On this day in vegan history · December 12, 2003
Keiko, the Real Willy, Dies Free
The orca who played Willy in a Hollywood tearjerker spent his last year doing what the movie promised: swimming loose in the open Atlantic, until pneumonia caught up with him in a Norwegian fjord.
The facts
- Captured
- 1979, near Iceland, at about age 2
- Fully released into the open ocean
- July 15, 2002, off Iceland
- Died
- December 12, 2003, in Taknes Bay, Norway, at about age 27, of pneumonia
- Cost of his rehabilitation and release
- roughly $20 million
Keiko was captured off Iceland around 1979, sold through marine parks in Ontario and Mexico City, and cast as Willy in the 1993 film Free Willy, which turned his cramped tank in Mexico City into a public embarrassment. A foundation funded by Warner Bros. and animal welfare groups spent years and roughly $20 million moving him back to Iceland, retraining him to hunt and tolerate cold water, and on July 15, 2002 releasing him fully into the ocean. He swam to Norway that summer, where he kept approaching boats and swimmers instead of joining wild pods, and local caretakers ended up feeding him daily. He died of pneumonia in Taknes Bay, Norway, on December 12, 2003, at about 27.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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We took the hardest candidate and took him from near death in Mexico to swimming with wild whales in Norway
David Phillips, executive director of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Keiko's release was the first time a captive orca went fully back to the ocean, and its messy, expensive, only partly successful outcome became the reference case every later captivity debate cites, on both sides. He put a real, named, camera-ready animal at the center of an argument that used to run on statistics alone.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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