Oregon -- Newport Copes With Life Without Keiko

NEWPORT, Ore. - The tank where Keiko the orca once swam at the Oregon Coast Aquarium has been drained and filled with a crane and construction workers transforming it into a new exhibit.

Keiko T-shirts are 25 percent off at the gift shop. A brewery next door has shipped its last case of Keiko Root Beer.

And Deb Clark's fifth-graders at the local Sam Chase Elementary School no longer feel like visiting the aquarium, now that their favorite attraction is thousands of miles away in Iceland.

"He was almost like a person, another friend," said 10-year-old Yuanbo Liu.

"I don't think I'll ever forget him."

Though he was here for less than three years to recover from the ills of warm-water captivity in a Mexican amusement park, the star of the 1993 movie "Free Willy" worked his way into Newport's hearts and pocketbooks.

Seven months ago Keiko was flown to his native Iceland, the next stop in the orca's, or killer whale's, odyssey to cold-water freedom. Even people who had been cynical about what the whale came to mean to this small coastal town confess to missing him.

Sitting in his Big Guy's Diner, Mayor Mark Jones said things have slowed on the tourism side of Newport's economy, but not all was lost with the whale. A new Burger King opened. A beachside hotel is under construction. The academic and government labs connected with the Hatfield Marine Science Center are thriving.

"The whale was like being a star," he said.

"Right now, we don't have the leading part. But we're getting a lot of bit parts and keeping busy."

During Keiko's first year in town, aquarium attendance doubled to 1.3 million. But it gradually tapered off as everyone expected it would. Projections for this year are 725,750 people, still 22 percent more than before Keiko arrived.

Construction workers are pouring concrete that will divide Keiko's tank into three ocean habitats. When the attraction opens in summer 2000, visitors will walk through an underwater acrylic tunnel as sharks swim by. Aquarium President Phyllis Bell expects attendance to return to Keiko levels.

Since Keiko left town, the organization dedicated to his care, the Free Willy Keiko Foundation, has vacated its offices and is merging with the Jean-Michel Cousteau Institute of Santa Barbara, Calif.

Keiko's departure did not leave Newport without whales. On the waterfront, tourists can view an orca mural on the side of a fish plant or board a tour boat to watch gray whales spouting in the ocean.

In April, a pod of killer whales regularly swims right into Yaquina Bay, reminding people that life in the wild and life in a tank are different.

Yuanbo Liu will remember Keiko not as a killer, but as a playmate. Appearing in a Jean-Michel Cousteau documentary after winning an essay contest, she became the envy of her classmates by playing tag with Keiko in Newport and watching him splash down in his sea pen in an Iceland bay.

"I think he'll be happier there than in some small tank here," she said.

Folding sweatshirts at the Wind Drift Gallery on the bayfront, Kevin Sandbo recalled that his cynical heart was won over when he and his wife went to see Keiko on his last night in town. When the lights dimmed to signal people it was closing time, Keiko took a last turn by each of the three underwater windows.

"It was like he was saying, `Goodbye, I'm going home,"' Sandbo said.