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BY JOHN GRIFFITH |
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The Marine Mammal Protection Act requires the release of beached or stranded cetaceans within six months of capture or import. Extensions may be given up to 24 months, at which time a presumption is made that the animal is unreleasable. Choices then are euthanasia or public display for the rest of the animal's life.
Tim Desmond, international animal-parks consultant, and his partner, Gail Laule, who trained Keiko in Mexico for his Free Willy performance, oppose his release.
Once Keiko gets to Iceland, the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and the Icelandic government will decide what happens next.
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Scores of reporters have beached themselves upon Oregon's shore this week to chronicle the departure of Oregon's biggest movie star, just as they did when he arrived from Mexico in January 1996. The public loves the idea of nature imitating Hollywood fiction, and Keiko's move to Iceland is the most ambitious step in the storied quest to free Willy. In focusing on the script, however, the media and public have largely ignored a couple of troubling questions involved with releasing a captive cetacean into an ocean playpen. For example, since he was captured as an infant whale 19 years ago, Keiko has been entirely dependent on people for food, health and companionship. Some marine-mammal experts, including Keiko's former trainer Karla Corral, say the killer whale is behaviorally bankrupt, no more prepared to make it in the wild than a middle-aged man raised by feral pigs could cut it at a West Hills cocktail party. But the biggest fly in the Free Keiko ointment is that he has a unique, warty skin condition called papilloma virus. Keiko's keepers have known about the virus for years, and some scientists have argued that it should preclude Keiko's release into the wild-whale populations ("Keep Willy," WW, May 21, 1997). In the past year, nothing has happened to diminish those worries, but in the rush to stay on script, they have been largely dismissed. "We know papilloma exists in the wild," says Bob Ratliffe, Free Willy Keiko Foundation executive vice president. "His is all but cleared up. You want us to stop all this now, all this effort, because of that?" Ratliffe's remark seems to settle the matter, as far as the foundation and its media allies are concerned. In reality, it goes to the core of the Keiko controversy. It shows the foundation's willingness to risk Keiko's well-being and the health of wild killer whales in its effort to make Hollywood fiction become reality. "We know papilloma exists in the wild." The most difficult matter involving Keiko is the virus he has had since at least 1993, when he was first diagnosed in Mexico by Dr. Gregory Bossart, a veterinarian at the University of Miami, Fla. Bossart's work, financed by Warner Bros., maker of Free Willy, was published in Marine Mammal Science, the journal of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, in April 1996. Bossart noted that the virus has been found in a few other marine animals and that the suspected symptoms, called papillomatosis, were observed in two other killer whales. However, Keiko is the only killer whale in which the virus has been confirmed. According to Bossart, papilloma viruses are contagious and species-specific. In other words, killer whales can only catch the virus from other killer whales. The scientist's concern is that Keiko's virus may spread even if he is confined to his massive net pen, from which water flows to the open sea. "We don't know how it's transmitted," says Bossart. "He may not have to rub against another whale; he may just have to be close to one. Or maybe it's transmitted by vectors like fish." Bossart is not alone in his concern. Jay Sweeney, Keiko's vet during the filming of Free Willy, has said, "From a biologist's or an ecologist's point of view...releasing this animal is unethical because...the animal is a known carrier of a viral disease." The potential to pass on the virus is particularly troubling given recent research. In the past year, scientists have seen emerging strains of papilloma viruses in manatees and Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. In two dolphins, the normally benign symptoms underwent malignant transformation into cancers, killing one of the animals. Ben Beck, associate director for biological programs at the National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C., agrees. "It's a very serious issue," says Beck. "That's one of the reasons why we have all been so cautious about the Keiko situation." Not everybody shares this view, however. In January of this year the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued the report of a team of scientists assembled to examine Keiko's health. The report was explicitly not meant to support or oppose Keiko's release. It did, however, state that the papilloma virus was not considered a health threat to Keiko. Bossart, along with seven of his University of Miami colleagues, responded with a dissenting view, saying the ethics of animal husbandry forbid Keiko's release. "One of the prerequisites for releasing an animal is that it has no contagious diseases," says Bossart. "If there's any chance that we're introducing a virus back to a wild population, that now has the potential to become latent and potentially malignant, then we've got some serious questions we've got to answer." "His is all but cleared up." Keiko's move to Oregon was supposed to remedy health problems he developed in his cramped, warm Mexican home. In many cases, it's worked. Technically, Ratliffe's remark that Keiko's papilloma virus is not as bad as it used to be is true. But the statement is as meaningless as an assurance from a herpes sufferer that his sores have cleared up. Keiko's symptoms come and go. They always have and probably always will. Keiko's symptoms went through eight progression/regression cycles in Mexico, according to Bossart's paper. In two cycles, regression of his viral lesions was almost total. More important, the papilloma virus isn't Keiko's only problem. Last winter, the U.S. Department of Agriculture assembled a team of scientists to examine Keiko. The media universally reported that Keiko was free of 48 viruses he was tested for. They failed to note, although the team report was clearly worded, that Keiko was tested for 49 viruses and was clear of 48 of them. Tests for the 49th virus are inconclusive, says virologist Al Smith, of Oregon State University. Smith said the virus is different from papilloma virus but declines to identify it until tests are final. "You want us to stop all this now?" Free Willy Keiko Foundation officials always say they will do only what is best for Keiko. "The goal of this project is to release Keiko to the wild, if he can possibly do it," says Diane Hammond, media-affairs chief of the foundation. Despite its rhetoric, however, insiders such as Mark Trimm, Keiko's former chief trainer, say the foundation has always been committed to releasing the whale. "The foundation line is, anything short of release is failure," says Trimm, one of several top Oregon Coast Aquarium employees who quit last year when the foundation got more aggressive about releasing Keiko. "They have this mandate from on high." Indeed, Craig McCaw, the Seattle cellular-phone multi-billionaire, who has bankrolled the Free Keiko project, has said that the Free Willy movie series made a promise to billions of children worldwide that Willy would live free. Keeping Keiko in captivity, he said in an interview last fall with PBS' Frontline, would break that promise. The only problem is that, unlike the movie, there's no way to control the ending of that story.
originally published September 9, 1998 |