Episode 6: The Last Winter

Summary

Episode Summary: "The Last Winter" – The Good Whale

The Good Whale, a collaboration between Serial Productions and The New York Times, delves into the poignant journey of Keiko, the orca who captured hearts worldwide as the star of the Free Willy movies. Episode 6, titled "The Last Winter," serves as the final chapter of this decade-long experiment to rewild Keiko and grant him the freedom he longed for. This detailed summary encapsulates the episode's key points, discussions, insights, and emotional conclusions.

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1. Revisiting Keiko's Early Freedom

The episode opens with Howard Nesig recounting a formative summer experience that highlights Keiko's extraordinary journey towards freedom.

Howard Nesig shares:

"It was the first day of September 2002, and a 13-year-old boy named Howard Nesig was spending the waning days of summer with his family at their seaside cabin on the Norwegian coast..." (00:28)

During this idyllic summer at a Norwegian fjord, Keiko unexpectedly arrives, following Howard's family without menace. Unlike his previous life in captivity, Keiko exhibits a calm demeanor, akin to a friendly stray dog, seeking companionship.

2. The Initial Encounter and Connection

Howard describes the profound moment when he directly interacts with Keiko, emphasizing the bond that forms between human and orca.

Howard Nesig reflects:

"He was just outside our cabin in the ocean there, and he was lying and making these sounds. He was crying for either attention or for loneliness or just to have company, I guess. So I went out and stayed by him." (03:44)

This intimate encounter symbolizes the hope that Keiko can transition from captivity to a free life in the wild, setting the stage for the ambitious rewilding project undertaken by experts and enthusiasts.

3. The CARE Team's Intervention

As news of Keiko's presence spreads, Colin and Fernando, key members of the CARE (Cetacean Awareness and Rehabilitation Effort) team, embark on a mission to monitor and assist Keiko's integration into the wild.

Colin narrates:

"We kept about a mile away and we're just trying to get some pictures of him and video of him again to prove that he was fat and healthy. And we managed to do that." (07:13)

Their initial observations confirm Keiko's good health, providing a glimmer of optimism. However, the situation soon escalates as media attention turns the serene fjord into a chaotic spectacle.

4. The Onslaught of Media and Tourists

Keiko's newfound freedom attracts torrents of media and tourists, overwhelming the orca and disrupting his acclimation to the wild.

Topa, a member of the team, explains:

"There were boats all over the place where people were trying to either go and swim with him, trying to pet him." (11:25)

This influx leads to Keiko exhibiting signs of distress, retreating from the crowds and avoiding close interactions. The team grapples with managing the delicate balance between allowing Keiko freedom and ensuring his well-being amid overwhelming human interest.

5. Life in Taknes Bay: A Temporary Refuge

To mitigate the chaos, the CARE team relocates Keiko to a more secluded bay, Taknes, intending to provide a peaceful environment until spring.

The episode paints a serene picture of life in Taknes Bay:

Colin reflects:

"I remember in the winter when pitch black and all the phosphorescence were lighting up and you could see this glowing outline of an orca." (15:04)

Here, Keiko experiences a semblance of free life, engaging in natural behaviors like rubbing against kelp and occasionally displaying wild instincts, such as attempting to catch a seagull. The team's daily routine involves feeding, interacting, and monitoring Keiko's health, fostering a tranquil coexistence.

6. The Unforeseen Tragedy: Keiko's Illness and Death

As winter progresses, an unexpected turn of events leads to the heartbreaking demise of Keiko. The team faces challenges in administering necessary medical treatment as Keiko becomes increasingly isolated and unresponsive.

Franklin, a local Norwegian farmer assisting the team, recounts:

"He was not keeping up with the boat. And we got a little bit like, okay, there is something wrong." (23:21)

Despite their efforts to treat Keiko's infection, his health deteriorates rapidly. The situation becomes dire as Keiko eventually beaches himself, leading to his untimely death.

7. Final Farewells and Reflections

In the aftermath of Keiko's passing, the team confronts both logistical challenges and emotional fallout. They discreetly bury Keiko to preserve his dignity, evading pervasive media presence to honor his memory privately.

Topa shares the emotional moment:

"It was really, really weird. I mean, making this huge hole. And it was snowing, it was cold. And then dragging Keiko around the bay... very surreal and sad moment." (29:46)

Colin expresses the profound sense of loss:

"An emptiness, like it was the end of the project. It was the end of Keiko. It was the end of our… It was the end." (31:36)

8. Evaluating the Experiment's Legacy

Post-Keiko's death, the episode delves into the ethical and emotional debates surrounding the rewilding experiment. Questions arise about whether the effort served Keiko's best interests or was more about symbolizing hope for orca liberation.

Dave Phillips, founder of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, defends the project's integrity:

"We wanted to see how far he could go. Right. We wanted to see how far he could go." (32:58)

The narrative explores differing perspectives on Keiko's legacy, acknowledging both the educational impact and the personal connections forged through his journey. The episode concludes by contemplating whether granting Keiko freedom, despite its tragic end, was a worthwhile endeavor that broadened public understanding and compassion for marine life.

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Conclusion

The Last Winter serves as a poignant closure to Keiko's story, intertwining personal anecdotes, expert insights, and emotional reflections. It underscores the complexities of rewilding a captive orca, balancing human intentions with an animal's intrinsic needs. Through Keiko's narrative, the episode invites listeners to ponder broader themes of freedom, captivity, and the ethical responsibilities humans bear towards intelligent marine creatures.

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Notable Quotes:

• Howard Nesig:

  "What would Keiko have traded the life he had, those four weeks of freedom and the richness of those years in the Atlantic, feeling the currents and listening to the sea for a longer, safer, but more sterile life in a tank under human care?" (33:30)

• Topa:

  "I remembered,woken up at night just to listen. Okay, can I hear him? Yes, he's down there. It's okay." (15:25)

These quotes encapsulate the emotional and ethical dilemmas faced by Keiko's caretakers, highlighting the profound connections and difficult decisions inherent in the rewilding process.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

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[Howard Nesig]

It was the first day of September 2002, and a 13 year old boy named Howard Nesig was spending the waning days of summer with his family at their seaside cabin on the Norwegian coast. They lived most of the year on a farm an hour away, but he loved these summers. There might be 15 people staying there at any one time. His extended family, his uncles, aunts and cousins. And there was always something to do, someone to hang out with. They'd go fishing, biking, swimming. They'd catch crabs right at the shoreline, pull them from the traps and boil them, cracking the shells open against the rock and eating them fresh. One afternoon, his dad and sister took their small boat to go out fishing, while Howard stayed behind with his mom. When his sister and dad came back, Howard could hear them shouting, trying to get his attention.

[Narrator]

So we got down on this dock and we just what's going on? And then we saw that, that they had something beside the boat in the ocean there.

[Howard Nesig]

That something was a killer whale. Howard's dad explained that the beast had come up beside their little boat, just popped up out of the water. And yeah, they were scared. The animal was enormous. But when they tried to get away, he followed. And not in a menacing way. They pointed their boat toward home, and the strange killer whale simply swam alongside calmly, like a stray dog, just happy for some company. It was Keiko, of course. By this point, he'd been gone for four weeks, had made his way from Iceland to this tiny seaside town in Norway without any human help. And now here he was, nonchalantly doing just what he'd been trained to do for years. Follow a boat. At the dock, Howard was enthralled. He'd never encountered an animal this big, this. This close. He doesn't even remember being afraid. Nor did he stop to think too much about what happened next. He had to get near this animal. And so, just like that, he jumped in the water and found himself swimming with this strange but apparently friendly killer whale. Swimming so close he could touch him.

[Narrator]

It was not like Touching a fish, it was harder, but more, you call it smooth. Smoother and harder than a fish. And I remember holding my hand over his breathing hole or when he blow, when he blew air out, it was like.

[Howard Nesig]

And all that day, Keiko was theirs. Just Howard, his family, A handful of neighbors, their kids, and the cold peaceful waters of a Norwegian fjord. A quiet, out of the way place suddenly made electric by the presence of a friendly killer whale. The pictures of that long summer day are pretty incredible. Howard and one of the neighbor kids in their swim trunks clamber onto Keiko's back as if this 9,000 pound creature were a plaything, an oversized beach ball or a giant black and white floaty. Keiko doesn't seem to mind, never strays too far or shows any inclination to leave. Quite the contrary, he lets himself be scratched, moving through the water while the children laugh and the sun tilts ever so slightly toward night. Later, when Howard was trying to sleep, he lay in bed just listening. His window was right by his bed and he could hear the whale, hear Keiko.

[Narrator]

He was just outside our cabin in the ocean there, and he was lying and making these sounds. He was crying for either attention or for loneliness or just to have company, I guess. So I went out and stayed by him.

[Howard Nesig]

Howard went out alone, sat on some rocks near the water, Keiko bobbing alongside, calm. Now it was just Keiko and Howard together on a Norwegian summer night. A 13 year old boy and a strangely placid orca who seemed not to want to be alone. Like a scene from the movie that started all this. Only quieter in the ocean and real. That quiet was about to be interrupted, of course, because even here in such a remote part of the world, Keiko's fame mattered. For the moment, his presence was a secret. But that couldn't last for long. From Serial Productions and the New York Times, this is the final episode of the Good Whale. I'm Daniel Alarcon. Foreign.

[Podcast Host]

This podcast is brought to you by Apple Pay. When you've got a gift list to finish, the last thing you want to do is take out your wallet a million times. Instead, pay the Apple way. With Apple Pay, you can pay with a phone you're already holding. Just double click, smile at face id, tap and you're done. The people in line behind you will thank you. 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.

[Howard Nesig]

I gave my brother a New York Times subscription. She sent me a year long subscription, so I have access to all the games.

[Fernando]

We'll do Wordle mini spelling bee.

[Howard Nesig]

It has given us a personal connection. We exchange articles and so having read.

[Podcast Host]

The same article, we can discuss it.

[Howard Nesig]

The coverage, the options, not just news.

[Colin]

Such a diversified disc.

[Podcast Host]

I was really excited to give him.

[Topa]

A New York Times cooking subscription so.

[Podcast Host]

That we could share recipes and we even just shared a recipe the other day.

[Howard Nesig]

The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. You have all of that information at your fingertips. It enriches our relationship, broadening our horizons. It was such a cool and thoughtful gift. We're reading the same stuff, we're making.

[Colin]

The same food, we're on the same page.

[Dave Phillips]

Connect even more with someone you care about.

[Podcast Host]

Learn more about giving a New York.

[Howard Nesig]

Times subscription as a [e-mail] gift get.

[Dave Phillips]

A special rate if you act before December 26th.

[Howard Nesig]

A few days before Keiko showed up outside Howard's cabin, his caretakers had gotten a ping telling them their whale was just off the coast of Norway. By that point, Keiko had been gone nearly four weeks, and they'd been keeping tabs on him via a satellite tracker at attached to his dorsal fin. A few times a day, it sent them a signal, a little blip popping up on a screen moving steadily east. They'd known approximately where he was, but they hadn't known where he was heading or whether he was with a pod. They hadn't known if he was eating, if he was healthy, if he was sick. Now, with his ping telling them that Keiko was near the coast, Colin and Fernando, two of the main members of the team, flew from Iceland to Norway and chartered a boat to go out and check on Keiko. Stealthily.

[Colin]

We kept about a mile away and we're just trying to get some pictures of him and video of him again to prove that he was fat and healthy. And we managed to do that. He was out in these little islands off the coast, just rubbing himself in the kelp fronds, which was a relief.

[Howard Nesig]

Keiko was alone, which isn't exactly typical for wild whales. Orcas mostly travel in pods. But he seemed totally fine, content, and from all appearances, healthy. Colin called Dave Phillips of the Free Willy Keiko foundation back in California to tell him the news.

[Colin]

Well, I was describing his condition and so on and what we were observing. And I remember Dave saying something like, well, what's he doing now? And I said, I don't know, he's on a long dive and then he spy up next to the boat just after that, and My knees just buckled and I fell to the deck trying to hide. And I said to Dave, I said, damn it, I just got busted. And he says, what's he doing now? And I said, well, I don't know. I'm lying on the deck of the boat.

[Howard Nesig]

Colin was hiding, and he had to, because if Keiko was wild, if he was free, the last thing they wanted to do was interfere.

[Fernando]

I was expecting that as soon as he saw Colin, he will just stick around and he will not leave the boat. This is Fernando, but we checked him, we took some photos of him, and then we went below decks and he just swam away. He didn't follow us. I don't remember if he swam away or we swam away, but he didn't follow us.

[Howard Nesig]

And just that fact that Keiko didn't follow the boat was reassuring, as was his appearance.

[Fernando]

It was surprisingly good how good he was looking. Also, the way he was swimming, it was a good surprise to see that he was not miserable. He was not thin, he was not emaciated. It didn't look like we needed to rescue him right there and then.

[Howard Nesig]

In other words, they'd done it. Keiko had done it. Just think about that. Keik. Keiko, who'd spent his formative years in a small pool in a Mexican amusement park, had just swum 1,000 miles on his own. Now here he was, serenely exploring the beautiful coast of Norway, rolling and splashing in the kelp fronds. To Colin and Fernando, he didn't seem to have lost any weight. So all that training, all that hard work had paid off. And then a few days later, Fernando and Colin get a call.

[Colin]

Somebody called us and says, you better turn on the tv.

[Howard Nesig]

Keiko, star of the Free Willy movies, has taken up residence in the waters of western Norway and is frolicking in the fjords with adoring children, a real treat for his unsuspecting host.

[Topa]

But those who know Keiko best worry he's swimming right into trouble.

[Howard Nesig]

Sometime after Colin and Fernando saw Keiko, he ended up at Howard's cabin. And someone there had alerted the media. It was no longer the quiet scene in the fjord with Keiko and a few curious kids. Now it was everyone. Buses full of tourists coming from all over to see this whale.

[Topa]

Got his face up.

[Howard Nesig]

Now where is he? He's got his face up by the white boat. What Colin and Fernando describe is basically chaos. Kids banging on the side of boats, trying to get Keiko's attention, calling out to him. Keiko. Keiko. People swimming toward him. Wanting to pet him, throwing him fishing. And at first, Keiko, always the good boy, tried to keep up, swimming this way and that to whoever was calling him. But if it seemed like Keiko was basking in the attention, that didn't last long. After a few days of this, to Colin and Fernando, at least Keiko seemed scared. They say he started spending more and more time hiding from people, inactive, floating between boats.

[Colin]

It was tragic. I was. I mean, I was beyond pissed off. I was asking people, please stay away. They basically just said, you don't have any rights in our country. And they'd just swim right past me.

[Howard Nesig]

Topa, who'd worked with the CARE team in Iceland, flew over to try to help.

[Topa]

There were some days, like where I had just. I was just sitting by our little floating dock and literally just keeping Keiko with me because there were boats all over the place where people were trying to either go and swim with him, trying to pet him. I think Keiko was overwhelmed too. Even if he likes the attention, this was too much.

[Howard Nesig]

What did all this mean? Four weeks at sea, and at the first opportunity, Keiko had swum right toward humans. Did this mean the experiment had failed? Was it a sign that Keiko didn't want to or couldn't live on his own in the ocean? A lot of his former trainers said they didn't believe Keiko had hunted for food on his journey. To them, Keiko was probably hungry, scared, and ultimately happy to be reunited with humans. Dave Phillips rejects that interpretation. He believes Keiko did eat while he was alone. Shortly after Keiko arrived in Norway, Dave spoke to the press and his positive outlook was clear. Sure, maybe Keiko had swum a thousand miles only to end up back with humans, but dammit, he'd swum 1,000 miles and survived.

[Dave Phillips]

Oh, I'm. I'm very excited to see him looking so good. He looks.

[Howard Nesig]

He looks.

[Dave Phillips]

He looks big. He's been on a big journey. I never thought I'd see him in Norway. It's an incredible voyage for an incredible animal.

[Howard Nesig]

For Dave, Keiko showing up in Norway was not the result of some binary choice between humans or the ocean. Dave thinks it's totally unsurprising that as Keiko neared the shore, a shore where people lived, that he would be drawn to that. Of course he would. He had a lifetime of memories with humans swirling around his giant orca brain, and a lot of them were nice memories.

[Dave Phillips]

It's certainly not a surprise that an orc whale that spent all that time is going to have some reaction, right? Does that mean that he's so acculturated that he's just impossible for him to live in the wild? Not at all.

[Howard Nesig]

As far as the foundation was concerned, Keiko showing up in Norway was just another step in the larger project. For Keiko to be ultimately truly free, they just needed to figure out what to do next. It took a few weeks to make a plan for Keiko. Iceland was a thousand miles away, too far to return, especially with winter approaching. So the CARE team decided to keep Keiko in Norway for a while, move him up to a more isolated bay on the coast, away from the hordes of people and tourists. And boats basically babysit him until the winter was over. Then they could take him back out into the ocean to meet more wild whales. Fernando left the project for another job, but Colin and Topa both volunteered to stay. The two of them moved up the coast to a new bay, along with Keiko, of course, who swam alongside the boat, following his human friends to yet another home. The way Colin and Topa describe this new life, it's almost like a fairy tale. They moved into a cute red cottage up on a hill, farms on either side, apple trees. They were so excited that when they first arrived, Topa literally picked Colin up and carried him over the threshold of the house and just down the hill, a friendly orca swam in what was basically their front yard, a Norwegian bay called Taknes. Even as winter came and the cold blew in and the endless days of summer became the endless nights of winter, the place maintained an otherworldly beauty.

[Colin]

I remember in the winter when pitch black and all the phosphorescence were lighting up and you could see this glowing outline of an orca. Every time he'd move a fin or, you know, his body, it would just light up in green. So you're just seeing the silhouette of a green orca.

[Howard Nesig]

And there was quiet, so much quiet. Once in a while, there was a car passing or a couple of cows mooing, but beyond that, there was nothing. Just the sound of a whale out in the bay, breathing.

[Topa]

I mean, I remember I woke up at night just to listen. Okay, can I hear him? Yes, he's down there. It's okay.

[Howard Nesig]

Their location, Taknes Bay, was chosen in large part because wild orca pods tend to swim by in the spring. The thinking was the next time Keiko's wild brethren were in the area, Kollen and Topa could coax him out to sea. And while the goal for this time was still to rewild Keiko, get him in shape for when the next pod of orcas visited, the actual vibe of the place was more laid back. I mean, if life in Oregon was a workout with a personal trainer and Iceland was boot camp, Norway was a meditation retreat, the Free Willikeo project unplugged. The daily routine looked something like this. Colin and Topa would take turns making breakfast for one another and then take the boat out for a walk with Keiko. Every couple of weeks, Colin would drive the 60 miles or so along the Atlantic road to pick up food for Keiko herring from a fish processing plant. Morning walks were sometimes followed by late night hangouts on the dock.

[Topa]

I loved going down late in the evenings, go down to the, to the floating dock and Keiko was there and just give him a good body scratch just there in the moonlight. Me laying on the dock scratching a killer whale. That was really, really moments that I treasure because then it was just me and him and he was just moving back and forth where he would like to get the scratch and I was just scratching and just clearing my mind. It was wonderful.

[Howard Nesig]

It wasn't like Keiko was completely domesticated. It was more like a midway point between freedom and captivity where he could be wild at his own pace.

[Topa]

And I remember one day, it was when I was feeding Keiko and there was this seagull came and he got the herring and Keiko came just underneath, just on full force and just grabbed the seagull and the herring and then went down again. And I was, oh my God, did he just eat a seagull? Like Keiko is starting to be wild. And then after a little while it was just like a cartoon. He just came up and just spit the seagull out.

[Howard Nesig]

For a while. Keiko's new bay had no net, which meant he could come and go as he pleased. And he did. There was a salmon farm nearby where Keiko was definitely not welcome, though of course he'd go anyway. So Colin and Topa would have to get in the boat and go fetch Keiko sometimes in the middle of the night, lead him back to their bay. It's hard to say, of course, how Keiko felt about this time. Did he seem happy? Colin and Topa thought so, for the most part. From time to time, Keiko would have these thrashing spells, tantrums really, and sometimes was in such a bad mood that Colin felt it was dangerous to get in the water with him. But this was only occasionally and on the whole, Keiko seemed fine, seemed to enjoy being there. And in any case, this arrangement was only supposed to Be temporary. When spring came, the hope was that Keiko would swim off with wild orcas. But they didn't come. Locals said this hadn't happened in recent memory with no whales for Keiko to swim off with. One winter in Taknas became two and Colin says it started to feel like maybe this was it.

[Colin]

I thought that was probably our lot in life was just to hang out there with him now.

[Howard Nesig]

How did you feel about that?

[Colin]

I was okay with that. You know, it's a pristine environment. He had us, we had him. You know, if that was going to be his so called retirement, then, well, great.

[Howard Nesig]

What if this version of the movie didn't end with Keiko swimming off into the sunset? What if instead he simply faded from view, was freed not from humans altogether, but at least from their expectations. Could we maybe live with that? A few years earlier, Warner Brothers had made a Free Willy sequel, Free Willy 2 the Adventure Home. In it, Willy is reunited with his family, with his mom and siblings. There's an exploding Liberian oil tanker, a visit from his old friend Jesse. Lots of action. I'll spare you the details, but maybe a more realistic sequel could be this. Willy jumps over the barrier, swims for a while, maybe even a thousand miles. He finds himself all alone in the vastness of the ocean. And then miraculously, he sees the faces of the people who loved him. He returns to them. The orphan whale gets a mom, a dad, a surrogate human family. Sure, he swims off now and then to steal salmon from the farm up the coast, but mostly it's a quiet kind of life filled with love and affection and sustenance. The true ending to his story. In December 2003, 15 months after arriving in Norway, Colin went on vacation. The thing about living at work is that you never really have time off. Topa had already taken her hard earned break and now it was Colin's turn. His first vacation since joining the project nearly two years before.

[Colin]

You know, I'm not a sit on the beach kind of guy, but that's what I needed. I needed to vacation. I wanted to go and sit on a beach under a tree and do nothing, you know, and so I went to a, which I would never do again, but an all inclusive resort in Mexico. And I just sat myself under a palm tree. Basically.

[Howard Nesig]

He'd planned for a month off, including 10 days at a Mexican resort. No interruptions, no cell service. And then one day I come back.

[Colin]

To the room and there's a little light blinking on my telephone and voice message said, you better phone your office.

[Howard Nesig]

When he was finally able to get hold of someone, they told him the news. Keiko was dead. We'll be right back.

[Podcast Host]

This podcast is brought to you by Apple Pay. When you've got a gift list to finish, the last thing you want to do is take out your wallet a million times. Instead, pay the Apple way. With Apple Pay, you can pay with the phone you're already holding. Just double click, smile at face ID tap and you're done. The people in line behind you will thank you. 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.

[Howard Nesig]

Hey, it's John Chase and Mario Ihara.

[Dave Phillips]

From Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from.

[Howard Nesig]

The New York Times.

[Dave Phillips]

Mari it is gift giving time, John.

[Podcast Host]

We have over 40 gift guides like.

[Howard Nesig]

Gifts for people who have everything on that list. I particularly love the self watering planter.

[Dave Phillips]

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 else at nytimes.com holidayguide.

[Howard Nesig]

Keiko's death and the illness that precipitated it took his care team by surprise. Tulpa was there, along with a couple of others, including a local Norwegian farmer named Franklin, who joined the team as a kind of de facto translator and was now one of Keiko's main caretakers. This is how it happened. A few days after Colin left for vacation, Frank took Keiko out on one of his boat walks and he noticed Keiko seemed slow.

[Franklin]

He was not keeping up with the boat. And we got a little bit like, okay, there is something wrong.

[Howard Nesig]

A day passed and then another, and Frank and Topa could clearly see that not only was Keiko not improving, he was getting worse.

[Topa]

He was kind of starting to distant himself a little bit, which is a clear sign that there was something that was not right. And then he just got sick. Very, very fast. His breath was starting to smell. And then like he was when he was swimming, he just started to tilt. Well, he was just. How should I say it? He was not swimming straight. He was just leaning.

[Howard Nesig]

By this point, they knew Keiko had an infection. One of the trainers we spoke to told us Keiko was prone to these episodes, a seasonal sort of thing. But an infection didn't necessarily have to be a death sentence so long as Keiko got antibiotics. Normally they'd give him these meds by mixing them in with his frozen herring, but Frank said this time Keiko had no interest in eating he picked up.

[Franklin]

The herring and he was swimming with the herring in his mouth for hours, just swimming with the herring and around the bay and slowly. And then he just dropped it and we was not able to feed him. So then we started to, I wouldn't say panic, but we started to realize that, okay, this. If we can't get him medicine, there's.

[Howard Nesig]

Just one option, an injection. If Keiko would just swim close enough, they could inject him with antibiotics.

[Franklin]

Unfortunately, he was not willing to get close to us. This is just speculation, but if you ask me, I have a feeling that he was tired. Like, I'm done.

[Howard Nesig]

Later, some of Keiko's former trainers would accuse this crew of being out of their depth, of not recognizing the warning signs soon enough and not knowing how to handle the infection once they had. And it's true, Frank had never worked with orcas before. Topa, while close to Keiko, wasn't trained to be in the water with him and wasn't an orca trainer or specialist either. Colin was the one who knew the most about orcas and maybe he could have done something, but he was unreachable. His cell wasn't working in Mexico. Topa remembers being desperate to reach him, leaving him increasingly panicked voicemails.

[Topa]

I called him million times because I really needed to talk to him and I just hoped that he would end up getting signals somewhere so he could kind of reach. So I was just giving him. I was just describing in details how Keiko was reacting and if he could give me some feedback, if he knew some tricks that I could do to kind of get medicine into him and just. I needed someone to reflect on what I was observing and seeing.

[Howard Nesig]

What she was seeing was frightening. A suddenly weak killer whale who appeared to be deteriorating. Topa called Lenny Cornell, Keiko's vet, who was based in California, and he was blunt. Prepare for the worst, she remembers him saying. So they did.

[Franklin]

It was Friday evening, around 5:00. We were listening to him all the time. It was like pitch dark, so we couldn't see anything. But from the house, which was very close to the bay, we always could hear that he was breathing. But at this time, we. We hadn't heard his breathing for 10, 15 minutes. Either he has passed or he has been gone. He is gone. When we came down, he had beached himself. He has been well. He swam up to the shore and like lay down because it's not very unusual because he was drowning, so he was trying to avoid drowning. I remember that I picked on his eye because Usually that is something that he reacts if you touch his eye, but he didn't react. So we realized that it's over.

[Howard Nesig]

The decade long science experiment that had captivated millions. This moonshot of an idea to rewild a captive whale was finished. The press release about Keiko's passing went out at four in the morning, Norwegian time. By dinner time stateside, it was all over the news.

[Topa]

It was a grand experiment, the release.

[Howard Nesig]

Of a captive killer whale.

[Topa]

Tonight, the beloved Keiko, Hollywood's Free Willy, is gone. Officials in Norway say Keiko, the killer whale made famous by the Free Willy movies, has died at the age of 27.

[Howard Nesig]

In the few hours before the press were sure to descend on their little bae, Frank and Topa hung tarps around Keiko's body so there could be no pictures of the dead celebrity. Something Frank says the Free Willy Keiko foundation wanted them to prevent at all costs.

[Franklin]

We wanted to have an image of him as like a Free Willy movie, like a whale that was full of life and an icon in a way.

[Howard Nesig]

The crew could only hide the whale for so long, though. Something had to be done with Keiko's body. Ocean burial was out of the question. His body might bloat and float back to shore. Or they'd have to cut him open and sink him, which wouldn't be great for optics. They felt like they had to bury him on land, which wasn't exactly an easy thing to pull off, not with journalists on sight, not if your goal was to preserve Keiko's privacy. But with the international media camped out waiting to take pictures of Keiko's lifeless body, the weather intervened. A snowstorm blew in. So the journalists left for the night seeking shelter. And that's when Frank sprang into action. He called a local guy he knew who owned an excavator.

[Franklin]

And in two hours he was there with his tractor and starting to dig the hole.

[Topa]

It was really, really weird. I mean, making this huge hole. And it was snowing, it was cold. And then dragging Keiko around the bay, well, around the dock and up to the grave. It was very surreal and sad moment and I even get emotional talking about it now. The grave was huge, just down by the coastline, what, seven meters long and of course very deep. And it wept as beautifully as it as possible, actually. So he just swooped into his grave and there he is sleeping.

[Howard Nesig]

They all stood by the side of the grave for a moment in silence, each of them saying goodbye in their own way. No speeches, just quiet. The next morning when the sun came up, and the storm had passed. The journalist returned to the beach only to find that Keiko had vanished. Gone were the tarps in the tracks. Nothing left to prove that Keiko had been there at all. Just a few inches of unblemished snow covering everything. His last act, then, orchestrated by humans, was to disappear, to exit the stage in darkness. Now that it was over, there was suddenly so much to do. The house had to be closed up, their lives packed away. Equipment, everything from tracking gear to fish buckets, had to be sold or donated. Topa and Colin's happy Norwegian idol had come to an end because Keiko, who'd held them all together, was gone. Colin told us. It was all so sad and grim and sudden.

[Colin]

An emptiness, like it was the end of the project. It was the end of Keiko. It was the end of our. Our time in Norway together. It was the end of our jobs. It was the end. It was just the end.

[Howard Nesig]

He'd spent nearly two years of his life with Keiko, watched this orca get stronger and wilder and more daring. 1,000 miles on his own, and now it was all over. Which was devastating, of course. But in an odd way, it was also almost a relief.

[Colin]

All these injustices he'd faced since being captured in Iceland when he was 2, at least everything, whether we were doing the right thing by him or not, I could only imagine we were. But never being able to fully answer the question, what is best for Keiko, truly best for him, given what his life has been like up to this point? There would always be that question, are we doing the right thing? And now that he had passed away, at least everything was over and you didn't have to ask that question anymore.

[Howard Nesig]

But lots of people were and still are asking that question, or a version of it. What was best for Keiko? I've been struggling with that, too, trying to understand if the motivation behind all this was the welfare of Keiko the individual orca, or the success of Keiko the symbol. I asked Dave Phillips and he reframed it. Like, if we didn't do the right thing, then tell me, where would you have stopped?

[Dave Phillips]

We wanted to see how far he could go. Right. We wanted to see how far he could go.

[Howard Nesig]

So would you have stopped in Mexico? Dave asked me where Keiko was, putting on three shows a day in a warmish pool he'd long since outgrown. That one's easy. No, definitely not.

[Dave Phillips]

Or in Oregon. We moved him to Oregon. He gained weight. He got his health back. He started echolocating. Would you just Leave him there in a concrete tank in Oregon?

[Howard Nesig]

I wouldn't have, I don't think. But there are reasonable people who might claim that wouldn't have been so bad. You could argue he served an educational purpose there, capturing the imagination of countless children in a pool specially designed for him. Again, I wouldn't have left him there, but I can see the argument.

[Dave Phillips]

Well, that's a choice we made the choice to bring him to a. A net pen area in Iceland, in his home waters. We could have left him there. Would you have left him there in a sea pen?

[Howard Nesig]

To be honest, yeah, I think I might have. He was safe. He was strong. He'd come such a long way by that point, and he was in the ocean. Why wasn't that enough? Because you can always go further. I know the original value proposition of this project was that Keiko would be an ambassador for the sea, a character you could point to and love who would, in turn, make you care about the ocean and all its wild creatures. That was the idea that convinced Dave to take a chance on Keiko. To take a chance on an orca everyone agreed was a terrible candidate for rewilding. And in a way that worked, A generation of kids learned to think of the ocean differently. We know a lot more about orcas in the Atlantic because Keiko's team studied local pods, searching for one he might be able to join. That wouldn't have happened if he'd stayed in Oregon, if he'd never left his bay pen and never gone free. In any case, they didn't stop at the sea pen, Dave says, because Keiko didn't stop. He never stopped, kept learning, getting stronger, becoming more acclimated to the ocean, being curious about the wild orcas he encountered, even if they may have scared him a little. If he'd stayed in Oregon, they might have caught his infection more quickly and he might have lived longer. But would Keiko have traded the life he had, those four weeks of freedom and the richness of those years in the Atlantic, feeling the currents and listening to the sea for a longer, safer, but more sterile life in a tank under human care? I think the answer to that question might depend on how much Keiko valued the company of humans, the one consistent presence in his life from the moment he was captured around age 2 until he died at around age 27. And all the evidence seems to suggest he did value it a lot, which was maybe why it was so easy to love him and why it was so hard for him to go free. The Good Whales 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 Lachica and Osman. Our theme music is by Nick Thorburn and additional music from Matt McGinley and Daniel Hart. Research and fact checking by Jane Ackerman with help from Ben Phalen. Tracking direction by Elna Baker. Susan Wesling is our standards editor. Legal review from Al Amin Sumar and Simone Prokas. Carlos Lopez Estrada is a contribution 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 a senior operations manager. So many talented people helped us put this series together and for them a huge thanks thank you to Ana Marcibil Clausen. A huge thank you to the staff, especially Pablo Arguelles, Camila Segura, Luis Fernando Vargas, as well as Natalia Sanchez Loaisa and Sarah. The art for our show comes from Denise Nestor, art direction from Pablo Del can, and at the New York Times, a special thanks to Nina Lassom, Brian Rideout, Susan Beachy, Kitty Bennett, Allen De La Carriere, Sheila McNeil, Jack Begg, Jeffrey Miranda, Peter Rentz, Jordan Cohen, Mahima Chablani, Jessica Anderson, Carl de los Santos, Kelly Doe Sue, Jan Z, Victoria Kim, Brad Fischer, Maddie Masielo, Tug Wilson and Sam Dolnick, who's the deputy managing editor of the New York Times. The Good Whale is from Serial Productions and the New York Times.