Action Alert: Keiko
I never thought I'd have to send this Action Alert, but the Miami Seaquarium has just filed
an application to "rescue" Keiko and put him in captivity again.
We need to act now!
PLEASE WRITE TO THE US GOVERNMENT
and cc. THE MIAMI SEAQUARIUM
Gene Nitta <Gene.Nitta@noaa.gov>
National Marine Fisheries Service
Chief, Permits
(301) 713-2289 Office
(301) 713-0376 Fax
Maritza Arceo<MArceo@msq.cc>
>Public Relations Manager
>Miami Seaquarium
>4400 Rickenbacker Cswy
>Miami, FL 33149
>(305) 365-2525 Office
>(305) 365-0075 Fax
>www.miamiseaquarium.com
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Seattle Times
Saturday, September 21, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific
Aquarium in Florida wants Keiko in captivity
By Eric Sorensen
Seattle Times science reporter
A curious new notion is crossing the ocean: De-free Willy!
A Florida aquarium has applied to federal marine officials for permission to bring Keiko, star of the movie "Free Willy," back to the United States, presumably for public display.
The move comes after the orca, subject of a massive and costly effort to reintroduce him to the wild, swam 900 miles from an Iceland pen to Norway, where he mugged for handouts and human attention.
The Miami Seaquarium says Keiko's interaction with people and boats is putting the whale and humans in harm's way.
"As a facility dedicated to the care of marine mammals,Miami Seaquarium has an interest in the ongoing health and well being of Keiko," the Seaquarium said in a prepared statement yesterday. "To that end, we have contacted appropriate authorities and offered to rescue Keiko and insure his survival."
The Seaquarium did not make officials available to elaborate on its plans.
A spokesman for Seattle-based telecom billionaire Craig McCaw, who spent millions to return Keiko to the wild, said the Seaquarium and its small marine-mammal tank would be the "least appropriate" place for the orca to go.
"Certainly Craig would not like that at all," said Bob Ratliffe, top aide to McCaw. "He would be very disappointed in that."
Alarmed animal-rights groups immediately started mobilizing against the Seaquarium's application to the National Marine Fisheries Service. Mark Berman, assistant director of the San Francisco-based Earth Island Institute and Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, which has
custody of Keiko, called the Seaquarium request "quite arrogant."
"It would be not only detrimental to Keiko to destroy what freedom he has now but it would be a highly outrageous thing to do to those millions of people who supported Keiko in his quest for freedom," Berman said.
"We know 21 orcas have died in captivity since this reintroduction effort began, so sending him to an aquarium is out of the question," said Nick Braden, director of public relations for the Humane Society of the United States, which took over management of the effort this year. "Keiko is doing really well right now. There's no reason to pull the plug on the reintroduction."
When Keiko was first taken from a Mexico theme park in 1996, orca advocates were viewing his rescue as an important test case for returning other killer whales to the wild. But when Keiko left the Oregon Coast Aquarium two years later, he had spent nearly 20 years in captivity - making his reintroduction all the more difficult.
This month, the Oregon Coast Aquarium told the Keiko Foundation that it would be interested in bringing Keiko back to its tanks. But the aquarium never applied to do so with federal fisheries officials, and it quickly backed down when the foundation said Keiko would not be available.
A leading candidate for reintroduction is now Lolita, a Puget Sound native and a star Seaquarium attraction. But Keiko's behavior in Norway is viewed by many as a blow to the effort. If nothing else, the Seaquarium request shows how the political ground is shifting on the subject of returning orcas to the wild.
"We certainly don't want Keiko to be a political pawn, but that is how it's turning out to be," said Jeff Foster Keiko's handler in the first years in Iceland.
Susan Berta of the Free Lolita Campaign said Keiko's interaction with people in Norway's Skaalvik Fjord is "just a setback." The trip itself, she said, "is a huge success and a huge step forward, and that has the marine-park industry shaking in its boots."
But Fred Jacobs, communications director for Busch Entertainment, which has 21 killer whales in three SeaWorld parks, said Keiko's demonstrated fondness for people proves the reintroduction effort was misguided.
Foster, a recent critic of the way Keiko has been handled, said he doubts the Humane Society of the United States and the Earth Island Institute have the resources to continue trying to keep him in the wild.
McCaw, who spent in the neighborhood of $20 million trying; the Humane Society is spending between $600,000 and $700,000 a year, said Braden.
"It seems to me that Keiko has made his choice," Foster said, "that he enjoys human contact, he enjoys people."
But few people think he will end up back in a tank.
Certainly the Seaquarium faces several bureaucratic and political challenges before Keiko swims with Lolita.
For now, Norway has jurisdiction over the animal and aims to keep it that way.
"So far, Norwegian authorities are working with the Keiko Foundation," Halvard Johansen, Norwegian counsel for fisheries, said from his embassy's office in
Washington, D.C. "That road will have to be explored much further before it will be acceptable to do anything else. So the plan so far is for the whale to stay in Norwegian waters, unless the whale decides to do something."
Moreover, the Norwegian people have grown attached to Keiko, he said. And while Norway allows the hunting of certain whales, "Norwegian policy is that whales should not be kept in aquariums."
If the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) decides to issue a permit for importing Keiko from Norway, "we will have to reconsider the situation," Johansen said. "But so far that is not the case."
Once the fisheries service deems that the Seaquarium application is complete, the public and the Marine Mammal Commission will have 30 days to comment, after which the service will have 30 days to rule on the request.
But Norway still trumps the U.S., said Gene Nitta, acting chief of the Permits Division in NMFS' Office of Protected Resources.
"It's in Norway's jurisdiction," Nitta said. "The only permit that we would be issuing would be for import, if we issue it. It would be their decision whether or not Keiko would be recaptured and what his disposition would be."
Eric Sorensen: 206-464-8253 or
Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company
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FOLLOW KEIKO'S PLIGHT ON ORCA NETWORK:
See Orca Network Keiko Alert!
<http://www.orcanetwork.org/news/keikoforum.html#berman>
Thanks.
Annelise Sorg <annelise@direct.ca>
Coalition For No Whales In Captivity
Tel: (604) 736-9514
Vancouver, BC Canada