Keiko surfaces for a frolic in Norway; desire for human contact seen as big setback

OSLO, Norway — Keiko, the killer whale who became famous as the star of "Free Willy" movies, has turned up in a Norwegian fjord, where delighted coastal residents petted and swam with him.

And while Norwegians are delighted by his playfulness, the people who have tried to re-acclimate him to the wild after years of captivity say the orca's frolics represent a significant setback.

"It's definitely him. We have tracked him from Iceland," Fernando Ugarte, part of the team monitoring the orca's progress, said by phone yesterday from a ship in the fjord.

Having spent most of his life in captivity, Keiko spent years with volunteers training him for life in the wild. He was released from his pen in Iceland in July and swam nearly 870 miles to a western Norway fjord.

The orca surprised Norwegians, who swam with him and climbed on his back as he splashed in the Skaalvik Fjord, about 250 miles northwest of the capital, Oslo.

"He is completely tame, and he clearly wants company," said Arild Birger Neshaug, 35.

Neshaug said he was in a small rowboat with his 12-year-old daughter, Hanne, and friends when they spotted Keiko on Sunday.

"We were afraid," Neshaug said. "But then he followed us to our cabin dock. At first we were skeptical, and then we tried petting his back. Finally the children went swimming with him."

He said the orca stayed by their dock all night and into the day yesterday, happily eating fish tossed to him by the families.

Keiko is arguably the world's best-known whale, given his starring role in the three "Free Willy" films that were released in the 1990s, as well as a brief animated series shown on television.

Newspapers in Norway expressed tongue-in-cheek surprise over the whale coming there, since the oil-rich Scandinavian nation of 4.5 million people is the only country that commercially hunts whales despite a global whaling ban.

However, Norway's whalers hunt only minke whales.

Ugarte is monitoring the whale on behalf of the Ocean Futures Society and the Humane Society of the United States. He said Keiko was in excellent shape but still seems to prefer humans to other whales.

Former handlers of Keiko expressed concern recently that he might be disoriented and starving.

Eight former staffers for the orca's rehabilitation effort wrote a letter to federal marine officials in August saying the whale probably lacked the foraging and navigation skills to survive in the North Atlantic.

The letter also expressed fears that Keiko might turn up among boats and humans, said Jennifer Schorr of Ocean Futures, one of the former trainers in Iceland.

"If he's now been out six weeks and choosing to interact with people rather than with whales, it's a setback," she said yesterday.

Schorr said she hopes Keiko is fitted with a new transmitter and intensively monitored to keep him away from people in the future. The batteries on his existing transmitter are due to expire in October, she said.

Schorr, who worked on the recent effort to return the young, sociable orca "Springer" to its pod near Vancouver Island, said Keiko is a greater challenge because he was in captivity and dependent on humans for more than 20 years, and because the whereabouts of his relatives are unknown.

Representatives of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and The Humane Society of the U.S. also issued a statement, calling Keiko's antics in Norway a setback.

"He's proving he has the skills to be a wild whale, but it is critical that he not be encouraged to come to boats or people," said Dave Phillips, director of the Free Willy Keiko Foundation. "We hope the public interactions are temporary and that Keiko is able to return to the open sea."

Paul Irwin, president of the Humane Society of the U.S., asked boaters to keep their distance from the world's most famous killer whale, and to "give him all he needs to be fully self-sufficient."

Keiko, which means "Lucky One" in Japanese, was captured near Iceland in 1979 when he was 2 and spent most of his life in captivity in Canada and Mexico.

His appearance in the 1993 film "Free Willy" and later sequels helped spark a campaign to free him. He was rescued from a Mexico City amusement park in 1996 and rehabilitated at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Ore., before he was airlifted back to Iceland in 1998 and taught to catch fish. Keiko's rehabilitation cost $20 million.

Ugarte said his team will continue monitoring Keiko's progress and movements.

Seattle Times staff reporter Mike Lindblom contributed to this report.