Keiko's winter home finally found

After weeks of searching, supporters of Keiko the killer whale today finally found a winter home for the star of the Free Willy films.

The six-tonne orca showed up in Norway’s Skaalvik fjord in early September after swimming 870 miles after his release off Iceland in July.

His team and Norwegian authorities have studied many sites to find him a home. To the delight of the people of Halsa, the main village on the fjord, they settled on the nearby Taknes Bay.

“It took a little while,” said Lars Olav Lilleboe, who, as the village’s Keiko coordinator, deals with the thousands of fans who show up weekly. “It is great that he gets to stay here.”

After he arrived in Norway, the friendly killer whale let his fans swim with him, pet him, even climb on his back, until he was so overrun that Norwegian authorities imposed a ban on approaching him.

His Canadian trainer Colin Baird said they expect to move him next week, using fish to get him to follow a small boat, after setting up a base. He will not be penned in.

The bay in the Korsnes Fjord, also in Halsa township, is only about six miles from Keiko’s current location, a trip Baird said would take about 90 minutes.

Keiko was captured near Iceland at the age of two. The Free Willy films sparked his rescue from a Mexico City amusement park in 1996.

After two years of rehabilitation at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, the whale was airlifted to Iceland in 1998, taught to catch live fish and then released off Iceland in a €20.5m programme to return him to the wild.

He swam to Norway – the only country that conducts commercial whaling – and became so listless in the Norwegian fjord that his team started feeding him up to 175lb of fish a day.

“We are still feeding him,” said Baird. “He is lazy, just like all of us. He will take a free meal.”

The Norwegian Fisheries Directorate today approved the plan by the Free Willy/Keiko Foundation team to move him.

Conditions included that he not be penned up, commercially exploited or placed in conflict with other interests.

“As long as the foundation can guarantee Keiko’s well-being and wants to continue its project to set him free among wild killer whales, the Fisheries Directorate will not give permission for him to be caught or exploited commercially,” Fisheries Director Peter Gullestad said.

At least one aquarium, Miami Seaquarium, has expressed an interest in capturing Keiko, but US and Norwegian authorities rejected the request.

Baird said the new bay has deep water, plenty of fish and a good chance that other wild killer whales will pass by.

“It might be possible for us to ’walk’ him with wild killer whales during the winter,” said Baird.

Baird said it was impossible to say whether Norway would become a long-term home for Keiko, but that they will try to keep introducing him to wild orcas in the hopes that he may someday join them.