The Truth About Keiko: "Killing Keiko" Review

The story of Keiko is often told like a fairy tale: the poor whale who swam away into freedom, and into the sunset. The truth is, life is not a fairy tale; life is far more complicated than that. Mark Simmons presents a firsthand account of the real events in the months leading up to the release of the world’s most famous whale, Keiko.

(Photo: Marilyn Kazmers/Getty)

Better known as “Willy” from the Hollywood blockbuster Free Willy, Keiko’s story is a very complicated one, and is much deeper than it would appear. The story that Hollywood would like you to believe is that Keiko was released off the coast of Norway, met up with his “old family”, and swam away into the sunset, a happy whale with his own kind. Mark Simmons paints a very different picture than that.


To fully understand and appreciate Killing Keiko, one must fully understand the large and complex issue that is killer whale captivity. The origins of which can be traced back 60 years, and is not very glamorous. In the 1970s, an entire business was completely reliant on the capture, and subsequent capture of while killer whales. The primary targets of the companies were calves, juvenile whales who were around 2-5 years old, in the early stages of their life. Keiko, like many others, was taken away from his pod, and sold to amusement parks, as part of a booming multi-million dollar industry.
Keiko ended up at a park in Mexico City, called Reino Aventura, where he spent most of his life, living, performing, and ultimately, became a movie star. Free Willy is the heart-warming tale of a lonely whale and a lonely boy, who overcame the odds, and help “Willy” to freedom, by kidnapping him in the middle of the night, and driving him down to the coast, and having Willy jump to freedom, where he lived happily ever after. It makes for a good movie, but like most movies, is not very practical or realistic.

In the years following Free Willy, there was a large push to free the real Willy, Keiko. A long process began to slowly morph Keiko back into a “wild whale”, the largest step of which was moving Keiko to a sea pen of the coast of Vestmanneayjar, Iceland. Keiko was released into the wild on May 2, 2002, after a nearly two year process. The release was deemed a success, and everyone packed up and want home. Everyone but Keiko.

True, Keiko did leave Vestmanneayjar, and swam roughly 400 miles across the Atlantic Ocean, to Halsa, Norway over the course of 60 days. However, this was no happy ending for Keiko. As a whale who had been in human almost his entire life, he was starved of human attention and connection. By the time he ended up off the coast of Norway, he had lost a considerable amount of weight, and displayed signs of depression. From Keiko’s perspective, he has spent nearly two months in solitary confinement from humans, wandering across the ocean alone. He never interacted with a single wild whale and never likely never ate a meal during his two months at sea.

By the time members of the release team made it to Norway, Keiko had been discovered by the local community, and had finally gotten the human attention he so desperately craved. He spent the last two months of his life in a makeshift sea pen, but in the care of humans. Keiko died December 14, 2003, alone, in the middle of the night, without the company of human nor whale.

In the years that have followed Keiko’s release and subsequent death, much has changed within the industry of whales in zoological settings. In recent years, SeaWorld has received an overwhelming amount of negative press, spearheaded by the “documentary” Blackfish. Suddenly millions of “activists” are demanding for the release of SeaWorld whales, especially Tilikum. The sad truth is the world has clearly learned nothing from Keiko’s death. Killing Keiko is an essential perspective into what happens when humans allow fantasy and idealism to override logic and science.

Whether as a reader you support SeaWorld, and captivity in general, one must look at the hard facts about releasing captive whales. The truth is not always a rainbow colored fairy tale. Killer Whale release is not an option, and the world must come to accept this. Or more whale, like Keiko will pay for humanity’s ignorance with their lives.

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