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Metropolis Reality Forums « Call to kill 'Free Willy' star »

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Rhune
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Call to kill 'Free Willy' star
« on: Sep 3rd, 2002, 4:25pm »		 Quote Quote Modify Modify
http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/09/03/norway.whale/index.html
 
Call to kill 'Free Willy' star
September 3, 2002 Posted: 1:32 PM EDT (1732 GMT)
 
OSLO, Norway -- A Norwegian whaling expert says the killer whale who became famous as the star of "Free Willy" movies should be put to death.  
 
Keiko has turned up in a Norwegian fjord, six weeks after he was returned to the wild from his pen in Iceland.  
 
He is arguably the world's best-known whale, given his starring role in the three "Free Willy" films that were released in the 1990s, as well as a brief animated series shown on television.  
 
"This is all madness," whaling expert Nils Řien, of the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, told VG Nett, the online edition of Norway's largest newspaper.  
 
"First they spend millions on taming him and turning him into a movie star. Then they spend more millions on turning him back into a wild animal.  
 
"They should have let him live and die in captivity. Now that they have decided not to keep him in captivity, they should put him down. Those who believe that they are helping Keiko by setting him free, are really doing the opposite."  
 
Having spent most of his life in captivity, volunteers spent years training Keiko for life in the wild. He was released from his pen in Iceland in July and swam nearly 870 miles to a western Norway fjord.  
 
The orca surprised and delighted Norwegians, who petted and swam with him and climbed on his back as he splashed in the Skaalvik Fjord, about 250 miles northwest of the capital, Oslo.  
 
"He is completely tame, and he clearly wants company," said Arild Birger Neshaug, 35.  
 
Neshaug said he was in a small rowboat with his 12-year-old daughter, Hanne, and some friends when they spotted Keiko on Sunday.  
 
"We were afraid," Neshaug said. "But then he followed us to our cabin dock. At first we were skeptical, and then we tried petting his back. Finally the children went swimming with him."  
 
He said the orca stayed by their dock all night and into the day on Monday, happily eating fish tossed to him by the families.  
 
Newspapers had expressed tongue-in-cheek surprise over the whale coming to Norway, since the oil-rich Scandinavian nation of 4.5 million people is the only country that commercially hunts whales despite a global whaling ban.  
 
However, Norway's whalers only hunt minke whales.  
 
"It's definitely him. We have tracked him from Iceland," Fernando Ugarte, part of the team monitoring the orca's progress, said by telephone Monday from a ship in the fjord.  
 
Ugarte is monitoring the whale on behalf of the Ocean Futures Society and the Humane Society of the United States. He said Keiko was in excellent shape, but still seems to prefer humans to other whales.  
 
Keiko, which means "Lucky One" in Japanese, was captured near Iceland in 1979 when he was 2 and spent most of his life in captivity in Canada and Mexico.  
 
His appearance in the 1993 film "Free Willy" and later sequels helped spark a campaign to free him. He was rescued from a Mexico City amusement park in 1996 and rehabilitated at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon, before he was airlifted back to Iceland in 1998 and taught to catch fish.  
 
Keiko's rehabilitation cost $20 million. Ugarte said his team will continue monitoring Keiko's progress and movements.
« Last Edit: Sep 3rd, 2002, 4:26pm by Rhune » IP Logged
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Kramer
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Re: Call to kill 'Free Willy' star
« Reply #1 on: Sep 3rd, 2002, 5:55pm »		 Quote Quote Modify Modify
This is really sad. I heard that they were unable to release him successfully.  These type of stories just break my heart.  The Hollywood moguls use these animals and then dump them to their own demise.
 
This whale will eventually have to be put down if it cannot resocialize into the wild.  The risk of allowing humans to get used to swimming with Killer Whales is just to great.
 
It breaks my heart completely Sad
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Rhune
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Re: Call to kill 'Free Willy' star
« Reply #2 on: Sep 3rd, 2002, 6:33pm »		 Quote Quote Modify Modify
I don't understand why they nned to kill him. If he can't be rehabilitated and wants to be with people, can't they find a suitable zoo or sea world or something instead?
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Kramer
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Re: Call to kill 'Free Willy' star
« Reply #3 on: Sep 4th, 2002, 7:09am »		 Quote Quote Modify Modify
Im not sure how that works Rhune.  I am sure that they have probably tried.  If not, I agree with you, I wish they would.
 
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Rhune
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Re: Call to kill 'Free Willy' star
« Reply #4 on: Sep 4th, 2002, 8:32am »		 Quote Quote Modify Modify
Well my understanding from a few years back is they didn't try to find him a zooish home because he was the star of free willy, and everyone who saw it wanted to "free" him.  There was a lot of public outrage that he was in captivity at all.  So I'm not sure that they ever did anything other than try to rehabilitate him.
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Kramer
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Re: Call to kill 'Free Willy' star
« Reply #5 on: Sep 4th, 2002, 8:44am »		 Quote Quote Modify Modify
Well, I wonder if they ever thought of donating him to an aquarium quietly.  If no one ever advertised that this whale used to be "Free Willy" then I bet people wouldn't try to free him.  I mean, the average person isn't going to be able to tell one killer whale from the next Sad
 
How ignorant can these hollywood animal trainers/producers/or whoever owns him be?
 
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Now this looks like a job for Detroit,
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