Episode 3: Homecoming

Summary

The Good Whale: Episode 3 – Homecoming

Introduction to Keiko and the Journey Towards Freedom

In Episode 3 of The Good Whale, titled "Homecoming," Narrator sets the stage by recounting the tumultuous history of Keiko, the iconic orca who inspired the beloved film Free Willy. Initially viewed with fear and misunderstanding as a "killer whale" or "sea monster," Keiko's life in captivity became a global concern.

Historical Context and Jeff Foster’s Early Involvement

Jeff Foster, a central figure in Keiko's story, reflects on his childhood experiences that shaped his lifelong connection with animals. Jeff Foster shares, “[02:43] And I don't really like talking about myself very much, so it's always a little bit awkward, but yeah. So I kind of grew up with animals all my life.”

Growing up with a father who was a full-time zoo veterinarian, Jeff developed a profound affinity for wildlife. By the age of fifteen, he was already working at the Seattle Marine Aquarium, engaging in the very practices that led to Keiko's capture. For over two decades, Jeff participated in the capture of approximately twenty killer whales, a practice that was increasingly scrutinized as public understanding of orcas evolved. As Jeff admits, “[04:47] Yeah, it kind of kept building...you always remember it.”

Relocating to Iceland: A Step Towards Liberation

In 1990, after two decades of capturing wild whales, Jeff Foster ceased his involvement in orca captures. Eight years later, his path intersected with Keiko's liberation effort in Iceland. This marked a significant shift from trapping whales to rehabilitating one for freedom. The relocation involved constructing a massive sea pen in the Westman Islands, designed to mimic the ocean environment more closely than Keiko's previous confinements.

Behavioral Training: Preparing Keiko for the Wild

As Keiko settled into his new environment, the team faced the challenge of transforming his captive behaviors into those suitable for the wild. Mark Simmons, a behavioral scientist brought in from SeaWorld, spearheaded this transformation. Drawing from his extensive experience in captive environments, Mark implemented a behavioral modification program aiming to reduce Keiko's reliance on human interaction and encourage natural behaviors.

Mark Simmons Explains the Training Process: “[21:27] [...] You can't have him released to the wild and swimming up to any old boat and going, hey, what's going on, guys?”

Mark and his colleague, Robin Friday, focused on reinforcing positive behaviors such as independence and exploration while discouraging actions that could hinder Keiko's integration into wild pods. This included strict regulations on who could interact with Keiko, limiting human contact to the behavioral team only. Jen Shore, another trainer, recounts the emotional difficulty of these changes: “[23:03] After Mark and Robin got there, we weren't allowed to really touch him anymore... it was frustrating.”

Progress and the First Walks

Under the rigorous training regimen, Keiko began showing promising signs of independence. By February 2000, he was swimming more autonomously, engaging in activities like chasing seals and interacting less with boats. The introduction of walk boats, led by Mark Simmons, became a cornerstone of the rehabilitation process. These boats were designed to guide Keiko towards the open ocean, rewarding him with herring when he exhibited desired behaviors.

The Pivotal Day: Introduction to Wild Whales

June 2000 marked a critical moment in Keiko's journey—the planned introduction to a pod of wild whales. The team envisioned a peaceful, observational interaction where Keiko could acclimate to his natural environment. Charles Vinick, the project manager, explains the optimistic outlook: “[36:06] I think the assumption going in was that this would not be a long and extended period... they would accept him readily.”

However, despite meticulous planning, the encounter took a disastrous turn. As Tom Sanders recounts, “[37:09] We don't know where the wild whales are... it was a disaster.” The interaction resulted in Keiko becoming severely distressed and separated from the pod, leaving him traumatized and isolated.

Aftermath and Reflecting on the Failed Introduction

The failed introduction left the team grappling with the consequences of their actions. Keiko was found alone, visibly traumatized, which led to intense self-reflection among the trainers. Mark Simmons expressed his frustration and sense of responsibility: “[40:22] I was furious... we had made it an absolutely traumatic learning event.”

The incident underscored the complexities and unpredictabilities inherent in attempting to reintroduce a captive orca to the wild. It raised critical questions about the ethics and feasibility of such endeavors, leaving the team divided on the next steps forward.

Conclusion: Uncertain Futures and Lingering Questions

As Episode 3 concludes, the team faces a crossroads. Some members choose to leave, feeling that their efforts have inadvertently harmed Keiko, while others debate the necessity of pushing forward despite the setbacks. The episode leaves listeners contemplating the delicate balance between human intervention and the natural instincts of wild animals, highlighting the profound challenges in rehabilitating a captive orca for life in the ocean.

Notable Quotes:

• Jeff Foster [04:09]: “You know, it's a huge adventure. It's extremely exciting.”
• Mark Simmons [20:14]: “I knew that we, to prepare him for the wild, he had to forget everything he knew.”
• Charles Vinick [36:06]: “They would accept him readily.”
• Tom Sanders [37:09]: “We don't know where the wild whales are... it was a disaster.”
• Mark Simmons [40:22]: “I was furious... we had made it an absolutely traumatic learning event.”

---

This detailed summary captures the essence of Episode 3, "Homecoming," delving into Keiko's challenging journey from captivity to attempted freedom. It highlights the dedication and emotional turmoil of the individuals involved, the intricate behavioral training undertaken, and the unforeseen difficulties that ultimately hindered Keiko's reintegration into the wild. Through vivid storytelling and poignant reflections, the episode invites listeners to ponder the complexities of human-animal relationships and the ongoing quest to balance compassion with practicality in wildlife conservation efforts.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

This podcast is brought to you by Apple Pay. During the holidays, I'm a big online shopper thanks to Apple Pay, and that's because I don't have to waste time typing all my info into those long checkout forms. Plus, Apple Pay is made to be secure thanks to the built in technology of Face id, which is designed so that only I can authorize payments this season. Do what I do and pay the Apple way. Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payment Services, llc, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. And any card used in Apple Pay is offered by the card issuer.

[Listener 1]

If you become a New York Times subscriber, you can listen to all episodes of the Goodwill right away. No waiting, and it's super easy. Sign up through Apple Podcasts or Spotify or go to nytimes.com podcasts if you're already a time subscriber, just link your account and you're done.

[Narrator]

In the beginning, we thought of them as monsters. Sea monsters out of some saltwater nightmare. We called them orcas, or killer whales, emissaries from the kingdom of the dead. The first live orca ever captured and shown to the public was actually caught by accident. This was 1964, and an expedition left Vancouver with a simple, sadistic kill an orca and bring back its carcass so an artist might sculpt a life size replica for the local aquarium. The media were captivated by the story of these brave hunters who left town and were expected to return within a week. But that's not how it happened. In fact, nearly two months passed before they finally managed to harpoon a killer whale who inconvenienced them all by failing to die. So they dragged it, wounded but still Alive, for about 20 hours, back to Vancouver Bay. The animal was put on display in a shipyard where it received thousands of visitors. So many, the aquarium curator began to suspect it might be worth more alive than dead. An aquarium in California offered $20,000 for the animal, but they refused to sell. 55 days after its capture, the orca ate for the first time in captivity. This was a big enough deal that it made it into the local paper. And then, a month later, after nearly 90 days in captivity, it was dead. The whale's death was likely related to exhaustion. The water where it was kept was less salty and therefore less buoyant than the ocean it was accustomed to. What now seems self evidently cruel or barbaric back then simply was, and no one seems to have thought much of it. Jeff Foster was just a kid when this happened. Growing up not so Far away across the border in Seattle. And this first orca capture would come to shape his life in profound ways. Though he might not come right out and admit it.

[Jeff Foster]

And I don't really like talking about myself very much, so it's always a little bit awkward, but yeah. So I kind of grew up with animals all my life.

[Narrator]

Jeff's dad was a full time zoo veterinarian, which had its privileges and made for a unique childhood. His dad might come home some nights with an animal that needed special care. A baby lion or leopard, an otter or a monkey. Jeff loved it. At 12, he was catching rattlesnakes for fun. By the time he was a teenager, he had a job at the Seattle Marine Aquarium. Fifteen years old, at sea on fishing boats, doing exactly the kind of work that would set the Keiko story in motion, that is, capturing killer whales for display at marine parks. The whole world, it seems, had learned precisely the wrong lesson from the abrupt death of that first captive orca. Now marine parks across the world wanted one of their own, and it was Jeff's job to get them. It was dangerous work. In the beginning. They'd use firecrackers to herd the whales into shallow areas. Later, they'd pay fishing boats to leave some of their haul floating in the water. When the orcas showed up to feed, Jeff and his team would trap them in nets. It was the young ones they'd go after, under 5 years old or so, but still huge. Once their target was trapped, Jeff would.

[Jeff Foster]

Jump in and then my job is to get in the water and try to get him out of the, out of the nets and put them on stretchers and load them onto the boat.

[Narrator]

You could die or the orchard could die, or you could both die. But Jeff was good at the work and liked it.

[Jeff Foster]

You know, it's, you know, it's a huge adventure. It's extremely exciting. It's, it was really something, you know, getting to be involved with something like this. And it was a massive scale and working with one of the top prayers in the world.

[Narrator]

Jeff estimates that over two decades, first in Puget Sound and then eventually in Iceland, he helped capture as many as 20 killer whales. But over time, as the scientific community, and in turn the public began to understand that orcas were intelligent social creatures with strong family bonds, that they had their own sophisticated language with different dialects. Jeff's feelings shifted too. Was there a moment where you were like, oh, this is too much, I can't do this?

[Jeff Foster]

Yeah, it kind of kept building. You know, when you bring these animals onto the Deck. They're, you know, they're small, they're younger animals, and, but they're, but they're confused and they're, you know, nervous, and they make a vocalization that sounds like almost like a crying baby. It's, it's, it's pretty powerful.

[Narrator]

It's not like a crying baby. Actually, it is a crying baby. And the bond between a male orca and its mother is particularly strong. In fact, in some orca populations, male orcas will live most of their lives with their mothers protected by her, fed by her, even swimming in her slipstream. As an adult, taking a calf from its mother is nothing less than a kidnapping.

[Jeff Foster]

You know, the more I did it, and the longer I did it, the more we knew about these animals that it, you know, that cry, you know, it sticks with you. You know, you always remember it.

[Narrator]

And so in 1990, after two decades catching wild whales, he stopped. Eight years later, Jeff found himself back in Iceland. Only instead of capturing orcas, this time he would be helping one go free. And here's where Jeff's story intersects with ours. He was part of the team that would be helping get Keiko back to the ocean he'd been ripped from when he was just a calf. Now in Iceland, Keiko's humans, Jeff among them, were going to try to make amends, try to fix something that had been broken, something they had broken. To achieve their audacious goal, they had to try, no matter the odds, to prepare Keiko for freedom, to train him to be wild again. From Serial Productions in the New York Times, this is the good whale. I'm Daniel Alarcon.

[Podcast Host]

This podcast is brought to you by Apple Pay. During the holidays, I am a big online shopper thanks to Apple Pay, and that's because I don't have to waste time typing all my info into those long checkout forms. Plus, Apple Pay is made to be secure thanks to the built in technology of Face id, which is designed so that only I can authorize payments this season. Do what I do, and pay the Apple way. Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payment Services llc, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. Any card used in Apple Pay is offered by the card issuer.

[Robert Vinlou]

Hey, I'm Robert Vinlou and I'm from New York Times Games, and I'm here talking to people about wordle and the wordle Archive. Do you all play wordle?

[Narrator]

I play it every day.

[Listener 1]

All right.

[Robert Vinlou]

I have something exciting to show you.

[Jen Shore]

Oh, okay.

[Robert Vinlou]

This is new. It's the wordle Archive.

[Listener 1]

What?

[Jen Shore]

Okay, that's awesome.

[Robert Vinlou]

So now you can play every wordle that has ever existed. There's like a thousand puzzles. What day would you pick?

[Narrator]

Let's go back to my birthday. My first guess is going to be birth, because it's my birthday.

[Podcast Host]

What made you guys do an archive?

[Robert Vinlou]

It's one of our most requested features. A bunch of our other games have archives.

[Narrator]

Like the password puzzle.

[Robert Vinlou]

Yeah, exactly. Like the crossword. You know, you can catch up if you missed one, which is pretty cool.

[Listener 1]

Wordle archive.

[Listener 2]

Oh, cool.

[Narrator]

Now you can do yesterday's wordle if you missed it.

[Robert Vinlou]

Thanks so much for coming by and talking to us. Or playing New York Times game subscribers can now access the entire Wordle archive. Find out more at nytimes.com games My.

[Listener 1]

Default word is always bread. Why I like bread.

[Narrator]

It's September 10, 1998. Keiko's arrival in Iceland. It took the Free Willy Keiko foundation months of negotiations with the Icelandic government to get Keiko back to his home waters. And now the day was finally here. It has everything we've come to expect with these milestones in Keiko's journey. The eyes of the world, nothing less. Aside from Bjork, Keiko was probably Iceland's biggest celebrity. And some kids got the day off so they could follow his arrival on television. Heimaey is the largest of the Westman Islands and the only one with any residents, though there aren't many, fewer than 5,000. And here in this remote volcanic archipelago was where Keiko would be living on the day of his arrival. The little island is overwhelmed by crowds, the kind that gathered anytime Keiko traveled. Locals and tourists lining the streets and over 100 foreign journalists who come to cover the story. Many of them stand clumped on a green hillside at the airport as a giant military cargo plane approaches the not very long island Runway. Inside the plane is a 45,000 pound piece of cargo Keiko floating in a fiberglass cradle. The landing was a near disaster. Fierce crosswinds buffeted the plane as it pulled in. It touched down with a jolt so violent that the landing gear buckled in a cloud of smoke inside the cargo hold. Water spilled over the top of Keiko's container. Jeff says they heard big loud pop.

[Jeff Foster]

And we stopped really quickly.

[Narrator]

Jeff and another trainer named Brian and Keiko's veterinarian, Lanny Cornell, all went to check on Keiko while everyone else waited to get off the plane.

[Jeff Foster]

And I jumped into the cradle with Keiko and he just stopped. He was just frozen. And Brian was saying, breathe, dude, breathe, dude. And Dr. Cornell was saying, I think he's dead. I think he's dead. I'm in the water with him. And I was poking next to his eye, and he wouldn't. Wouldn't blink. And I was pushing on his blowhole and trying to get it open, and he just wouldn't move. I mean, he was just, like, frozen.

[Narrator]

Keiko wouldn't breathe. One minute, three minutes, five. The team feared the worst. Seven minutes.

[Jeff Foster]

It seemed like forever, but it was probably maybe 10 minutes. And then he started and breathing and catching his breath.

[Narrator]

Alive. His breathing lessons back in Oregon had paid off, apparently. Now Keiko had made it to Iceland into the biggest body of water he'd been in since he was a calf.

[Jeff Foster]

And so we got him out of the stretcher and, you know, we opened the stretcher up, and he swam out for the first time, and he dove down and went underwater. We didn't see him for a minute or two. And then he popped up, came over, and I rubbed him down. Thank you. Thank you. He's doing so well, you know, and he just kind of came over to me like a security blanket, you know, I told him, yeah, this is all right. You're home now.

[Narrator]

Home is a tricky concept, of course, but let's consider where he is first. Well, there's his sea pen, a massive enclosure about 2/3 the size of a football field. Think of it as a permeable tank with thick nylon netting instead of walls, floating in the middle of the bay and anchored to the seafloor. It had been built from nearly 200,000 pounds of metal, plastic, aluminum, and rubber, and was designed to withstand waves and storms. All told, it was 60% larger than Keiko's pool in Oregon, which, if you'll recall, was itself much larger than his home in Mexico City. But beyond the size of it, most importantly, crucially, the pen is in the ocean, like the actual ocean, with all the sights and sounds and tastes and stimulation that implies. Keiko could feel the waves and the currents and the tides, feel his body being pulled effortlessly this way and that, something he hadn't experienced since he was a calf, and he was no longer subjected to the echoes of a walled tank. He could distinguish individual sounds of different species of ocean life, could tell which direction a specific animal might be coming from. For a species that echolocates, this might be like suddenly seeing normally after a lifetime of having a flashlight shone in your eyes. Herring and minke whales and pilot whales populate the waters off the Westman Islands, and they were close that very first afternoon. A Pilot whale swam into Keiko's cove, as if stopping by to see who was new in town. Even vocalizing with Keiko, it was an auspicious sign, or at least that's how it was interpreted by the staff. And for a whale who'd been living on his own in a tank for most of his life, just hearing another marine mammal so close by must have been striking, maybe even revelatory. So set aside for just a moment the finger wagging about not projecting human emotions onto animals. Forget that. Instead, let's imagine the interior life of this magnificent creature with a brain several times larger than our own, as he confronts the weird, intoxicating newness of his environment, the turmoil it must have caused him, the surprise, the curiosity. Nothing as binary as happiness or sadness, I'd guess. Maybe just awe. Maybe just an unsettling awareness that the world was far bigger than he'd ever understood it to be. So that's his immediate. His pen. Then there was the broader setting. Keiko's new home was in the windy Westman Islands. And despite the scare of the rough landing, once he was in the water, it seemed like an inspired choice.

[Jen Shore]

Everybody said, look how protected this bay is. It was a perfectly calm, still day, and it has 600 foot cliffs on three sides of it.

[Narrator]

This is Jen Shore. She worked with Jeff as animal care staff in Oregon. A trainer, basically, and was part of the foundation team that moved with Keiko to Iceland.

[Jen Shore]

Little did we realize every wind comes in the bay and turns into a vortex, basically using the 600 foot cliffs on three sides.

[Narrator]

Jen and the rest of the staff learned the hard truth about the weather a couple of weeks after Keiko's arrival, when a storm came through featuring insanely high winds destroying an expensive piece of Keiko's medical equipment. Pretty soon it was clear there would be far more of those windy days than the calm ones. There's video of someone trying to feed Keiko during one of these wind storms. It's like those weather channel shots where they send an anchor to stand outside in a hurricane. Only in this case, the staff aren't just standing still. They're trying to scoop fish out of a trunk with a net while the wind blows the rain and the sea spray horizontally. For a certain kind of adventurous young person, working with Keiko was nothing less than a dream job. The pay was good, and for every month they were in Iceland, they had a month off to travel. The project had the equipment and infrastructure too. Jet skis, boats of various sizes, even a little office built onto the Beipen, which the staff called the research shack. It was pretty deluxe, complete with electricity, running water, and an Internet connection. From here, they could monitor Keiko's behavior, his swimming speed, the depths of his dives. From a bank of 19 screens showing live video feeds of underwater cameras placed all around the pen. And there was a hydrophone as well, recording the sound beneath the surface, his vocalizations. No cost was spared. Billionaire Craig McCaw, who was footing a huge part of the bill for this experiment, happened to have an extra helicopter parked on his $100 million yacht, so he lent it, along with a pilot, to the Keiko project. This way, they could more easily keep tabs on the wild killer whale pods that came through the area. The more they learned, the more likely they were to find Keiko's family. And finding them, most people on the project agreed, would greatly increase the likelihood of a successful return to the wild for Keiko. After all, lone killer whales in the wild are a really rare occurrence. Without the help of a pod, whether his own or an adopted one, Keiko would have little chance of survival. So that's the state of things. In the fall of 1998, Keiko back in his home waters with a human support team befitting a global celebrity. Money and people and equipment all deployed to give him the opportunity to meet wild whales. Keiko had been rescued from Mexico, rehabbed in Oregon, and now in Iceland. It was all about release, which meant even more rigorous training toward the ultimate goal, becoming wild. But before they could get closer to the release part of the plan, they had to get Keiko comfortable just being in open water. Jen Shore and some of the other trainers suspected that if they lifted the gates of Keiko's pen and invited him to explore the wider ocean, he'd politely decline the invitation. This was the immediate problem they needed to solve. How to get a whale who is uninterested in freedom to be more interested in it.

[Jen Shore]

You can't really make a killer whale do anything. I mean, I think the original view was just kind of, we're going to see how this goes and how he does, and we'll be guided by that.

[Narrator]

But about six months later, in the spring of 1999, Keiko was still in his sea pen, swimming circles in his little gated subdivision of the ocean, not much closer to being wild than he had been in Oregon. The project needed a larger team to work with Keiko around the clock and one with a specific skill set. Jeff suggested bringing on a small team of animal behaviorists, which included a guy named Mark Simmons. It wasn't, at least on the face of it, a natural fit. In fact, the person most surprised by it might have been Mark himself.

[Listener 1]

You know, the Keiko project within the professional zoological field was just ridiculous. It was a. It was a joke because it was.

[Narrator]

Unrealistic and expensive because it was seen as closer to activism than to science. The project market assumed was too radical in its mission to have anything to do with someone of his background.

[Listener 1]

You know, this. This was the quintessential animal rights contingent that was, you know, set on freeing every whale. SeaWorld had to be clear.

[Narrator]

The Free Willy Keiko foundation was, for now, only set on freeing one whale. Keiko, though they did hope he might serve as a test case for others. Mark, though, came from a different perspective. He was 30 years old and had spent a decade working at SeaWorld in Orlando in what most people call the captive industry. Mark bristles at that term, calls it instead the professional zoological field. And for him, it's an important distinction. Mark thinks places like SeaWorld are helping preserve species that might otherwise be at risk of extinction in the wild. Now he was being brought on to help Keiko get ready for freedom. A totally implausible idea as far as Mark was concerned. There was so much about living in the ocean that this whale had never had the opportunity to learn the language of his pod, how to hunt, for starters. It wasn't even accurate to call this project a rewilding.

[Listener 1]

This was not an animal that had anything to recall. This was an animal that had never effectively been in the wild. And so he'd been in the care of man. And I knew that to prepare him for the wild, he had to forget everything he knew. He had to show avoidance of humans. He had to learn many new skills, and most importantly, he had to integrate with wild whales, something none of us had any control over. So.

[Narrator]

But there must have been something about it that excited you.

[Listener 1]

Oh, yeah.

[Narrator]

I mean, you did it.

[Listener 1]

Well, I mean, I, you know, back then, SeaWorld was really, I often call it sort of the Harvard of the marine zoological environment, especially when it came to animal training. SeaWorld sort of pioneered the scientific approach, the methodical approach to behavioral modification. And I learned through that. So, you know, I was pretty confident. I was also at that age where, you know, right at 30, where you've got some experience, but you're also young enough to be really bold. And of course, you're either a give me the ball coach kind of person or not. And I wanted the ball.

[Narrator]

Mark got to work right away. He and his colleague Robin Friday had come to Iceland armed with a plan outlining the training methods and protocols to be followed for Keiko's possible reintroduction. They built their proposal based on an approach which will be familiar to any college psych major. Behavioral modification. Some of the same principles, incidentally, that they would have used at SeaWorld to teach an orca new behaviors, or, in Keiko's case, reshape previously learned behaviors. Meaning you use conditioning and rewards like food and attention to reinforce certain actions and reduce others.

[Listener 1]

Things like being sedentary or watching a boat. Not good, right? Soliciting for attention from a marine ops guy that was working on the bay pen. You know, that's not good either. You can't have him released to the wild and swimming up to any old boat and going, hey, what's going on, guys? The things you want to reduce, you make sure not to inadvertently reinforce those by coming out at the wrong time by a boat, driving up, by making sounds with food buckets, because that's a precursor to reinforcement. There's a million things on the flip side of that. We have beavers we want to see. We want to see more swimming. We want to see more independence. We might want to see him going after a seagull. We might want to see him chasing a seal that happened into the bay. You can directly influence those by reinforcing them.

[Narrator]

But it wasn't just Keiko who had to change his behavior. Certain behaviors among the staff had to be eliminated, too. To prepare Keiko for the wild, Mark wanted to cut down how much human contact Keiko received. So he laid down some ground rules. For starters, the only people allowed to interact with Keiko would be the behavioral team. Everyone else had to keep their distance. That meant the researchers and the operations staff were not allowed at the C pen. No more random visits from members of the foundation board, either. No more swimming with the whale just for funsies or handing out belly rubs whenever Keiko wanted. None of that. For Jen, who had been with Keiko since Oregon and had dropped everything to follow him to Iceland, this new way of doing things required an adjustment. It was difficult, to say the least.

[Jen Shore]

After Mark and Robin got there, we weren't allowed to really touch him anymore. I mean, he would come over to wherever you were working with him from and solicit scratches, and, you know, we're like, sorry, can't do that anymore. And it was just frustrating.

[Listener 1]

That was really hard to do to him, because I will tell you, you'd have to be a sociopath, not to be emotionally impacted by that, it was hard. And from keiko's standpoint, he didn't understand any of this. We couldn't speak english. We couldn't show him the permit and have him read what was going on. All he'd ever known was this human foster family and had been very loving and great, and he was into it, man. And what we were doing made no sense.

[Narrator]

But did that give you pause? I mean, like, you know, it sounds like what you're saying is almost an argument for, like, not doing this.

[Listener 1]

Yeah, it gave me pause.

[Narrator]

And yet you were part of it. I mean, you did it, and you were following the program that you and robin that I created.

[Listener 1]

Right. But we also believed there was a measure of possibility that maybe he would beat the odds.

[Narrator]

When you watch video from this time, what's clear is just how hard mark is pushing keiko. There's nothing playful about this routine, Nothing relaxed. I mean, if life in mexico was spring break and Oregon was a workout with a personal trainer, then Iceland. Well, iceland was boot camp.

[Listener 2]

Okay, we're getting ready to do a full routine exercise. There's seven behaviors in there. It starts with a fast one to the right, and we'll go through the behaviors that we've done already and the criteria, and we're going to stick to that. Now, in the last few days, we've been pushing him to do three to four consecutively correct and two criteria behaviors on the first SD. That's been about his threshold.

[Narrator]

By February 2000, a year and a half after Keiko's arrival in Iceland and 10 months after Mark had first come, there was progress. Keiko was more independent and active, in better shape than he'd ever been. He was paying less attention to boats, was doing more exercise than ever, spending nearly two thirds of his free time swimming. The progress was dramatic and clear enough for mark and the other trainers to decide, yeah, he's ready to leave his pen. Keiko had already had a chance to leave his pen about six months earlier when a storm broke it open. But he hadn't taken it. Like a good boy, he'd stayed put. This time, his trainers hoped would be different. They were determined to coax him out. They'd even had time to prepare, building a net across the mouth of the bay, essentially making the entirety of the COVID Keiko's very own protected space, exponentially larger than any pen he'd ever known. And as usual, the media was on hand to speculate breathlessly about what he might do.

[Listener 1]

When we see keiko out into Greater expanse. Now, is it kind of like seeing.

[Narrator]

A free prisoner, we don't know what.

[Listener 1]

He'S going to do?

[Narrator]

That's the thing. I don't think anybody really knows what this whale is going to do. And that's a great analogy. It is like being in prison. When humans are let out of prison, some are comfortable in that prison. Want to go back to it? In this case, Keiko had to be lured out by his trainers. One inside the pen and one standing on a platform just outside it, slapping the water. It took a while, but finally Keiko did what they were asking. He. He swam through the gate and out of the pen. Once there, and with the entire bay at his disposal, Keiko, well, he didn't do too much exploring. He swam briefly out into the COVID did a dive, and then headed back into his pen. So nothing like the whale he played in Free Willy. His reaction to this quasi freedom was more like McFly or the Dude. It was Keiko just hanging out, wondering, like, what the hell am I supposed to do with all this water? But over time, with reinforcement, Keiko became more interested in leaving the pen and learned to appreciate life in the bay. Pretty soon, he was spending eight hours a day outside the pen of his own accord, swimming around, exploring. When he did, his trainers would reward him, using a slingshot to send herring flying all over the bay. They even had contests among themselves to see who could shoot it the farthest. Sometimes seagulls would get there first, and this, thought Mark, was a good thing. If Keiko was going to make it in the ocean, he'd have to learn to deal with a little competition. Once Keiko was used to the bay, his trainers, they pulled off something pretty remarkable. They trained Keiko to ignore all boats except one, named Draupnir. This particular boat would be his guide, his walkboat. It had a platform on one side where the trainers could stand to feed Keiko and give him instructions. The goal was to get Keiko to follow the Draupnir out of the bay and into the ocean.

[Listener 1]

I mean, when we took him outside the bay, it was a gorgeous day.

[Narrator]

This is Mark Simmons again. He still remembers the first time they took Keiko way out into the open ocean for a walk.

[Listener 1]

And the current around the island is such that right outside the mouth of the bay is where it's the choppiest. So the swells were bigger than the Draupner, you know, and we'd go up one swell, down another, and he immediately started riding down the swells with his flukes. Kind of tipped up like a, like a sail. And just. And the water was just gin clear. And it was amazing. I mean, my, my heart was in my throat. Everybody was just like, oh my God, look at him. You know, it was so much fun. He. He was like a little kid.

[Narrator]

The walks became an essential part of Ko's regimen. He might swim 11 nautical miles a day in the open ocean alongside the Dr. He was diving more, eating the live fish he was fed, including fish that had not been stunned. The underweight weakling that had arrived in Oregon was no more. This was Keiko, unrecognizable even to Mark.

[Listener 1]

There was a point at which my wife came up to visit and she was still a trainer at SeaWorld, so she had been working with the whales there. She came out on the walk boat and I'll never forget, she really thought he had the disposition and demeanor of a wild killer whale. And to me, that was groundbreaking. I didn't see that much change. I knew he changed, but maybe not that much change. And here's this big marshmallow angel of an animal, and my wife's telling me he looks like a wild whale. And to me, that was a great success. That was affirmation. I think it was the first time that I thought, holy crap, we might actually pull this off.

[Narrator]

They might. They actually might. That's after the break.

[Podcast Host]

This podcast is brought to you by Apple Pay. During the holidays, I'm a big online shopper thanks to Apple Pay, and that's because I don't have to waste time typing all my info into those long checkout forms. Plus, Apple Pay is made to be secure thanks to the built in technology of Face id, which is designed so that only I can authorize payments this season. Do what I do and pay the app away. Apple Pay is a service provided by Apple Payment Services llc, a subsidiary of Apple Inc. Any card used in Apple Pay is offered by the card issuer.

[Narrator]

Hey, it's John Chase and Mari Uehara.

[Listener 1]

From Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from the New York Times. Mari, it is gift giving time, John.

[Narrator]

We have over 40 gift guides like gifts for people who have everything on that list. I particularly love the self watering planter.

[Listener 1]

I struggle to keep plants alive, so this is like a perfect solution. Check out all of Wirecutter's gift recommendations for yourself and everyone [e-mail] holidayguide all.

[Narrator]

The behavior modification, the boat walks, the training. It was all leading up to one very important day in June of 2000 when Keiko would be reintroduced to wild killer whales. The last orcas Keiko had met had been in Canada at Marineland, when he was just four or five years old, and it hadn't gone well. Keiko was frightened and bullied by these older, bigger killer whales and had arrived in Mexico traumatized by the experience. That was his history. And in the years since, he'd been habituated to humans, and with the brief exception of his dolphin friends at Reyno Aventura, only humans. In Mark's mind, this history was all the more reason to go slow. They were thinking that Keiko's first introduction to wild whales would be more of a baby step than a grand reunion.

[Listener 1]

We wanted this to be a passive experiment where Keiko was within sight or hearing range of the wild whales. We expected it to be very, very benign, a very boring introduction.

[Narrator]

They had planned and discussed and negotiated this introduction with each other for weeks in meticulous detail.

[Listener 1]

We would take him out into the path of the wild whales, you know, far in advance of the wild whales, a mile or more, and we would go neutral and be silent in the water. We would pull up the platform, letting Keiko know, leave the boat, you know, that he's not going to get attention from us. And we would go silent and we would just let happen what was going to happen. Whether he would see them, hear them, whether they would be curious, whether they would come by or swim away, we didn't know. But that was it. That was it.

[Narrator]

Tom Sanders, another trainer on the project, remembers it similarly.

[Tom Sanders]

You know, I mean, we wanted them to just kind of see him for who he was, you know, let them communicate, possibly echolocate through the water, whatever. We weren't sure what was going to happen, to be honest. We just kind of wanted to try to give him every chance he could to make it work for him.

[Narrator]

In other words, they'd follow Keiko's lead and keep it nice and easy and quiet. The big day finally arrives. Everyone's got their assignments. Mark's on the walk boat, standing on a platform where he can keep tabs on Keiko, who's swimming alongside Jeff Foster. He's up in a helicopter, tasked with watching from above. And then there's Tom. His boat leaves early that morning, hoping to find a suitable pod of wild whales for Keiko to meet. He's not the only one on this boat.

[Tom Sanders]

The driver was a guy. He was a local man. His name was city. And then Dr. Lanny Cornell, the vet.

[Narrator]

Lanny Cornell, Keiko's veterinarian, one of the people Calling the shots that day. Eventually, Lanny and Tom spot some wild whales.

[Tom Sanders]

When we got close, we could see the pod. We had binoculars and things like that. We could see. The wild pod did have young with it, only a few months old, if I had to guess. They were still yellowish in color, which signals that they're younger and then size. They were small. We knew it wasn't ideal that they had kid whales with them, basically because we just knew that they'd be more protective and not necessarily wanting some big male bull to show up in their midst.

[Narrator]

But if anyone had any hesitations about Keiko meeting this pod with cavs, Tom says they weren't discussed on his boat.

[Tom Sanders]

It's like, well, how many chances of this are we going to even get? You know, this is stick with the plan, turn the motors off, chill out and just float.

[Narrator]

But that's not what happened.

[Tom Sanders]

I told City, our boat driver, to go ahead and kill our engine. And Lanny immediately was like, no, get closer. And I was like, what are you talking about? That was the whole point, was, do not get close to this wild pod with a running boat. So Stinty, I feel really bad to this day for that guy because he's got me basically saying, turn the engine off as we planned. But then he's got this guy that's like has clout telling him to not do it. Then we have to get closer because this is for research and important, you know, we have to document this whole thing.

[Narrator]

Lanny was Keiko's lead vet, but he didn't live in Iceland with the rest of the team. He just flew in from California occasionally. Because of this, some people felt Lanny didn't actually know Keiko, at least not as well as they did. Lanny didn't want to talk to us for this story, so I can't say how well he felt he understood Keiko, but as the lead vet, he had a lot of power on the Keiko project. And according to Tom and several others we talked to, for Lenny, this day wasn't just an introduction to wild whales. It was a farewell to Keiko.

[Tom Sanders]

From what I remember, he kind of was like, talking like it was happening that day, like to release. He was going to swim off into the sunset with his swamp pod that day.

[Narrator]

To be fair, it wasn't only Lanny who held out hope for this. To some extent, the entire project was built around a shared desire for this very outcome. Here's Charles Vinick, who managed the project at the time.

[Charles Vinick]

I think the assumption going in was that this would not be a long and extended period. This would be something that when Keiko had the opportunity to meet wild whales, he would join them readily or join a pod readily, and they would accept him readily.

[Narrator]

I imagine that everyone that day wanted to believe this was at least possible. I mean, how tempting must it have been to just find out, like, let's just see what happens if we get a little closer.

[Tom Sanders]

So we got closer and closer and we got to where we were basically in the pod at this point.

[Narrator]

The next thing Tom knows, the wild whales have disappeared underwater and he's not sure which direction they've gone in. At the same time, back on the walk boat, the one Keiko is near with Mark watching, they believe the wild whales are actually moving away from them. So they move a bit closer and all of a sudden it's chaos. The wild whales and Keiko were way too close to each other, thrashing and splashing in the water. Here's Mark again.

[Listener 1]

We don't know where the wild whales are. Keiko sunk explosively, letting go of a lot of air. If you've ever seen a whale do this, they'll just blow all their air and go down and it's enough to rock a good sized boat. And so there was bubbles coming from everywhere.

[J]

It was an absolute clusterfuck of epic proportions.

[Narrator]

Tracy Carmuzzo was one of the trainers on the walk boat with Mark.

[J]

And all of a sudden this boat was here and this boat was here and the whales were there and it was just this. And who knows what happened underwater from.

[Narrator]

The helicopter, Jeff could see what had happened. Keiko had split and I could just.

[Jeff Foster]

About see how big his eyes were when he started porpoising across the water and trying to get out of there.

[J]

It just was a disaster. And when Keiko went one direction and the whales went the other and he just was gone.

[Narrator]

Gone? Yes, they had a tracker on him. Unfortunately, it only worked if Keiko was close enough to pick up a signal and he was way out of range. Just like that, the world's most famous whale was gone. So what now? It depended on how you interpreted what had just happened. Maybe the boats corralled Keiko and the whales too close to each other and. And Keiko responded to a chaotic situation, swimming away out of fear. Or maybe you believe that by swimming away, Keiko had made his choice wildness, which would be a thrilling prospect. Of course, Project manager Charles Vinick told me Lanny Cornell was so convinced of this, he even called some of the board members to share the news, called.

[Charles Vinick]

Board members and said things to anyone really well. And Keiko was on his own. And this is, you know, we should declare victory, and this is where we are. I don't think his words were declare victory, but his words were that, you know, Keiko has gone. But I think it felt premature to almost everyone.

[J]

No, he's not. He's not with Wales.

[Narrator]

This is Tracy again.

[J]

He's not frol.

[Podcast Host]

He's.

[J]

Again, he's not blowing rainbows and going off. You know, it's. I was like, no, that he's traumatized.

[Narrator]

And so a search party, including a boat and a helicopter, goes off to find Keiko. Mark and a few others spend hours looking. The radio transmitter on Keiko's dorsal fin pings when you get close enough, and eventually their antenna picks up a signal. When he surfaces, they see that Keiko is alone. Not with wild whales, just alone and in terrible shape.

[Listener 1]

His eyes were just bugged out of his head. I have never, never before and never since seen a killer whale's eyes that big. And he didn't look like. He just did not look like himself. He looked. It's impossible to know the cognitive state of an animal. They can't talk to you. But if I didn't know better, I would say he was just so wigged out.

[Narrator]

He was incoherent, which is a kind of wildness. Sure. Just not the kind anyone had hoped for, and probably not the kind of wildness that would help Keiko much at all.

[Listener 1]

I was furious. I was furious because I could see what we had done to him, and I knew that we. That it was predictable. We had done. We, as a group, had done precisely what every protocol we had outlined set out to avoid. We had made it an absolutely traumatic learning event. And, you know, memory. Memory gets recorded in the nervous system. So we couldn't have done a better job at upending the entire reintroduction protocol and process that we had spent 10 months building up to.

[Narrator]

Mark and his crew try to get Keiko to follow the boat back to the bay pen, but every time they move, he falls behind. By this point, it's nighttime, or at least that summer half light that passes for night in Iceland. Keiko, seemingly exhausted from swimming so far so fast, can't keep up, no matter how slow they go, no matter how many breaks they give him. So finally, they give up for the night.

[Listener 1]

We all just kind of found a place on the boat, and we're going to catch some shut eye and give Keiko a chance to rest. And we could hear his breathing, his blows near the boat. And I don't remember how long we stayed like that. As long as we felt comfortable, I think for a few hours maybe.

[Narrator]

Eventually they start up again and slowly make it back to the Beipen to rest. For Mark, Robin and Tom, that was essentially that the end of their association with the project. They saw Keiko was traumatized by the botched introduction. He'd been pushed too far, too fast, and to stay would have meant being okay with more encounters, no matter the cost to Keiko. And so within a few weeks they were on flights back to the US but there was another way to look at all this. Being too protective would do Keiko no favors. He was never going to make it unless he was pushed, and those who chose to stay in Iceland were going to have to be okay with pushing him. That's on the next episode of the Good Whale. On him.

[Listener 1]

Whales are right on him.

[Narrator]

Us training him to be a wild.

[Listener 1]

Killer whale is a little ludicrous.

[Tom Sanders]

He would be trained, but not by.

[Narrator]

Us, by the other whales. But at some moments I was wondering how much, when is too much, how much this whale suffer, you know?

[Jeff Foster]

You know, I didn't sign on board to watch this animal starve to death.

[Narrator]

New York Times All Access and Audio subscribers can binge all episodes of the Good Whale right now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Just head to the link in our show notes and subscribe. Or if you're already a subscriber to the Times, link your account. Sign up for our newsletter where this week you can see photos of Keiko's Bay pen and its stunningly dramatic location in ICELAND. Go to nytimes.com serial newsletter the goodwill is written by me, Daniel Alarcon and reported by me and Katie Mingle. The show is produced by Katie and Alyssa Shipp. Jen Guerra is our editor. Additional editing from Julie Snyder and Ira Glass. Sound design, music supervision and mixing by Phoebe Wang. The original score for the Good Whale comes from La Chica and Osman. Our theme music is by Nick Thorburn and additional music from Matt McGinley. Research and fact checking by Jane Ackerman with help from Ben Phelan. Tracking direction by Elna Baker. Susan Wesling is our standards editor. Legal review from Alameen Sumar and Simone Prokas. Carlos Lopez Estrada is a contributing editor on the series. The supervising producer for Serial Productions is indeed Chubu. Mac Miller is the executive assistant for Serial. Liz Davis Moore is the senior operations manager. Special thanks this week to Anna Marcibel Clausen, Catherine Henley, Michael Parks, Robin Baird, Howard Garrett, Craig McCaw, Kelly Reed, Jim Horton and Greg Schorr. The Good Whale is from Serial Productions and the New York Times.