SeaScope 37 - Keiko - Learning to be Wild 

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Thats a clear sign he was stressed from being locked up. Disgusting people!

S H He rly was. My dad was apart of the crew that took care of him in Iceland during the late 90s and early 2000s. He was one of Keiko’s main trainers and would ride, pet, and play with him everyday. He ended up leaving the team in late 2001 because I was about to be born, and Keiko died about a year and a half after my birth. It’s horrible how he died in captivity without any fellow orcas to interact with. They’re very social animals and they get depressed quite easily. Poor guy died a sad and painful death. Atleast he went out as a legend and a symbol for animal rights around the world. Rly wish I coulda met him, even if I was just a baby. I probably could’ve if my dad hadn’t abandoned the job for me (which i’m very thankful for btw). Definitely considering getting a tattoo of him at somepoint

Nicky 88 Ahhh my mistake. Didn’t know he left captivity. Either way, he died a miserable and lonely death. No other orcas would/could go near him cuz he was sick. Also just finding out he died of pneumonia :// I always assumed he just died in Iceland

Ain't shit cute about being in prison

Not cute.....that was one of his stereotypes from being in captivity alone. He gathered his toys up like that also in Reno Adventura because he was so lonely, his toys were his only friends....

@@DomOfSin666 He wasn’t Lonely Before he Died.They Discovered him with a Pod.But it wasn’t his because if it was he would’ve stayed there or his mother rejected him.If it wasn’t his pod he probably joined it And he mated with the other Females then left.

Emily Burns yes he was

Very cute

And he did nothing wrong to be in captivity

@@erindakers8356 that's just how yal do.

@Sarah Arshad VIII-C-A Keiko was constantly bullied around other whales. He never got along with any whales. You think that’s a good life for him? He loved humans and never wanted to be around other whales

he was not really prepared to be on the open sea, that's the reason of his death

@@nriq_ he had a chance more than others get u prick

@@thehopelesshobbit8731 but he's right, I heard that he frantically greeted humans wanting his old life back. Or that he'd commonly stay in people's backyards with oceans. The ocean is big and scary and he wasn't ready for it

“Happy he died a free orca” literally the reason he died was because he was free.

@@porkypig8008 yep

Though Keiko did not survive, those who helped him can all at least take comfort in knowing that, when Keiko died, the whale we once knew as Willy was free.

So sad he didn’t live long . This is why they shouldn’t take the orcas in the first place . Captivity ends up killing these beautiful intelligent mammals.

The others only snap because they aren't being properly cared for. They are being starved, kept imprisoned in tiny tanks that are way to small for them. Etc.

@@WildeMermaid Let's say then that seaworld are the real culprits that the killer whales have this aggressive behavior, fortunately keiko ended up in a place where he was not mistreated and exploited

@@WildeMermaid they are not straved and the pools are 2nd biggest in the world for orcas

problem is that it may be good, but the animal rights activists weren't fond of it. There's a book called Killing Keiko, that exposed that some Animal Rights organizations were obsessed with optics in saving an orca they barely understood that rehabilitating a whale that's been raised in captivity for so long is asking the impossible

Right its insane they set the most friendliest orca free but not the ones that were goig more insane from isolation

He was stolen from his Family! He should never have been in Captivity!!!

No wild animal should be in Captivity , being exploited for $$$$ animal Cruelty!

He was seeking help because he was dying. He died alone because of selfish idealism.

You wanted them to kill Tilikum too? He had a family at SeaWorld and he was not alone, one of his daughters and his grandson Trua lived with him in an good sized pool. There are videos.

@@tessdurberville711 Before those two were able to live with Tilikum he was the victim of severe displacement by Katina, Kalina, and Gudrun. Taima was the only female to really tolerate him for extended periods of time. This is literally written in his SeaWorld profile.

@@itsikabitch9005 ignore Tess they have been all over the comments talking about how releasing Keiko killed him which is inaccurate. They are basically defending captivity.

@@tessdurberville711 yeah the family/kids that he was forced to breed with & seaworld admits to constantly taking his sperm to breed with female killer whales in every single sea world aquarium they owned during his life. Under the guise of “conservation” but in reality it was to have a constant supply of killer whales dependent on humans & cannot be released back into the wild so they could in turn make more millions for the shows they put the whales through.

@@tessdurberville711 good sized pool? The stupidity of your comment (and you) is literally making my brain ache. Jesus fucking christ, humans are so dumb.

I hate people who say, you can't free Orca's becayse Keiko.. We can free them, it will be tough and we'll have to go through trial and error but if we could have someone go out with them everyday and take them to spots where penguins hang out and where seals hang out and teach them how to hunt those types of prey as well as herring, I'm sure they'll do a lot better. We can only learn more and improve.

Gandalf the Tsaagan he was beautiful

He was sick for YEARS in Reno Adventura. He developed a bacterial infection from the constant warm water. Keiko was not the perfect candidate for full release, but at least he was able to make his own decisions at the end...

@@SuperAmzy1 www.amazon.com/Killing-Keiko-Story-Willys-Return/dp/0996077014

@@Cami_lla1 Im pretty sure his immune system got fucked up while in captivity, which made him more prone to catching diseases

He had a beautiful $7m home in Oregon, people who loved him and all the fish he could eat. He should have been allowed to live out his life there!

@@tessdurberville711 He had two of those three things in Norway...

@@tessdurberville711 No hahaha ha

@@tessdurberville711 Oregon was never intended to be a permanent home for him and the only reason the plan would've changed would be profit. This is a plan that was successful only because it was stuck with right through to the end and it's worth trying because of everything we learned. We don't know anything about reintroducing orca to the wild and you can only say what shoulda been done because you have the benefit of knowing the outcome. And does knowing the outcome really show that staying in Oregon would've been better than the pen he lived in in Iceland?

I disagree i feel the pressure to release him lead to a premature death, but doo gooders will be doo gooders, and thats why the world is a mess with telling parents how to dicipline kids, how to deal with colleagues at work, how police are to act etc. They are now trying to do the same with morgan and im glad shes been looked after properly at loro parque and that she is not released as this tragedy will likely repeat itself Its like you having a child, then taking them to the savanah or desert or maybe the alps and saying right off you pop Give me your clothes, everything you have and good luck time to survive You would have to build shelter, know how to heal infections without modern medicine, how to hunt (and yes hunt, as first you would have to catch and kill your meal) or at least know what is poisonous and not from vegitationx how to avade predators, make clothing, how to cook and you would need to kake fire not with matches or lighters hell no thats removed from you, but rather from what nature provides you Lets see how you do Morgan was brought into captivity as she lost her pod and was tpo young to feed her self or know how to hunt and was found half dead, she was nursed to health and later discovered she is deaf and animal rights campaigners chant and campaign to put her in the wild Idiots the lot of them

I feel like if they really took the tine needed keiko would of made it. I dont believe he died from a disease. Keiko still wasnt hunting on his own and still depended on humans. He wasnt ready. He didnt know how to live with a human taking care of him.

@@black_goddess2813 five years wasn't enough, he left with his pod and returned a year later. Where you on the team that helped him hold his breath for 18 minutes not to mention the size growth. Better then in a tank swimming in circles and chewing on paint.

@@Funksinthehouse you must not have paid attention to the eyewitness accounts of people confirming he was alone and continued to look for human companionship. And wow a human taught a whale to hold jis breathe for 18 minutes when he might to be able to last longer than that. And im not gonna give them credit for a "new N better" tank when he wasnt suppose to be in a tank to begin with

@@black_goddess2813 sea pen vs concrete pool. How disgusting that captivity does to cetaceans. Secondly, he traveled for almost a year then he popped up in Norway, of course he is going to trust humans. He was sick with pneumonia!

As well, I agree he should of never been in captivity in the first place. Any cetaceans that is.

He must be a great hero for generations,

Keiko died a whole after he was released

@@aa329809 actually he was living in the ocean in a seapen before his release into the wild, so he got to enjoy the ocean a lot more. Keiko also wasnt the best candidate for release as he did have a love for humans and didnt get along with any pods he encountered while on his 'walks' from his seapen into the open ocean where he could have just, swam off at any point

He literally slowly suffered to death...

spacebug30 he was already sick before they released him he had an illness that couldn’t be cured

spacebug30, Well at least he got to experience some freedom and didn’t die in a tank at SeaWorld!

@Sarah Arshad VIII-C-A It was just activities designed to get him back in shape similar to a person working out at the gym to get him ready for the ocean life, carrying people around was kind of questionable though

Seriously! They are dumb for trying to convince us of any form of freedom

@@czatron Lol what do you mean?

@@jdf9456 I assume the carrying people around thing was to increase his critical thinking, as most of his thinking has been limited to instruction at the aquarium rather than letting him do what he thinks is right

@Sarah Arshad VIII-C-A Keiko was bullied by other whales, he never got along with them. You think that’s a good life for him? That’s pretty cruel

Sepnyte He was happy and healthy in Oregon and should have been allowed to live out his life there. He would only be 44.

Tess d'Urberville Even though Oregon was well-done, no male orca has ever reached 44 in captivity (though Ulises might next year). The odds of that are so unlikely.

@Sarah Arshad VIII-C-A 5 years, actually. Not 1.

@Sarah Arshad VIII-C-A how do you know ? Seriously how ?

He's likely have died around the same time due to things like sunburn and the other health problems he had. You have to look back tho. Was the first captive orca survive? We know what went wrong with keikos release, If we we're to try this again we would need to do it with an orca who has a pod. If Corky was recorded reacting to her pods call that proves they can still understand one and other. Younger orcas like Morgan can be realised. I think her and Ula could be released if we can find her pod. there is no actual evidence to her being deaf and she was captured under weights she was not beached Rescued yes, deaf and beached no.

Your arithmetic is faulty. Two years in Oregon, four years in seapens, one year of "freedom". Freedom is not the "Free Willy" fantasy so many continue to think it is. That is what is truly " crazy".

@@tessdurberville711 Are you delusional? Keiko lived longer when he was released into the wild than he would have lived if he had continued to be held in captivity. If you think having these intelligent animals in captivity is okay when they're held in spaces too small for them and you can visibly see the self harm they've inflicted into themselves inside captivity then you have absolutely no empathy or a soul. People like you is why our oceans are suffering and our wild animals are increasingly becoming endangered. At least he got the chance to live in the wild after a life of suffering. Lolita and other orcas like her never got that chance.

@@mini6876 No, but you clearly are, if you think that your future holds anything more than contributing to the surplus population. The animals in zoos and aquariums are the ambassadors for those in the wild. Without them, orcas would still be considered nothing but pests.

@@tessdurberville711 Are narwhals pests? I don’t recall those ever being successfully held in captivity.

@@tessdurberville711 what a load of shit

He was unique, amazing and beautiful!

Keiko was captured in Iceland. So he actually was from Earth but stolen as a 3-year-old.

It's Ika Bitch We meet again...

Even if you don't speak their language, wouldn't you enjoy it more to live amongst humans - your own kind - than pigs or chicken, Roberts?!

peta thinks they would be happier free in the ocean, far from the every day shows, the chlorined water, the small ass tanks and the lack of food. yes, PETA is right and yes, you are egocentric and need to grow up

No one has ever been to Mars so dumb analogy. So you're uneducated and think PETA is wrong and animals should live in small thanks with chlorine and getting sick from eating the pools? Please give specific details.

Yes it was. Parents money given though lots of it. It should have all come from the organizations that plucked them out of their natural habitats. They made a ton of money off these beautiful killer whales amongst other sea creatures they had taken from their homes. The crooks that are all part of this monstrosity should be the one to pay the price for what they have done. Nit ask more $$$$$$$$$$$ from the citizens. That's insane!

The Oregon pen he was first transferred to should not have had public access at all

Thought the sameeee thing

You can’t just release a captive animal that has grown to rely on humans for food and care to the wild. It will die because it doesn’t have the skills to survive.

I COULD be mistaken on this, but some SeaWorld trainers were originally involved in Keiko's rehabilitation, but got fired for pulling stunts like that and trying to train him for food.

He was able to survive in the wild but he choose to be with other people. He seeked human interaction.

Yes

I completely agree!

actually he didn't beg for food, he wanted human attention because he couldn't find a pod to get along with. He wasn't the best candidate for release considering his attachment to humans, like Luna. (though i know a few that would be best candidates for release) But he wasn't exactly starving himself or anything when he swam to Norway, he had been feeding himself along the way. People intervened because he missed humans, not because he was hungry.

Orcas approach swimmers on the wild all the time.

@@deftone4656 that's not a good thing. (also Keiko let children ride on his back. that's not normal)

@@beautifulgudrun8802 what's normal, watching him being sunburn in the Mexican sun, chewing on paint. No one knows how much longer he would of lived in a concrete pool!

@@Funksinthehouse you seem to have decided that i supported his conditions at Reino Adventura. i don't. the park loved him and cared for him, but their facilities where shit. i personally think they should of kept him in the seapen, taking him out on daily walks. he craved human attention, dumping him in the open ocean wasn't the best decision.

he died

When killer whale pods get too big they leave their original pod to form their own or join others Adult males are the ones that tend to leave to avoid interbreeding He wouldn't be alone for long (he found a pod), the problem turned out to be that he still preferred the company of humans so he ended up leaving behind the pod to hang arround a town that his pod used to pass by

Gandalf the Tsaagan actually adult males don’t leave moms side

he lived for like 7 years in the wild, so he did decent, he still was friendly to humas tho obliv because he was around them all his life

mmsmith1777 he died in 2003

That would still be impossible as each orca has their own language, culture, etc

One year and he died sick, alone and hungry. Nothing to be "happy" about!

@@tessdurberville711 He was literally being fed by the foundation that released him 🤦‍♂️

@@itsikabitch9005 Until they lost their funding and they were not feeding him the full amount to "teach" him to hunt. I believe the credible people, not a RU-vidr with a crude name and most likely, a ninth grade education.

@@tessdurberville711 Mark Simmons is not credible, he has severe bias due to his career in dolphin capture... And Keiko was proven capable of hunting after release, but you conveniently forgot that as well I guess. As for “ninth grade education,” I’m a marine bio major who’s getting my bachelor’s next year. What you just did is called an ad hominem, and since you don’t know what a straw man is, I’ll explain this one. It’s an uneducated attack on a person rather than the information they present, generally used by people who know they’re wrong to try to discredit any damaging factual information.

@@itsikabitch9005 Then neither is Ric O'Barry or the other guilty aging hippies trying to assuage their guilt for their past crimes by committing new ones in the name of activism. I hope you do not expect me to just believe you. It is not as if either of us will be uploading our degrees here, is it? Interesting. The straw man tactic is used on me at least once a day here. I never knew there was a name for it.

As soon as he was "released", his life became a real nightmare. Kindly shut it.

@Sarah Arshad VIII-C-A that wasn't even my point but ok

Plastic pollution, noise pollution and ship strikes have entered the chat

what dog?!?!

Yosia Norna the one in the video swimming

@@mal-be2se ik so strange 😮

Call me naïve, but I'm glad he died a free orca.

it is very hard for an intelligent being to adapt to something at a late age because most of their behaviour is learnt and not primal instincts. the best analogy is human feral children who basically grow up isolated from other humans. and even after 20 years of rehabilitation, they can't even acquire the ability of speech their brains are already wired differently.

@Robert 0077 , (Edited. Ahh, sorry man, just got the Komo News Reference about the trip you speak of, I had that mixed with the trip out of Cali) he was flown, from what I looked into. They say it took 20 plus hours, and he didnt do to well during it all. He kept sticking to one area in Iceland, and they tried many times to teach him how to be free, and stay alive; not a good job for humans it seems. In the end, he was rejected by a pod, during an attempt for an open ocean run with them, and it was downhill for Keico not long after. (I only watched another documentary about what I just said, I haven't directly researched beyond it yet).

Bethany Ribet very sad

“HiS iMmUnE sYsTeM wAsN’t PrEpArEd” Here’s a little lesson in dolphin vaccination. Pathogens build up more easily in tanks than the ocean. Why? Because tanks are enclosed spaces in which filtration just goes right back into the enclosed space. The ocean has way too much room and movement for that. This is why only fish in tanks can catch marine ich. Now with that concept in mind, also keep in mind that orcas have VERY weak immune systems. As such, any whale or dolphin which does not receive a vaccination is nearly guaranteed to die within just one week in a tank. Karen Pryor detailed this in her memoir about her time as head marine mammal trainer at Sea Life Park in Hawaii. Keiko was literally the only vaccinated in an ocean of anti-vaxxers. His death by pneumonia could’ve been enhanced by his older age, as he outlived most captive males by the time he died. Pneumonia, the illness that killed him, also killed four whales at SeaWorld in the past three years: 36-year-old Tilikum, 3-month-old Kyara, 41-year-old Kasatka, and 30-year-old Kayla.

You would.

Keiko didn't die alone. When it was clear that he was sick, his veterinarians quickly intervened. However, by that point Keiko's Pneumonia was too severe and he died from respiratory failure. Keiko didn't resist the medical treatment he was being given. I think Keiko knew he was sick and he knew these humans actually were there to help.

It can happen to wild orcas (less than 5% have collapsed dorsal fins), but that is due to injury or stranding. 100% of all captive orcas, male and female, have either partially or fully collapsed fins.

@@CleverClover2023 some females like corky and Orkid have their dorsal fins still standing high

@@aidangm7419 that is because it is more common in males. Likely die to females being smaller, etc.

@@WildeMermaid well it depends on the size of the males. The larger the male, the bigger the dorsal fin and the more weight it has to carry which makes it more likely for collapse.

That is not true, when he left Iceland he left by free will, when he was on a walk. he was never abandoned. when he arrived in Norway he was walked 3 times a week and feed 175 kilos of fish a day to the end. He was never abandoned by humans, he was different and was not accepted by other orcas.

Chamorrita Jaz To what are you referring, exactly? They have nothing to do with the U.S. SeaWorlds.

Stella is too old for pregnancy and Lynn is too young, so Port of Nagoya isn’t gonna start breeding anytime soon, but Kamogawa Seaworld has expressed interest in artificially inseminating Lovey, Lara, and Ran, though the only males left who are trained for AI outside of SeaWorld are Kshamenk and Inouk. Japan doesn’t have a sustainable population, though, so they’ll have no real choice but to phase out eventually.

@@itsikabitch9005 Japan will do what it wants to do. It is not under U.S. jurisdiction.

Tess d'Urberville So Japan will inbreed? Taiji quotas for orcas are at 0. All 7 Japanese whales are descended from Stella. They literally backed themselves into a corner. There’s literally only 2 males available for artificial insemination right now. That’s like saying Japan will keep Commerson’s dolphins, despite all of them being descended from one of three females (Aura, Haruka, and Tierra).

Yeah obviously. Considering he died a month later.

They had to rush it because their sponsor went bankrupt I believe

It was a year later as far as I read he disappeared for a month but was properly released in the ocean over a year.

@@yaranieuwenhuis9462 yeah he went bankrupt and they had to rush the release and couldn't afford to keep him in the pen either. Sad buy true.

This is not what most scientists believe

Of course the following comment would receive some ‘brutal’ backlash but here are the ‘corrections’ on dorsal collapse in captivity. 1. The whale spends all its time on the surface which allows gravity to slowly cause it to bend under its own weight. The dorsal fin is also made of cartilage not bone. 2. It’s not depression or health decline. It’s not like a killer whale would have some kind of telekinetic ability to control its dorsal fin to go up when it’s happy or down when it’s sad. 3. There are no currents in captivity. In the wild, the currents create pressure caused by billions of molecules bumping against either side of the fin in a similar manner to when air molecules hit the underside of the wings of a plane allowing it to fly. This applies especially when the whale is often travelling. In captivity, no currents, no water pressure and the dorsal bends.

This was attempted by the TINRO Center after the Whale Jail freeze-over controversy. Most of the artificial pods eventually disintegrated, unfortunately.

None as far as I know. So sad to know we still steal them from the ocean.

Jennifer Lamont Omg I have great news for you! Russia has set the quota for orca captures at 0 for two years in a row now. All of the orcas that were illegally captured in the Whale Jail in 2018 have since been released. Russia was the last nation on Earth which permitted the capture of killer whales, which means it is now illegal to capture or kill an orca in all nations.

Not that I am aware of but many have been & are fighting for Miami Seaquarium to retire Lolita/Tokitae & return her to the Salish Sea where a Sea Pen is waiting. She was captured 51yrs ago in Puget Sound. She hasn't seen another Orca or Whale since 1980. Her mother & pod are still alive & in that area so she could possibly be reunited with them. . . if only we could get her released.

They're working on getting Lolita freed, but haven't made much progress until she was discovered to be incredibly ill. It seems like they're only willing to release them (for good company image) when they know they're really sick and probably won't make it.

@@itsikabitch9005 I had no idea that it's now illegal everywhere. Thanks for teaching me something new, Ika.

@Sarah Pose I would actually have rather that he stayed in the aquarium that was actually build for him, with people that love him and daily care. Yet he was abandoned as soon as he left his pen, oh he's gone, guess he's wild now, succesfull release He didn't die a whale dead, he died in a small pen locked off in Norway, without medical care which is why they didn't find out he got his pneumonia again, which btw he got every year

@@Ninuturu They let him wander out of the pen for weeks before he left of his own free will. It was his choice, and he survived for another year in the wild before he died. Considering how they never found his birth pod, and how he still managed to survive, and that this was the first ever recorded captive orca release, i'd say it was a success. Also he had severe skin infections while in mexico, bad enough to be life threatening. The water was too warm. He wouldn't have been able to survive there for much longer. He was only given 6 months of survival had he stayed in Mexico.

@@IcestormTundra False, first of all they started starving him, giving him lesser fish than normal. The only time outside his pen would be on walks, but on one of these walks he got scared and swam off. They didn't find him and just left it by that. He spend 2 weeks in on his own before ariving to Norway, and because he kept trying to find human contact he was again captured and put in a pen. His total time in the wild being wild was 2 weeks, he didn't eat in these two weeks He spend the rest of his time in captivity

@Sarah Pose have you seen how contact with his own kind went? He swam away, screaming on the top of his lungs, and hid under the boat he was with. People often forget that the only contact Keiko had with other orcas was negative (Marineland) and that the only good contact was with humans and dolphins. Keiko LOVED humans like he was human himself, he never viewed himself as orca

@Sarah Pose Hahaha I don't bluff, my info comes from many different sites and video's and people. And how did I ignore? We are talking about Keiko and you bring up trainers, well Keiko loved his trainers and they loved Keiko

My hope for the future is no captive Orcas at all. Boycott Seaworld

He was cared for humans at some point in the wild in Norway, but I agree that he should’ve stayed in a sea pen.

im glad someone agrees he was better in the seapen but not in a tank