MY FAVORITE ANIMALS
1977 or '78 Keiko is born in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland.
1979 Keiko is captured and brought to Saedyrasfnid, an Icelandic aquarium.
1982 Marineland in Ontario, Canada purchases Keiko. Began his training there, and performed publicly for the first time. Skin lesions are observed.
1985 Marineland sells Keiko to Reino Aventura, an amusement park in Mexico City, for $350,000. He is 10 feet long.
1992 Warner Bros. goes on location to Reino Aventura, filming Keiko in scenes for Free Willy. The movie portrays a killer whale threatened by unscrupulous amusement park owners but helped to freedom by a young boy.
1993 Free Willy is a surprise box office smash. "Willy" -- Keiko -- becomes an inspiration to millions of people, schoolchildren and adults alike. In November, Life magazine publishes a story revealing that Keiko lives in an inadequate facility where, despite Reino Aventura's best efforts, he suffers chronic health problems. An avalanche of inquiries begins arriving at Warner Bros., appealing to the movie maker to take action on Keiko's behalf.
With Reino Aventura's cooperation, Warner Bros. and film producers Richard Donner and Lauren Shuler-Donner take the first steps toward finding Keiko a better home.
1994 Earth Island Institute, an environmental and marine mammal advocacy group headquartered in San Francisco, agrees to take the lead in the search.
In May, after several false starts with other facilities, Earth Island holds its first tentative discussions with the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. The Aquarium meets four critical criteria: an educational mission; access to an unlimited supply of cold, clean, natural sea water; room to accommodate a huge new pool; and no performing animals. Earth Island's David Phillips, Richard Donner, and representatives of Warner Bros. and an anonymous donor convene at the Aquarium. They like what they find. With a green light from the Oregon Coast Aquarium's board of directors, confidential negotiations begin, and will last for months.
In November the Free Willy Keiko Foundation is formed with $4 million donated by Warner Bros., New Regency Productions, and an anonymous donor. The Foundation's mission is to relocate and rehabilitate Keiko at a new facility it will pay for, with the hope that Keiko can one day be released back into the wild. The Foundation also includes in its mission the intention to operate the facility in the future as a marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation facility.
1995 In February, Reino Aventura and the Free Willy Keiko Foundation jointly announce that the Foundation will donate Keiko to the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, and that Keiko's new $7.3 million rehabilitation facility will be located at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. The Aquarium announces that construction of the new state-of-the-art facility will begin immediately. The McCaw Foundation reveals its status as the anonymous founding donor whose $2 million helped establish the Free Willy Keiko Foundation.
A $1 million commitment soon follows from the Humane Society of the United States. Schoolchildren nationwide begin a series of fundraising events for Keiko, often bringing checks and jugs of coins to the Aquarium in person. Efforts are boosted by international benefit premieres in July, when Warner Bros. releases Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home. In October, Keiko's target arrival date of January 7, 1996 is simultaneously announced in Mexico City and the US.
On November 14, Warner Home Video releases more than six million copies of Free Willy 2 onto the home video market, each one carrying an appeal by the movie's cast members to help Keiko.
In mid-December the pool in Oregon is filled with water for the first time and its life-support systems are started up. At Reino Aventura, Keiko's Mexico City fans continue a series of emotional good-byes.
1996 On January 7, United Parcel Service delivers Keiko to the Newport Municipal Airport. He weighs in at 7,720 pounds and, minutes later, is introduced into his new facility in Newport, where he experiences natural sea water for the first time in 14 years.
By year's end Keiko has gained roughly 1,000 pounds, has only two small areas of skin lesions caused by a papillomavirus, and is markedly more active physically and mentally.
1997 Scientists affiliated with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of California at Santa Cruz begin research at the Foundation facility in Newport. Their work will yield not only data about Keiko’s physiology and vocalization patterns, but about the entire killer whale species.
In May, Keiko's rehabilitation staff begin introducing live fish into his pool on a regular basis, helping Keiko re-learn to eat live fish. Keiko is finally lesion-free for the first time since 1982.
On June 5, 1997, Keiko is lifted from his pool and weighed for the first time since his arrival. He weighs 9,620 lbs. -- an incredible weight gain of 1,900 lbs. in just 18 months. The Foundation staff sets its sights on relocating Keiko to a bay pen in the North Atlantic sometime in 1998.
In July and August, 1997, Keiko suffered from a possible liver ailment, and a respiratory infection that responded promptly and completely to medication.
In August, Keiko was offered live fish to eat for the first time in 18 years. While at first he did not eat them, he hunted and brought them back to his staff with increasing adeptness. At the end of a three-week trial period, he had caught and eaten at least one black cod on his own initiative. Filtration maintenance brought the program to an end until live fish were reintroduced again in February 1998.
1998 In January 1998, following two months of medical examinations that made Keiko the most thoroughly tested cetacean in history, a blue ribbon panel of marine mammal experts concluded that 1) there was no current indication that Keiko was ill; 2) Keiko showed no clinical pathological evidence of chronic deep-seated infection during his residence in Oregon; 3) immunological test results were apparently within known normal parameters; 4) there was no evidence of recent viral challenges to 48 different viruses; 5) Keiko appeared to be exhibiting no abnormal behavior patterns; 6) KeikoÕs only known chronic condition appears to be papillomatosisÑviral warts; and 7) KeikoÕs blood chemistry levels were all in normal range.
In April 1998, Familian Industrial Plastics in Washougal, Washington begin building Keiko's bay pen. Expected completion: June 1998. The pen's components will be shipped to Keiko's bay pen site and assembled there, with the help of local labor.
By April 1998 Keiko was hunting, killing and eating live steelhead trout weighing from three to 12 pounds, eating up to half his daily food this way. He continued to be given thawed, dead herring, squid and capelin at the same time.
