Plastics Plant Making Sea Pen For Keiko The Whale -- It's Not Firm's Largest Job, But It's A Big Media Draw

WASHOUGAL, Clark County - The Discovery Channel has been here. An Omnimax film crew came through. Jean-Michel Cousteau's documentary filmmakers did, too. Tokyo Broadcasting System is due next.

They all descend on an unlikely site - a drafty, cavernous plastics plant where a dozen fabricators saw, weld and move massive rounds of shiny black pipe taking shape as the future home to the world's most famous killer whale.

Workers at Familian Industrial Plastics in Washougal, near the bank of the Columbia River in Southwestern Washington, are about a month away from completing the frame for the 250-foot-long, 100-foot-wide sea pen that will house Keiko.

The Free Willy Keiko Foundation, which owns the star of the movie "Free Willy," hopes to move him to a bay or fjord in the North Atlantic - probably in Iceland or Ireland - this fall or next spring.

The sea pen, which could cost up to $500,000 by the time it's completed, is designed to be Keiko's halfway house. There, his progress in learning survival skills will determine whether he ever swims free.

Familian has built more than 1,000 sea pens in the past 20 years, primarily for the fish-farming industry and for fuel companies, which are required to keep them on site to protect and house injured marine animals in the event of oil spills.

Size-wise, Keiko's pen is the biggest. It's about 60 percent larger than the tank the whale swims in at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Ore., and will allow him to move in more than 3 million gallons of seawater.

Business-wise, the project is smolt when compared with the $2.5 million fish-bypass system that Familian is constructing at Bonneville Dam.

The 30-inch polyethylene pipes stand thigh-high and stretch varying lengths. David Schlegel, general manager at Familian, said the durable, flexible pipes will be filled with foam. The pen is designed to float, to move with currents and to withstand the pressure of ice.

Several other companies have a hand in the sea pen: Spectra-Net will provide super-strong netting made from graphite and Kevlar for the sides and base of the pen; Hydrohoist International is building the medical intervention lift - a 40-by-40-foot, rubber-coated platform, upon which keepers will be able to lift Keiko for medical and husbandry procedures. Marine engineers are still studying options for the pen's anchoring system. Should the site selected be in deep water, the anchoring system could drive up the total cost. The depth of the bay selected will determine how deep Keiko's pen is.

The hourglass-shaped pen has two octagonal structures linked by a narrower area in the middle; fiberglass-coated metal grates will serve as walkways around the pen, which also will include a generator room, dive locker, food-preparation area and offices.

The most commonly asked question: Couldn't Keiko escape the bay pen in one energetic burst reminiscent of his made-for-the-movie flight to freedom? Jeff Foster, the foundation's director of field operations and research, said those who keep marine mammals in sea pens never have had such a problem.