Jonah is the Whale (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine August 2001

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Jonah is the Whale (Cont.)


	Foster inspects a satellite tag on Keiko's dorsal fin

SINCE ORCAS STAY with their families for the bulk of their lives, Keiko's best chance of a successful return to the wild might be to hook up with his kin. That's what happens in Free Willy 2, anyway, in which our hero rejoins the Pacific family pod that scientists have dubbed "J." I figure flesh-and-bones Keiko is entitled to the same prodigal-son welcome home that celluloid Willy got. But the helicopter and several boats now looking for wild playmates for Keiko in the North Atlantic aren't focused on a family reunion.

"We've never set finding Keiko's family as a research goal. We've taken 11 genetic samples and dozens of photo IDs of killer whales, and we're looking for similarities," says Vinick. "But to go to the level of specificity of finding his family would be very difficult. You'd need a huge team and more resources, and our team is dedicated to Keiko."

Actually, according to wild-whale specialists, locating Keiko's family pod would be easy and cost-effective, and would dramatically increase the chances of the orca's permanent return to nature. After the $7.3 million cost of Keiko's digs at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the $1.3 million move to Iceland and the 35 months the whale has spent in his pen in Heimaey, finding his family looks relatively quick and cheap. Balcomb, director of the Center for Whale Research and pioneer observer of "J" pod, estimates that it would take four grad students on stipends 30 days during herring season to locate Keiko's sibs.

"I'm confident we could find his family. The whale population around Heimaey is 600 whales. I've cataloged 30 whales in Iceland in one night. You could identify the entire whale population in one herring season and find Keiko's family pod," Balcomb postulates. "He might not recognize his own family, but his mom might look at him and wonder. There would be some kind of connection. We've seen it with other large mammals, like elephants that have been returned to the wild and to their families after having been snatched away as infants."

In many ways, this summer is Keiko's last best chance to make it back to nature. At the end of March, the town's mayor signed a deal with a Norwegian salmon farm to take over Keiko's bay next year, and Icelandic officials say the whale will have to move this fall. Vinick acknowledges that the group is looking for new homes for Keiko in case he's not free by September. They are committed to caring for the orca for the rest of his life.

Meanwhile, as per an Icelandic government-approved plan, Keiko is sporting a tracking-device on his dorsal fin. If he's within 20 miles of the control boat, a VHF transmitter allows a boat to follow him and close in on his exact location in real time. If he surfaces, a polar orbiting satellite records his location so his complete path can be charted later. The ostensible reason for the tag is to monitor Keiko's condition and whereabouts and, should he go free, to allow for intervention if he gets into trouble. Which is to say, it enables further human meddling.

"Ideally, we want him to be tagged forever, because he's become an ambassador of his species," Vinick notes. "He can tell us more about the wild whales he's with." Foster goes further. "If we reintroduce Keiko to the wild, there's every possibility with the satellite tag that we can relocate him and, even after he's integrated into a pod of animals, recall him back to the boat. We'll be able to attach suction cups and new monitoring devices to him, maybe even a camera pack that sends images back to us." Funny, but the Oxford English Dictionary entry for "freedom," which includes the words "autonomy" and "emancipation," makes no mention of ongoing obeisance to former masters. Ocean Futures wants to have it both ways--to succeed in freeing Keiko, but to be able to call him home, too.

I confront Vinick with the conspiracy theory that a cabal of marine-park owners lurks behind the scenes, making sure Keiko doesn't go free. He fails to see the humor and issues a categorical denial.

"It may look slow, but three years is a human schedule, not a Keiko schedule," Vinick stresses. "We're learning how easy it is to capture a whale and how difficult it is to put one back."

Difficult, but not impossible. Although Keiko is the first aquarium whale to be purposely reconditioned for the wild, a handful of other confined whales have escaped their captors and made it back to the ocean--to stay. Back in 1971, the U.S. Navy was teaching two orcas it caught in 1968, named Ishmael and Ahab, to retrieve missile debris from the sea floor. Just like Keiko's trainers, Navy animal behaviorists schooled the whales to follow a lead boat from their coastal pens into the open ocean and to return to the boat at an audio signal. One day, Ahab took a 50 kilometer joy swim, but was recaptured. On another day, Ishmael spotted a whale pod in the distance and, ignoring the insistent siren call of the herring bucket, swam off. He never returned to base.

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