Keiko:A Killer Whale's Journey to Freedom

Keiko: A Killer Whale’s Journey to Freedom

He was one of the biggest movie stars in the 1990s. So why did he live in a small, dirty home that was polluted with his own waste? He was also underweight and had terrible tooth and skin problems—not very attractive for a world- famous actor. But few people knew the sad truth about Keiko, the killer whale. Killer whales, also known as “ orcas, ” are found in oceans around the world. Keiko was born in the Atlantic, off the coast of Iceland.

At around age two, Keiko was captured by a crew aboard a fishing boat and taken to an aquarium. A few years later he was sold to a water park in Canada. There, Keiko began training to be a performer. Then he was sold to an amusement park in Mexico. For the next ten years, Keiko starred in over seven thousand performances at the park. He was hand-fed about sixty kilograms of dead fish each day. But his pool was too small, and Keiko was bored.

His dorsal fin, located on his back, was droopy. This meant Keiko was spending too much time on the surface of the water and swimming in only one direction. However, most audiences were not aware of Keiko’s poor living conditions. In 1993, when Keiko starred in the movie Free Willy, his life changed forever. Free Willy is about a boy and a water-park whale named Willy. The boy, who is deeply attached to Willy, finds out that Willy’s owners are planning to kill the whale.

The boy does everything he can to save, and eventually free, Willy. The movie was a big hit and touched audiences everywhere. It also led many people to think about Keiko’s real-life situation. In 1994 the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation was established to rescue Keiko and release him back into the wild. Thousands of children from around the world also campaigned for Keiko’s freedom. They wrote letters to politicians and raised money.

At last the amusement park in Mexico agreed to donate Keiko to the foundation. The foundation planned to return Keiko to the wild. But first they had to teach him how to live there. They built a new home for Keiko in the United States. But how could they move a seven-thousand-pound killer whale? UPS, a package delivery service, volunteered to move Keiko to his new home. Keiko’s new home in Oregon was a large, custom-made pool by the ocean.