The project to release Keiko cost enormous sums of money, and was mainly financed by donations from different organisations and the public. In connection with the project, Malene Simon had equipment for her own research project at her disposal, and some of the money was thus used for the benefit of the wild killer whales.
Malene Simon in company with Keiko the killer whale. (Photo: F. Ugarte)
Photo above right: Keiko and the tracking boat. (Photo: F. Ugarte)
More information
Malene Juul Simon, PhD student
Can be contacted in Denmark up to and including 7 May, and subsequently in Greenland.
Greenland:
Greenland Institute of Natural Resources
P. O. Box 570, Kivioq 2, 3900 Nuuk
Tel. +299 361250
E-mail MaSi@natur.gl
Denmark:
Department of Biological Sciences, Aarhus University
Zoophysiology
C. F. Møllers Allé
Building 1131
8000 Aarhus C
Tel. +45 3091 5592
Website http://www.biology.au.dk/malene.simon.cv.da
Article in Marine Mammal Science http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122304928/abstract