Culture Re-View: Remembering Keiko the Orca, 20 years after his death

The story of Keiko is a fascinating and tragic one.

The male orca was born in the waters off Iceland in 1977 and was nearly two years old when he was captured by fishermen.

He was taken in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland in 1979 and was held in an aquarium in Iceland before being sold to Marineland in Niagara Falls, Canada. Three years later, at age five, he was sold to Reino Adventura, an amusement park in Mexico City.

His tank was tiny, and filled with tap water mixed with salt rather than real seawater. His health deteriorated during his fourteen years of confinement in Mexico.

Keiko was 19 years old when he was finally rescued.

Warner Bros. began filming the movie Free Willy – the story of a boy who helps free a captured orca from captivity – and the film became a surprise hit when released in July 1993.

At the end of the film, viewers were given a toll-free phone number to call to help save whales from commercial whaling, but over 300,000 people called asking for Keiko’s release instead.

In 1996, Warner Bros. and the International Marine Mammal Project collaborated to return Keiko to the wild.

In his large, new aquarium in Oregon, Keiko experienced natural seawater, pumped from the ocean, for the first time in 14 years.

After years of preparing Keiko for reintegration, Keiko was flown to Iceland in 1998 and in 2002, became the first captive orca to be fully released back into the ocean.

On 12 December 2003, the Free Willy/Keiko Foundation and the Humane Society of the United States reported that Keiko, the orca whale, died in the Taknes Fjord, Norway.

He died of acute pneumonia at the age of 27.

Wild male orcas are believed to live from 35 to 50 years or even longer, with females are believed to reach 90 years or more. At the time, Keiko was the second oldest male orca who’d ever lived in long-term captivity.

Keiko is the only long-term captive orca who has ever been given the chance to return to his native waters.

Some critics say Keiko’s release back to the wild was a failure, even if many experts disagree.

Indeed, throughout Keiko’s journey, controversy surrounded whether it was ethical to release him back to the wild, given his life in captivity.

After Keiko’s death, the NY Times called the project “a bust,” and many critics said it was a failure because Keiko never reintegrated with wild whales.

However, David Phillips, Executive Director of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, stated at the time that the organisation “took the hardest candidate and took him from near death in Mexico to swimming with wild whales in Norway.”

“Keiko had five years with the sights and sounds of natural seawater. I think it was a great success in terms of Keiko, his well-being, and the whole world that wanted to do the right thing.”

20 years since his death, Keiko remains one of the most famous marine mammals in the world.

Willy, we still miss you.