ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 6, 1996 TAG: 9601100031
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SAN FRANCISCO
SOURCE: San Francisco Examiner
HOLLYWOOD MADE HIM A STAR in a tale of a killer whale who's set free. Now his life is imitating art: He's bound for rehab in Oregon and a return to his life at sea.
Keiko, the cetacean star of ``Free Willy'' whose real-life drama mimics a movie script, will escape a cramped tank at a Mexico City theme park Sunday morning and fly to a new life in Oregon.
A team of whale experts planned to start preparations Friday to pack up the 21-foot, 7,000-pound orca in a metal box for a nine-hour, 3,000-mile trip on a C-130 Hercules cargo aircraft.
Within two years, scientists hope to find Keiko's family pod off Iceland, where he was captured 13 years ago at the age of 2, and release him to freedom.
Until then, the killer whale, 1,000 pounds underweight with a drooping dorsal fin and a chronic skin condition, will regain strength at the Oregon Coastal Aquarium in Newport, Ore., where he will not perform.
A San Francisco environmental group, the Earth Island Institute, helped plan the intricate journey for the whale, which must travel packed in 1,000 gallons of icy cold water from the Reino Aventura park in Mexico to Oregon.
Public interest in Keiko's fate was sparked by the 1993 tear-jerker ``Free Willy.'' In the movie, Willy, a captive forced by a mean park owner to perform in a nasty, tiny tank, leaps to freedom with the help of a young boy, his friends and a soaring musical score.
The Earth Island Institute received 1.1 million calls about Keiko after Warner Bros. put the group's toll-free number at the end of the movie.
In real life, Keiko, 15, has lived for the past 11 years in the suburban Mexico City theme park, eating dead fish and doing tricks in a warm-water tank. Orcas prefer cold water.
When they realized his condition, ``Free Willy'' producers Richard and Lauren Schuler-Donner called in the Earth Island Institute, which specializes in campaigns to save San Francisco Bay sea lions, tropical Pacific Ocean dolphins and endangered sea turtles.
Institute executive director David Phillips, working with Keiko's supporters and the owner of the Mexican park, raised $6 million to free Keiko.
About $300,000 in contributions came from the public, including 50 cents in one child's milk money and $31,000 from the Northwest Elementary School in Tampa, Fla., according to Earth Island. Warner Bros., the McCaw Foundation and Humane Society of America are the major donors.
Keiko suffers from skin lesions, malnutrition and a weak immune system, biologists say. The owner of the Mexican theme park, Televisa, agrees he will thrive in roomier quarters with a live-fish diet. The media corporation is giving him away and sending the orca's trainers to Oregon for six months to ease the relocation.
As moving day approaches, the team of scientists is preparing for the complex chain of events that will lead Keiko to home territory.
At midnight Saturday, Lanny Cornell, an orca expert, and Mike Glenn, marine mammal curator of the Oregon Coast Aquarium, will start putting Keiko into a sling. Then they'll lift him by crane into the metal transport box filled with water and ice. The box sits on a flatbed truck.
``We take off from Reino Aventura to the airport, about an hour away, with closed roads and a full police escort,'' said Phillips, who is in Mexico City for the move. ``Once we get to the airport, we'll be loading Keiko onto the transport plane.''
The C-130 Hercules, donated by United Parcel Service, should arrive in Newport about 3 p.m. Sunday.
Once in Oregon, Keiko will go into an enclosure five times the size of his present tank, filled by cold sea water. He'll feed off live fish and get weaned off human contact.
Then the search will begin for his pod, off Iceland, where he was captured in 1980.
Ken Balcomb, a marine biologist, has agreed to try to find the pod by recording orca dialects and analyzing DNA in skin shed by the whales.
``We want to set a different standard,'' Phillips said. ``Let people see dolphins start getting rehabilitated to return to the wild instead of seeing them jump through hoops and perform tricks.''
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Keiko will leave behind performances in a tank inby CNBMexico with his trainer, Karla Corral, for eventual return to the
ocean. color.