Monday, December 3, 2012

Free Willy: Freeing the real Willy, Keiko

Free Willy was a movie I used to watch over and over as a child. I absolutely loved animals and I absolutely fell in love with Willy, the Orca. For those who don't know, Free Willy was a film made in the 90's about a an Orca that was taken away to an amusement park owned by a greedy marine park owner. The movie follows Jesse who attempts to "free Willy" and help Willy escape to a life of independence in the ocean. However, there is a true and real story of the Orca behind the movie.


Keiko, the Orca who played Willy, was stripped away from the ocean at the tender year of one and put into several different amusement parks and aquariums doing tricks for human entertainment and lived in captivity for the majority of his life. He was sold in 1985 to a marine amusement park in Mexico for $340,000. In 1992, Keiko became the star of Free Willy and after the film the true conditions of Keiko's life were addressed. Acording to an article: "...publicity from the film eventually resulted in a feature in Life (November 1993) about the terrible conditions at Reino Aventura - Keiko was clearly dying, and efforts began to find him a new home..." Many activists pushed for Keiko's return to the ocean. 

After a period of time of training Keiko to hunt and adjust to ocean waters, he was finally released into the ocean. Keiko had a difficult time bonding with other Orcas and because he was so used to human company he ended up finding humans near coast who would feed him. After a year of the wild, Keiko died. 

This story raises up SEVERAL questions. Many about keeping animals in capitivity, not preparing them for a life in the wild,  and so on. I just think it's ironic that the star of Free Willy spent their whole entire life doing tricks for humans in an amusement park. What do you think?

Watch the film about Keiko. It's well done and very informative.The trailer is above. 


Sources: 
http://keiko.com/
  http://members.tripod.com/~keikos_home/keiko.html
 http://www.igreens.org.uk/keiko_the_orca.htm
 

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