Gender: Male
Location: Pakistan

the free willy whale dies

Keiko, the killer whale that starred in the film Free Willy, has died in Norway at the age of 27, 18 months after he was returned to the wild.
The six-ton whale apparently suffered a sudden bout of pneumonia in the fjord where he had been living.

Keiko was captured when two, but after the success of the film, he was freed from cramped conditions in Mexico City.

After his release into the wild in Iceland, Keiko swam to Norway, where he became a popular attraction.


Killer whales live an average of 35 years in the wild.

Sudden decline


Keiko became ill very quickly, according to Dane Richards who looked after the mammal.

"He exhibited some signs of lethargy and lack of appetite," Mr Richards told the Associated Press.

"We checked his respiration rate and it was a little irregular ... he wasn't doing too well. Early in the evening, he passed away," said Mr Richards.

"They really do die quickly and there was nothing we could do," said Nick Braden, a spokesman of the Humane Society of the United States.


Swimming to freedom

Keiko, whose name means "Lucky One" in Japanese, starred in three Free Willy films, in which a young boy befriends a killer whale and encourages him to jump over an aquarium wall to ocean freedom.

Captured near Iceland in 1979, Keiko ended up in a marine park in Mexico.

Inspired by the films, an international campaign began in 1993 to free Keiko and return him to the wild - the first orca whale to be freed in this way.

"We took him from near death in Mexico to swimming with wild whales in Norway," said David Phillips, executive director of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation.

After being trained to catch fish, Keiko was released off Iceland in July 2002, and swam to Norway, where he became so popular that he was moved to a more remote fjord for his own comfort.

Mr Phillips said it had still not been decided whether he should be buried on land or at sea.

"My preference would be to bury him on land," he said.

"If you bury him on land we could still recover his skeleton and that might have some value in a museum or something, but that is still being worked out."

__________________
Chughtai

Gender: Female
Location:

__________________
"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."- Thomas Jefferson

Gender: Male
Location: Mount Royal

__________________

Gender: Unspecified
Location: Barry, South Wales

__________________


www.myspace.com/throughsolace
Through Solace- The Stand out in March 08 on Holdfast Records

Gender: Female
Location: Mirkwood

Gender: Female
Location: London

Gender: Male
Location: Welfare Kingdom of California

__________________

Gender: Male
Location: Isla De La Muerte

__________________

"A lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths." Deep Throat.

Gender: Female
Location: Trinidad

__________________

Gender: Male
Location: Brooklyn, NY

__________________

http://www.FreePSPs.com/?r=17495261

Gender: Female
Location: Marineford

__________________

Gender: Female
Location: New Jersey

__________________
May the force be with you

Gender: Male
Location: Cleveland

__________________
Click this

Gender: Female
Location: New Jersey

__________________
May the force be with you

Gender: Female
Location: Northern hemisphere

Gender: Female
Location: New Jersey

__________________
May the force be with you

Gender: Male
Location: North

Stupid whale... good for him. Demanding a big paycheck for FW 4 showed you didn't it???






I'm just kidding! Sorry to hear about Keiko.

Last edited by mardook on Dec 17th, 2003 at 03:09 PM