Free Keiko!

By Dave Fox

In case there was any doubt in your mind that humans are stupid, I have new proof. Keiko the Whale told me.

Keiko starred in the 1993 hit family movie, "Free Willy" — a tear-jerker about a whale who's taken into captivity and trained to perform. The movie's basic message is: Taking whales into captivity and training them to perform is bad. In order to present this important message, the movie's producers… ummm… took Keiko into captivity and trained him to perform.

Afterward they sent him to live in an aquarium.

In fairness to the producers, they did rescue Keiko from a worse situation. He had been suffering at a theme park in Mexico where he was not properly cared for. He had bad skin and a limp dorsal fin. The producers moved Keiko to Oregon, where they started him on a rigorous rehabilitation program consisting of a better diet and daily showings of "Richard Simmons Sweatin' to the Oldies for Orcas."

During his time as a movie star, Keiko became domesticated. Perhaps even spoiled. He liked munching fish out of the hands of stupid humans. We were his servants. Keiko just had to swim around and spout water and do the occasional Cute Whale Trick, and voila! An all-you-can-eat fish buffet arrived in his tank every day.

Heimaey, Iceland: Not-so-natural surroundings if you've been raised in an aquarium.

Then a couple of years ago, some environmentalists decided Keiko should be liberated from his human captors. These Whale Experts decided Keiko, who had spent nearly all of his life socializing with humans, needed to be with his own kind. They wanted to him to go live with other whales, so they gave him a plane ticket to Iceland. Yes — in order to give Keiko a normal whale life, they put him on an airplane.

They airlifted Keiko to Heimaey, an island off of Iceland's south coast. Then, these Experts, who had spent years training Keiko to interact with humans, tried to train him to stop interacting with humans.

Last summer, they tried to set Keiko loose, but it didn't go too well. Keiko has been around humans his whole life. We're stupid but he likes us.

Every day for weeks, a fishing boat would lure Keiko out toward pods of other whales and hope Keiko would frolic with them. Keiko was happy to go for a swim, but at the end of the day, he always followed the boat back to shore. The people on the boat fed Keiko. The other whales weren't sharing.

So the Experts started ignoring Keiko. They stopped petting and talking to him. They wanted Keiko to go away. Finally Keiko, feeling jilted, took the hint and sulked out to sea.

The Experts were pleased with themselves. Keiko was free!

But at this point in Keiko's life, he has no desire to hang out with other whales. As far as Keiko's concerned, he's one of us. So he went for a big swim in search of friendlier people, and showed up last week in western Norway. He quickly made new human friends. He was still doing Cute Whale Tricks and eating out of people's hands. Parents even let their children swim with him. Keiko was happy.

The Experts, however, were not happy. They offered statistics to explain why we must stay away from Keiko: Male Orcas can live up to 60 years in the wild, and only half that time in captivity. Keiko is around 25 now. You can do the math.

I pondered these numbers and thought maybe the Experts were right — until a Norwegian environmentalist named Nils Øien, who swears he really honestly does have Keiko's best interests in mind, came up with this brilliant idea to help Keiko: Let's kill him.

Mr. Øien argued that we have confused Keiko by sending him out to sea. Rather than taking him back to his adopted home, where he could live out a short but happy life, Mr. Øien suggested Keiko will be happier if we harpoon him. I find it suspicious that Mr. Øien comes from one of the only countries in the world where it's legal to eat whales.

I have an alternate suggestion. Keiko is in good health, and happy among his new people friends. Instead of killing Keiko, let's feed Mr. Øien to him. Mr. Øien advocates euthanasia for confused animals, and if you ask me, Mr. Øien is a very confused animal himself.

When Keiko's done munching on Mr. Øien, I propose we fly Keiko back to Oregon and let him live out his irreversibly shortened life where he'll be happy — with his stupid human friends.