Bleating Hearts by Mark Hawthorne

Author:Mark Hawthorne [Hawthorne, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78099-850-3
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2013-11-29T05:00:00+00:00

Keiko

The cetacean star of the 1993 film Free Willy, Keiko was for a time the most famous orca in the world. He had been taken from his family in the waters off Iceland in 1979 and sold to the marine park industry, where he spent most of his life performing tricks. The consequences of confinement were writ large on Keiko’s body: his dorsal fin collapsed, he lost weight, and he developed a skin infection. In 1985, Keiko ended up at Reino Aventura, an amusement park in Mexico City, where he was kept in an enclosure designed for dolphins. It was in Mexico that Warner Bros. filmed Free Willy, which focuses on a young boy trying to save an orca, played by Keiko, from captivity. (Keiko did not appear in the two sequels.) In the wake of the movie’s surprise success, life imitated art and advocates managed to free Keiko, whose health was failing, from his tiny tank and transfer him to the Oregon Coast Aquarium, where he was prepared for his return to the wild. Further rehabilitation in his native Iceland taught Keiko to catch his own food and reintegrate with orcas. He put on weight, his dorsal fin became upright, and his skin infection disappeared. In July 2002, Keiko was released but swam straight for Norway, apparently in search of human companionship. He died there of pneumonia on December 12, 2003, at age 27. The debate continues on whether or not Keiko’s release was successful.

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