Keiko Part 2 with Brianna Bowman

What if that man to shrimp is like the little girl in the exorcist and it's like you're gonna die up there? Welcome to your wrong about the podcast where we tell you about your favorite Oregon celebrities and of course the best one of all is Keko. And with me today to talk about Keko is Certified Orca Girl and also Dolphin Girl, Brianna Bowman. Hi! Yes, that is! I really should put that at my business card, I think. Certified Dolphin Girl. Did I ever tell you, Sarah? Okay, this is kind of embarrassing. Good, great way to start. Is that much of a Dolphin Girl I am? Do you know what my first email address was? Dolphin Girl. No, I was trying to be a little squeak squeak. I was trying to be a little cooler than just Dolphin Girl. It was Dolphin underscore Chica for at Hot Maels. That's so beautiful though. Okay, do you know what my first AOL username was? I bet I've told you this before. No, I don't know. A Moray Dragon 88. Are those two both so unbranded? We haven't changed at all. You're still a Dolphin Chica and I'm still on a Moray Dragon at AOL.com. And then I ran in like, you know, 17. It was like you should never put your birth here in your email and I was like, oh no, what have I done? I have to say though, I think I've I was definitely a Dolphin Girl as a kid and I think as a woman. I am an Orca woman. That's interesting. Because you used to be really cute and you know, people pleasing and you would jump through who said, now you just want to attack billionaire's yachts. Yes, actually, that's a fair summary. It's pretty accurate. I feel like we should do a bonus episode on my lingering question of like, what is the deal with the Orcas allegedly attacking billionaires yachts? Do they hate capitalism specifically? Because that would be very exciting. Say that again, but in a Jerry Seinfeld voice. What's the deal with these Orcas? Why do they keep attacking billionaires? What is the deal with these Orcas? So, okay, so this is part two of the Kiko story. If you don't know who Kiko is, we bring you out to speed in the last episode. But if I may, in classic, you're wrong about fashion, I'd like to attempt to summarize it and you can correct me as needed. Go for it. Okay, so Kiko is a lovely little whale, killer whale slash Orca and he certainly is killer and he's a sweet little guy. And he's very sweet. Yeah, and he was born around Iceland, obviously not in Iceland in the 70s and was captured in 1979. Yeah, oh yeah, 78 or 79. Good memory as usual, Sarah. Thank you. At a time when random dick wheels were growing around capturing killer whales for fun and profit and to exhibit them and make ridiculous movies about them. I realized after we recorded the other day that I actually have a poster for a different killer whale movie on my bathroom door. Yeah, let me open the door and then I can read it to us. Are killer whales an apex predator? Yes, yeah, there's not really anything that is a threat to a killer whale besides people in the ocean. Yeah, I was going to say killer whales are the cutest apex predator, but actually I think it's got to be polar bears. Oh, yeah, polar bears are pretty stinking cute. Right, because kids love polar bears, they're in coke ads, they're drinking coke, they're looking at the sunset or the northern lights, I guess. Yeah, and yet according to to Blair Braverman who certainly would know in real life, polar bears see us much as I would see a delicious taco bell gordita. Oh yeah, yes, no polar bears are, I know like, you know, we're supposed to be wary of grizzly bears if we're out in the woods and yeah, I mean, I certainly don't want to force them to be friends with me. No, and like with a grizzly bear and it's mostly like, you just don't want to surprise them because they might hurt you that way. A polar bear will as far as I know try to eat you, they do see you as a tasty snack, so not a good situation if you're if you're near one. So I guess say no. Okay, so let me read you this Namo poster. So it's got a lovely painting of Namo Namo Namo. Yeah, Namo. I think the killer whale with some asshole holding onto his fin and and writing him while he leaps. We love the idea of just like writing a beautiful animal. Yeah, we really wanted to make Orca's like the horses of the ocean for us. I think God. Yeah, that's so depressing and it's like, yeah, I mean, I guess if a horse could hold its own against a great white shark, I might think a little bit more about that. It's amazing that we got our way with horses, which he quit while we're not ahead exactly, but you know, yeah. And the text says, anybody want to make friends with a very big, very wet, very playful killer whale? A very question mark three exclamation points. He's the biggest hero in the whole wide world of adventure. And then it's got a little girl with pigtails saying, don't let them hurt Naboo, mommy. I love him. So you can see that free will is working on a precedent that maybe had not been perfected yet, but sort of existed as a, you know, because there's so many narratives in American culture. And I'm sure pretty much any culture about kid and animal. Oh, yeah, who become friends and understand each other. Yeah, those are my, they still are my favorite stories. They were my favorite stories when I was a kid. I definitely gravitated to any story where a protagonist that's a young child is making their best friend is some sort of animal. Like what was it in my side of the mountain? And he had a hawk and falcon. Paragon falcon. Yeah. I think about frightful more often than actual people I have known in my life or like family members, you know. Yeah, I, well, I don't know. I can't remember this plot of Julie of the wolves if she actually had a connection. She's married off like as a 13 year old, I think. She's like married to a fellow kid. Yeah. I think she's in like, Barrow or something. And she runs away and like loses her bearing. And then she's adopted by a family of wolves. And they, they go hunting and then they regurgitate meat for her, which is so gross and so great. Yeah. You got to do what you got to do. Yeah, you know, I'm sure there's an influencer today who's thinking, you know, we should all be eating as regurgitated wolf meat. Oh, God. There probably is, honestly. That's the next thing billionaires are going to pull us word of God. Oh, probably. While they listen to the eyes wide shut soundtrack, we're predicting some really big trends here, I think, today. We really are. But I mean, I also, I'll say that like the success of this show, which has been listened to by more people than I would ever imagine possible when we started out, is to me, like further proof of my theory that like, obviously, people are different from each other to quote Eve's segue, but that there are a lot of basic human tendencies and drives. And one of them is that we're very curious and we love learning. If we didn't love learning, we wouldn't have landed on the moon. Right. With like computers that have less memory than probably what it takes to power one of those games where you have to save a king by sorting jewels. Yeah, we wouldn't have landed on the moon and we wouldn't have to bring it back. We wouldn't have tried to free Keko, I think. Exactly. And you wouldn't be listening to this wanting to know how this happens. Right. Because this is also a way, I think, for you to tell us about kind of the some of the concepts and science that are behind everything that is happening and that we're going to learn today. Yeah. Yeah. It was an astronomical feat. And we learned a lot and it also did not go perfectly. And that is part of the process of science and learning and trying new things. So I just want to say, like, you know, people try to talk about the Keko story in terms of whether was it a success or was it a failure? And I certainly used to think of it in those terms of like this very black and white. Did they achieve their goal or did they fail? And I think like all stories and just real life in general, the more interesting question is about what we did learn and the parts where we did failed to reach the goal and how we can do things differently next time and understanding the nuance involved and all the all the shades of gray in between. And yeah. That's where the real interesting part of the story lies. It's it's not just, you know, a yes, no binary of whether we did what we set out to do. Yeah. I guess like in the news boys' strike. Yes. Exactly. Well, I feel like one of the things that we're going to get into maybe is also when so many people are working on a project there being conflicting ideas of what the goal is. Yes. And so yeah, so to catch us up. So he's he's a lovely little little color whale. Mm-hmm. He's captured. He ends up in a theme park that is now a six flags in Mexico City. So he's a whale at altitude. Yes. Which is funny to think about, but also worrying. And he's in a tank that's like, and I remember this from when I was a kid to be clear because our chapter last time ended with Keko, on his way to the Oregon coast aquarium, which I remember. And which was like everyone was excited about in my memory and it was huge basically. Certainly for children, but I think kind of for everybody. Yeah. And especially in Oregon, and that became kind of part of our identity. It certainly is millennials. So we had like provided transitional housing for Keko. Yes. But so he was in a tank that I remember learning as a kid was like and that you reiterated in this episode was like consistently just like too small and too warm for his needs like based on his species. Mm-hmm. And then when they were making free willy, they were like, we need a whale, a whale that can act that works well with people. And that isn't owned by sea world who don't want us to work with their whales because for some reason, they don't want to help with a movie that's about freeing whales. And this theme park in Mexico is like, yeah, you can film with our whale. And so of course, then we have our like adolescent protagonist opening a door in Astoria, Oregon, and then going through it. And he's in a theme park in Mexico City with Laurie Petty and Keko. And so it's like a lovely movie where they like free Keko and he goes back to his pod and they're together again. And as we also talked about killer whales are very social. Yes, very social. And like, we'll be fair to say like don't thrive as loners, which might be foreshadowing. Yes. There are some examples of loner killer whales, but I think it's sort of similar again to people in that it's not really the norm to have a completely isolated life. Right. So we're telling the story of like human beings coming together, you know, kind of inadvertently making Keko a symbol of what happens in the movie. He's the star of which as he pointed out in the past, I cannot think of a single exit. You can't think, and I can't think of a single example of this happening in any other case where fact imitates fiction to this extent, unless you count things like Fantasia from American Idol playing herself in a movie, which I've also always found trippy. Oh, yeah. The only, well, and the other example I can think of president Zalinsky when he of Ukraine, you know, right. Wasn't he an actor in a show about becoming president? Something like that. Keko is really the the president Zalinsky of the ocean. So, okay, so our last installment ended with Keko, merely on his way to Newport, Oregon. Yes. And the plan at the time, which I didn't realize is a little kid because I'm sure no one explained this to me with enough nuance, or I guess ignored it possibly, was for him to be there for like a while. But then ultimately to be brought back to the water's outside Iceland, where he was from. Right. And my first question based on that, which I feel like we were about to get into, is how do you transport a whale, especially if you don't have the Enterprise, like in the Star Trek movie I made you watch. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not easy, but you'd be surprised how much whale transport takes place. I mean, any, okay, same worry about that. Well, they, it primarily happens by air. Oh, I believe that the plane that transported. I want an action movie about this. I know, right. The clock is ticking when you've got a whale on the cargo hold. Yes. And speaking of a ticking clock, I think where we ended last time, I was saying that there was a budget shortfall at this point in the Dory. So, right. Earth Island Institute, we had our protagonist, David Phillips. What does David Phillips look like? Does he wear teeth as it all? So I, I was thinking about this. I was thinking about like, who would I cast in my movie about Kako? Mark Ruffalo. Oh, that's a good one actually. Okay. I was thinking Tom Hanks actually. Okay, Proud Tom Hanks when? Recently. Okay. And with a, with a beard, like, you know, grizzled looking kind of fed up with everybody, but still very nice in the end. Yeah. Like a, and like I've spoken with David Phillips. And he's, yeah, he's very pleasant guy and really passionate about the work that he did. And he's very like strategic. He was involved in a lot of like media campaigns around save the dolphins in the 70s when it came to like two beneficiaries. Right. And yeah, I think he's very savvy and he understands how to make these big projects come together. Like he's a project manager essentially in this story, which is real world talk for producer from what I understand. Oh, yeah, that's true. That is kind of, it is the same thing. Now that I'm like getting more into this space. I'm like, oh, yeah, that, that is what a producer is. There's an episode of the Dick Van Dyke show where they like take Richie's class on a field trip backstage to the Alan Brady show where like the promises that Dick Van Dyke is a comedy writer. And they try to introduce, I think the kids to their producer who's walking by saying, don't talk to me. I got a big problem. And I was like, I, that's a great depiction of producers. Okay. So we have David Phillips and he's like crap. We need money like now. And they had at this point, secured that they're going to take him to Oregon, the facility in Oregon that was going to house Kiko, the tank. It wasn't already in existence. They built that specifically for Kiko. Just like making Titanic. They built a tank for that too. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Yeah. That's a little trivia. So they built this tank for Kiko. And it was going to, the deal was with Oregon Coast Aquarium that the free Willy Kiko foundation was going to pay for it. So Oregon Coast Aquarium just got this huge facility for free, essentially. Oh, great. I sorry. I thought you were going to be like, and then they refused to pay. I become so gated. Oh, no, but they were, they were behind on how much it would cost Warner Brothers. They chipped in some money. Well, they're from Hollywood. They should have anticipated going over Biket, but they never do. Yeah. And Earth Island Institute, they started fundraising quite a bit. So this is when we started getting the, there's these like Kiko adoption kits that people and mostly kids. I remember this. Oh my God. Yeah. Wow. Holy shit. So like a few dollars, you could, you know, get little updates about Kiko in the mail and get a picture of him. And you can get a little certificate saying like, I'm helping free Kiko or whatever it said. So they started that kind of fundraising. Kiko certainly had a personality that people felt like they knew and, you know, identified with. Yeah. And it does feel like, yeah, we're really, we're drawn to animals that possess what we see as kind of a humanoid intelligence. But interestingly, what that often means is that they're more likely to be dangerous to us. And I'll also just say another story I heard recently. There was this woman, I think in the Netherlands at a zoo who kept visiting this gorilla. Maybe you've heard this story, this gorilla named Biketo. And it was like, we have a bond. And part of that bond is sustained eye contact. Oh, I vaguely remember this. And I visit this gorilla all the time. And I love this gorilla. And then after this gorilla had a particularly stressful day, he somehow escaped his enclosure and attacked her. And when I kind of a rampage and it all, you know, ended up okay. But it turns out that that's like a sign of aggression for gorillas. But for a person sustained eye contact is like what they make you do in acting class to like open up your emotional pores, you know. So it's just like a complete difference in how we process something and like assuming that human body language is universal, especially with primates. You know, they didn't have to like, gun down Biketo, which is good. But also that this woman kept visiting and kept like, really? After she got attacked? Oh, wow. She's just a girl who can't say no. She's still convinced of their bond even after the Gs. So there's just this theme here. I think in all of our interactions with animals that you and I've already been talking about. And one question maybe that I want to bring to you that I think might be a thread here is like, it feels like there were people throughout who were like, well, we must get Kiko back to the wild as he deserves. And that is the only possible course of action. It seems like maybe it would be fair to say. Yes. And it's also interesting to ask the question, I think, of whether that might inevitably be influenced by the very human perspective that values freedom as a value that possibly is a value that orcas might not have. Yeah. No, I think you nailed it because yeah, they're just kind of without the course of the Kiko story and especially during what I consider kind of the second half of the story, there were these two main threads that persisted throughout the Kiko story. And one was that he's going to be released. He's going to be free. He's going to find his family. We're going to help him do that. That's what he wants. He said it in therapy. He said it himself. Because of course he wants it because every, you know, being deserves to be free and we screwed up by putting him in captivity in the first place. And what's the situation socially here? Because was there a hope that they could like where they like we have to get him back with his family? Or was there the sense that there was like a fallback of like finding other orcas to make him be friends with? Because I feel like this part, because it's like hard enough to put a human child in middle school. So like the social aspect here seems difficult. Yeah, it's interesting talking to people that were involved with the project. And I will talk more about one person in particular who is pretty critical of how the end of the project went. But there was this sense that there would be this intuition or instinct from Kiko that he would just kind of find his family. Like I don't know how else to put it. Like he would just know which has always worrying. Yeah, there were attempts and plans to get information on the whales around Iceland to try to narrow it down. They were going to try to record vocalizations of Icelandic whales so they could maybe find his pod through identifying the dialects which we explained last time killer whales have dialects amongst pods. So all these whales sound like Bjork. Yeah, so they could maybe identify him that way. But then they were also going to look for genetic data and try to do that. But it was like in hindsight, I think that was one of the things that people learned in the project that that was a key piece of information that they did not have enough data on. Yeah, because how are you supposed to find someone's whale family from like the 70s? That's like having a kid get lost in the wall and you're like, well, it was an Illinois. I mean, look, I don't that that might be a really silly comparison. No, I've made this exact comparison. Okay. Listen, I'm no scientist Brianna, but I'm afraid the ocean is pretty large. It's a big place. It's honestly not a pale green dot. It's a pale blue one. Yeah, well, and then on top of that, there's not just like a handful of killer whales in the North Atlantic. There's like thousands of them. Like they're doing pretty well population wise. So narrowing it down to Kekko's specific family, was going to be a bit of a needle in a haystack situation, especially at the time. I believe now there's a lot more data and there's a lot more researchers that are documenting the genetic lineage of killer whales in the North Atlantic and documenting their dialects and identifying them by individual and that sort of thing. But it's still like a much larger population. It's harder to keep tabs on than say the Pacific Northwest Southern resident killer whales, which as I mentioned, there's only currently 75. Well, 74, tentatively 75. But one key thing before we leave Mexico, so they didn't have enough money. And another really important character in the Kekko story enters here. His name is Craig McCaw. Craig McCaw was a tech billionaire from the early 90s. Yes. Who would you cast to play him in our movie? Well, I need some help with that one. Can you send me a picture of him? Yeah. Okay. Craig McCaw. He was like the one person I couldn't figure out. Interesting. Yeah. I got to say, um, Bill Paxton. Oh, right. With a sweater on. Yes. We'll go with Bill Paxton, Vertical Limit Era Bill Paxton. Yes. Uh, Bill Paxton with a comb over. So we got Bill Paxton and Tom Hanks. It's a star studded spectacular. It is. Um, in terms of a character and like what role he kind of serves in this story, he's definitely our John Hammond from Jurassic Park. He just has a lot of money and is very enthusiastic about this project. And me, I can say, if you have way too much money, as so many people do these days, why not free a whale for God's sake? Yeah. Having a big building with your name on it won't help you. Teenagers will put gum on it. Yeah. And so he got involved because literally he and his wife, Soft Free Willie, and they're like, oh, yeah, they were moved by the story. They were happy to chip in some money at this early stage. Something in the order of like a million dollars or two million dollars to help with the shortfall of specifically just this stage of getting Kiko out of Mexico. So one other like significant donation that happens at this point is David Phillips was able to get UPS to donate a plane to fly Kiko to Newport. Because this is like a great PR thing to get it on, right? Like, even if it's a stunt for some people, it's like, who cares? If you want to like look good by charming the kids of America by being the Kiko male place. Yeah. And like, it's a great idea. Like I absolutely. I love for corporate manipulation. If it's basically harmless and just kind of annoying, if you, you know, try really hard to be cynical, which I know obviously sometimes do. Yeah. And many people will kind of use Kiko in this way. So then we're leaving Mexico and it was supposed to be a secret like Kiko was supposed to leave in the, in the wee hours of the morning of January 7th, 1996. And it was supposed to be a secret. I don't know why they thought they could keep it a secret. Kiko and Princess Diana are the two main characters of 1996. I realize now. I know. I thought about Princess Diana so many times during the story too. Yeah. But of course, people knew he was leaving. It wasn't a secret that he was leaving. I don't know why they thought that people wouldn't show up. But apparently the streets were just lined with people wishing, you know, Kiko. That's so beautiful. Yeah. A good farewell. And it's like the ending of 10 poets society. And it's so beautiful at the same time. It's so funny to think of Kiko being like, I'm just a whale. I don't really understand what I know. This is about to be honest. It didn't go as David Phillips had hoped it would go. He thought he wanted it to go a lot more smoothly than it did. But they make it to the plane, which is like a C-130, which is just an enormous plane, obviously you would need. He makes a two new port. Finally, they had to do a couple refuelings on the way there. But well, this is where, yeah, we can introduce the town of Newport. Yeah. The story, which is where I currently live. And honestly, seeing Kiko here when I was a kid was probably what planted the seed in my brain of, hey, I would really love to live here one day. Yeah. We would go there for like weekend trips when I was growing up. And it's like, I feel like for people in most states with a coastal part, there's like a place where you eat taffy. And the port is like the place where you eat taffy. A story is also very pretty, but it's on a river. It's not right on the coast. A story is also home to the Fisher Poets gathering, which I think is my favorite festival I've ever been to. Yeah, which I have to go with you too. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, Newport's wonderful. I've, like I said, I wanted to live here since I was a kid. And now I do. And I made the best possible decision for my life moving here. I just love it. What's something that to you exemplifies what Newport is like? Like what's a Newport thing? I think the thing that I love I walk I walk on the beach every day with my dogs. And I live close to the bay entrance. So the river bar is not too far from me. And I love when I am walking on the beach near sunset. And I look down south towards the bar and I can see fishing boats coming in. And I see like their big bright glowing sodium lights and can see them making their way back into the harbor. And I don't know, it's Newport just encapsulates everything that really excites me. Like I love the ocean. I love learning about the ocean. I love marine science. There's the Haffir marine science center here. So there's world-class research happening in this tiny town. Yeah. What is it like when Keko comes to town? Well, you know, he had a huge procession that said for wealth to him from Mexico City. And there was a sizable crowd here in Newport, but it is a small town. And there's, so it wasn't as many people. But I think that actually like for David Phillips, I think he was a lot more comfortable with that. He wanted to keep things a little more low-key. And he and Keko arrived, obviously goes from the airport to the aquarium. They put him in his brand-new fancy tank. But there's still not enough money. It's very stressful. I imagine to be running out of budget because you have a wail you have to keep feeding now. Yeah. And he by bet he's eating a lot. Yes. Specifically the budget for the tank itself that was going to all be paid for by the Free Willy Keko Foundation. Again, they were short some money for that specifically. I feel like if I'm like, Joe Hollywood, I would just go to like a Dodgers game and just like ask the people in my row, just like pass down a memo pad and be like, well, you pledge some money to the Free Willy thing right down how much and like, right? Like a congregation in a church, like passing down the offering plate. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that's basically what David Phillips was doing. It was just they just didn't happen fast enough as my understanding. And the thing is they were building it and they knew they were short of the money. But there was so much pressure to finish it from the public and from kids that the contractor didn't want to be the bad guy in the situation. Oh, nice. So they were like, okay, we'll finish this project even though you owe us like literally like a few million dollars. Like I can't imagine finishing a project where I'm owed that much money. Like I well know. Yeah. Actually pretty generous of them. It's because the contractors are coming home to little Timmy every night. Yeah. To explain the the whale situation. I hope. Well, and also if they didn't finish Keko's tank, Keko's health was deteriorating in Mexico City. And so they kept saying like he's not going to last much longer. And what's the issue with his health? Because we haven't talked about that since the first episode. I don't think. I mean, overall, he just wasn't thriving. Does he have HPV or whale PV whale papilloma virus? He's got the papilloma virus. So it was a skin condition. And it was really bad in Mexico City. And part of that was to do with the temperature of the water in his tank. It just kind of allowed the virus to thrive and get out of control. And I believe it was having a negative effect on his immune system. So anyway, they they finished the project. But then David Phillips is like, oh my god, I have so much money that we owe these people. And that's where Phillips approached Craig McCaw again. And Craig McCaw was like, all right, I will give more money to this project. But this is the deal I want to make. The Oregon Coast Aquarium will give a percentage of its sales to the free Willy Keko Foundation. And he also pressured Warner Brothers to hold up an end of an agreement. Warner Brothers did say they were going to contribute some money. But at some point, they kind of backed out of the deal. And then anyway, McCaw, McCaw made sure that they were going to honor their end of an oral agreement. And then McCaw said, if I'm going to be like basically bankrolling this project from now on, I'm going to be the chair of the board of the free Willy Keko Foundation. And so therefore, he would have a lot more say and control over how the project was going to be executed. This was quite the big shift for the free Willy Keko Foundation. So David Phillips was the executive director of the board before. And so David Phillips was like, okay, I guess I'm going to hand over leadership of this conservation project to a billionaire. So Craig McCaw is like, it's my money, it's my show. Yeah, he wanted to have a lot more control. Which is like to one degree understandable and to another degree stupid because he's not a scientist. Right. There's a lot of people that start to get involved with the leadership of this project that are not, they're not scientists and they're not animal behaviorists, they're not trainers. There's a lot of like documentary filmmakers and that sort of thing going into it. And it's like, that in itself isn't a bad thing, but sometimes the goals are not aligned. Yeah. Because I mean, not to like even accuse anyone of shadiness, but if you're making a documentary or if you're trying to create media, you have some degree of interest in interesting things continuing to happen. Yes, exactly. And that you might feel pressure to shape the story a certain way based on the needs of your industry. Right. Exactly. You know, has led to some unfortunate outcomes in the past. Yeah. The documentary filmmakers or the people with that kind of leaning, they wanted to make sure they documented the Hollywood story of Keko swimming off with his family. And so their priorities were not aligned with the priorities of the people that kind of understood more of how a re-attraction process would take place. And it's not a one and done kind of thing. And with that shift of the leadership of the board of the foundation from an environmentalist leaning to a more kind of capitalist perspective, other members of the board began to become a little uneasy of whether the foundation was going to remain true to its goals of the rehabilitation and release. Some of the people on the board felt like maybe Craig McCaw and his underlings were maybe secretly in cooots with SeaWorld and they were just going to try to get to take it back into SeaWorld somehow. That's what would happen in the Ryan Murphy show for sure. Yeah. So people were like, why? Why does this guy even want to help Keko? And it might have been mostly his wife, Wendy McCaw, even later on in the story when Craig McCaw kind of ducks out Wendy McCaw stayed involved with the project. So there was just some skepticism about what his motivations were. Yeah, to speak about skepticism, I guess it's just fair to say that like when someone has enough money to exert control over a project, that kind of always puts everyone in a precarious position, even if they make great decisions the whole way through because it still means that like for someone to have more control than anyone else in a situation of this kind, especially coming in kind of later in the day is just like it creates the potential for someone not being able to be overridden basically. And I think in a way that's always worrisome regardless of who's playing that role. Yeah, even though there's a board and it's supposed to be this sort of democratic structure. Kenneth Brower, the author of Free and Keko, his analogy was that it operated a bit like the Roman Senate under Julius Caesar. So it was like, yeah, we're we're all making this decision together, but everyone's kind of looking at Craig McCaw every time of like, but what do you want to do? Like whale succession. Yeah, exactly. Well, how is how's like for Keko at the aquarium? What's this chapter like from his perspective? Yeah, this is I think something really positive to focus on in this story is Keko's health really improves during his day at the Oregon Co-Saparium. So he has this much much much larger tank where he can actually dive all the way down and is completely submerge himself do laps around the tank. It just is really substantially larger than his tank in in Mexico. It has actual seawater pumped in from Equino Bay and the temperature is a much more pleasant temperature for a killer whale. The sea temperatures around here I think are like in the like 40s in the winter and then maybe in the low 50s in the summer or something like that. That's why we don't swim in the ocean. Or you wear a wetsuit? That too. But yeah, it's it's cold. It's real cold. Even with a wetsuit I imagine it's pretty freaking cold. Yes. Because you still get your your poor little face in your hands or in contact with the ocean. Yeah, you'd be surprised. I mean, I go surfing here and I mean, I do wear gloves and and booties too because I mean, my hands and feet are just cold all the time anyway. But perfect for a killer whale. Yes, perfect for a killer whale. Because this is like literally I mean, is are there ever killer whales off the actual Oregon coast historically? Is this like where he would like to normally be? There are at the Southern resident killer whales occasionally make their way down here. Nice. It's not super common, but during the winter or they take a little trip. Yeah, they take a little trip. There's also the biggest transit killer whales and then offshore whales. Some other groups that live further offshore. They're different like culturally than the Southern resident killer whales. This is so good. They are primarily marine mammal eaters like they hunt other marine mammals. So they'll go after seals and sea lions and they can be spotted off of Oregon. Okay. So this is like he's in something that like is at least much closer to his habitat. Yes. Still being captivity. It's way better than being at 7200 feet elevation in the middle of the desert, which is where he was in Mexico City. And a small enclosure that gave him the curly fin. Yeah. Yeah. And so like that virus that he had on his fins that is starting to clear up like the cold water, I guess alone just kind of helps keep the virus at bay. And then of course he's getting like really good veterinary care at this point too. So they're doing everything because part of his eventual conditions for release, those involved with the project are going to have to convince the government agencies that they have to apply for a permit from that Kiko is in good enough health to be released. They can't ethically release him if he's like really dependent on veterinary care on medicine or whatever it is. So part of this middle stage between Mexico and Iceland was bringing him back up to health. Right. So he's in rehab basically. Essentially, yeah, rehabilitation and release were two of the main concepts of this project. Rehabilitation was a big part of it. And I would say that they really did that successfully at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. And once his health started to return, they started to introduce a program to get him trained up to exhibit wild behaviors again. So tell me more about that because what what was he like that told them that he wasn't showing wild behaviors and what those look like that they were trying to teach to him? Well, I know one of them specifically was they were working on his diving time. Like he just wasn't I mean, it was basically impossible for him to. Yeah, I know he's like in a little swim class or whatever. Swim team at school and proving his times. But he of course couldn't really dive hardly at all in Mexico. See, and this is again, we were doing the thing we're talking about where he's like an adult mayor predator and we're like, he's our baby boy. I know. We just we want to see him do well. And we're like, oh, I think I know what you need. It's really hard to just not naturally do that even just talking about him in hindsight. But yeah, he couldn't hardly dive at all in Mexico. So that was one thing. He needs to be able to dive in like. He's all out of practice. He's breath for longer. They wanted to up his. Sorry, it's just so cute. I know. I know. He's on like a little training program. He's a meadow is working his way up to tadpole and then after a few more levels he'll be at himself. They wanted to improve his stamina because wild orcas swim a lot. You'll be surprised to know. I guess they would have to. Do they swim while they're sleeping? How's that work? Yeah. So for cetaceans, for dolphins and whales, how they sleep in a nutshell is they sleep with half of their brain at a time. So they will. How do I say this? It is. It's so cool. I don't think enough people talk about it because it is really cool. So you're learning to be a science communicator. And this is a great context because we're like, how do I explain this to somebody whose kids are yelling right now, which is the condition under which perhaps you are listening to this right at this moment? Yeah. Maybe your kids are shouting at you because they want another waffle. So yeah, the whales and dolphins, they sleep with half of their brain at a time because this is the important thing. When a whale or dolphin needs to breathe, they have to think about it, right? Oh, right. I mean, we can kind of switch between consciously controlling our breath, you know, like we do when we're meditating or whatever, right? Or you can go the whole day without thinking about breathing. Yes. You could go for weeks without. Yeah, or years. But a whale, as you can imagine, cannot. They have to think about every breath that they take. So if they sleep, they can't completely go unconscious because, well, the way that their brains wire to their lungs, they would actually just, I guess, stop breathing because there be no part of the brain telling them to breathe. So they have to keep one half of their brain alert so that they can continue swimming to the surface. And I've never understood why people think that like God and evolution are sexually counterintuitive ideas because if you believe in God, surely you can believe in a God who invented whales. And I was like, and then half at a time, I don't know. I really painted myself into a corner with this one. Yeah, you made the whale and the angel assistant is like, oh, wow, beautiful, beautiful work. Just one thing. And then he gets through as his world's best God mug. But honestly, what he came up with is pretty cool. Like, you know, how this ferric sleeping is a pretty, pretty cool adaptation. And then it's like, is that semi-consciousness? From what I understand, the half of their brain that's asleep is something called slow wave sleep, I believe. And I believe the half of their brain that's awake, I can't imagine that it's super alert. And when pods of dolphins and whales are like killer whales are sleeping, they'll like sleep together. It'll be like nap time. And they'll, you know, kind of swim close to each other. Their pectoral fins might be touching each other. So they're like, you know, they're keeping an eye out, but they're also collectively sleeping at the same time. And other thing that I think is interesting about unihemospheric sleep, which I think that's the term, that I read in a paper is that dolphins and whales cetaceans, they don't go into REM sleep ever. Like the deep sleep, they just don't do it, which to sleep scientists is interesting because it was thought that REM sleep is necessary for proper brain function, like you need that deep sleep. But apparently whales and dolphins don't. So it makes sense. They're pretty different. Because humans also can't live in the ocean and eat fish the whole time. Yeah, whales and dolphins are just multitasking all the time and they're doing a great job. Okay, so Kiko is at the aquarium. The aquarium as Sandra Lee would say. And I would love for us to talk about the chapter where he is delighting the school children of Oregon and about your memories going to see him and what that was like for you personally as a dolphin girl. Yeah, so if you, as a listener, go to my Patreon page for the podcast that I'm making about this story. I have posted a couple pictures of me and my mom and my sister and we're standing in front of the tank and Kiko is right there. He looks like he's photoshopped in. He's just posing perfectly for this photo. He's like, yeah, that'll be five bucks. And I remember this from visiting Kiko. He was so engaged with people. I will get my story out of the way, which is that I went on a class field trip to see Kiko in second grade. It was a huge deal. We like got to school at like seven and we got back at like seven p.m. or something like that because it's like, you know, two and a half hour drive from front, I would say, or at least two hours. And I remember buying a book in the gift shop about bats. And I remember the gift shop having that very 90s thing where there was like a bunch of tiny TVs all arranged and like a grid on a wall in a store. And they each had a part of the same picture. So they all became like a giant screen, but like one that was made out of little TVs. Do you remember that? I think I do. Yeah. Yeah. And I remember this is so silly, but it's also so cute. I was like, everyone's got got for Kiko. I'm going to show I'm not like other girls by ignoring Kiko. And I think truly I felt that I was going to be like, Bellas won for Kiko. You know, I was like, I must distinguish myself to Bush Kiko because secretly I love Kiko so much. I didn't know what to do. Yeah. And now I realize that like whales and men are simple creatures and you really just have to, you know, just be direct as you are. And so, and so I don't know that he was interactive. And that's, I don't know, that's so cool. Yeah. No, this is this is something that came up for many people as well that I talked to just how much Kiko was engaged with people at the aquarium in this like underwater viewing area. And how much he like preferentially liked to engage with the kids that visited him. Like, how could you even imagine a better whale to cast in this world? And what was that engagement like for him? I mean, from what I understand, he just he would hang out at the window where you could see him and he would just watch you. So like kids would be like doing silly things. He was just an extrovert. He was, I mean, he is funny. He's an extrovert in that way in terms of like the skills he needed to be a wild whale and engage with other whales. He was much more introverted. It's that that classic thing where humans, I think we feel deficient in how far we've gotten away from animals in the way we live. And we want animals to include us. And then we make them worse at surviving among their own. Yeah. And like kids love him, the public love him. I have a video that I would love to share with you. Yeah. Please do. Let's do it. It'll bring you back to this time. Oh my god. Visiting Kiko at the aquarium. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that viewing area. Yeah. And it's like, you know, where you would see seals, I think normally, where you kind of go into this almost theater type environment. Yeah, there he is. He's hanging out by the glass and the kids are touching the glass and he's holding up little toys of him to the class. They're coming to Kiko's get well party. Today's beer time. They're having a Kiko's go party. So there's this lady with a big check. And I think it's a donation from Mattel. So Mattel made a Barbie. Oh my god. Yeah, Mattel knows what's good. We really wanted to help too. So we created Ocean Friends Barbie. And a portion of the proceeds from Ocean Friends Barbie will go towards Kiko's recovery. So I'm very happy today to present you Beverly on behalf of Ocean Friends Barbie and everyone at Mattel. This donation for $500,000 for the continuation of Kiko's rehabilitation. Very, very generous. Yeah, but Kiko's just hanging out. Yeah. He's watching. He's like, what are you guys up to? Yeah. I talked to someone here. The Oregon Coast Aquarium is down by Yukonabe. And you can see Kiko's tank was not in the ground. It was all above ground. So it was like, you know, like the biggest above ground pool you can imagine. And if you walked along the bay, you could like look towards the aquarium and you could possibly see him like jumping out of his tank. And I'm like, what? That would be amazing. I mean, I'm glad that we made the attempt to put him back in the wild, but it would be pretty cool if I could still see that. But yeah, so I just love that video because I feel like it captures that moment in time of visiting him at the aquarium. And another story that someone told me about why Kiko was so engaged with people in the underwater viewing area is that so in free willy with movie magic, they made it look like there is an underwater viewing area where they filmed it in Mexico City. But that didn't exist in Mexico City. They didn't have that actually. So when Kiko came to Oregon Coast Aquarium, that was the first time that he had been in a place like that where he could like look at people. And I'm sure he was like, whoa, this is different. All you guys are underwater. Like you're not usually underwater. Well, and yeah, the person that mentioned that, they think that that was part of his curiosity and where that interest came from was it was just new. It was novel to him. Yeah. He was gaining weight. He was his health was improving. And then like they mentioned, he was eating fish. And one of the biggest points of contention in the Kiko project was whether Kiko was successfully eating live fish or not. So they started this process at the Oregon Coast Aquarium of teaching Kiko to eat live fish. So this was something that they were, this was one of the criteria for release to the wild that he could, they could demonstrate that he could hunt live fish and eat live fish and be able to sustain himself that way, which makes a lot of sense. Like, of course, like you need to be, if you're going to be wild again, you're going to have to be able to feed yourself. It is a little funny to think that we thought we had the capability of teaching in apex predator like a killer whale. Yeah. How to hunt. Puberace. We're like, I want to find your family. We put it out up. So it's only a matter of time until they see it on the paper. And it's not to say that I think it was wrong to try. I just know. I'm glad we did. I'm glad we tried. But yeah, we might have been a little aspirational. Well, it's like people are going to start to think about the kind of optimism of the 90s or the way we see that now. And one of the counter points to that is that just because you're optimistic doesn't mean you're right. Yeah. And we need that optimism. But it's complicated as we've mentioned many times. Yes. And we're going to keep getting into that. So how long is he at the organ coast of Cray? I'm going to guess like, is it like three years? Yeah, about three years. So he arrived in 1996. And then Kiko's making improvements over the next few years. And the next big step is like, okay, we got to figure out where he's going to go next. Right. And you would think, oh, he's, he went to Iceland. They always thought he was going to go to Iceland. That's not true. They actually had a couple of other places in mind too, which I won't go into tomit detail on. But they were looking at Ireland and they were looking at Scotland at one point. Iceland was actually the last place they wanted to go for a few different just logistical reasons. And also the fact that Iceland culturally, especially at that time, was a pro-wailing nation. And so they just thought that Iceland was not going to be cool with the idea of this whole project in general. Iceland also had some history with environmental activists, specifically green piece activists. There's this really wild story of some green piece activists sinking a couple of boats in a harbor that were commercial wailing boats back in the 70s or 80s. Yeah, green piece will, we'll fuck up your boat. Yeah, from what I understand. Yeah. And so David Phillips and a couple other people, they went to Iceland to, you know, schmooze the right people. They talked to prime minister. They talked to the minister of fisheries. And they got a few different mixed messages. You can imagine like the minister of fisheries, which I believe that encapsulated the wailing industry at the time, he was not a fan and made it very clear that if anything, people in his kind of world and personality, he was inclined to say things like, you should just butcher a cake, oh, that's the kind of hammer that sometimes doesn't translate very well. No, it doesn't. I, well, and I don't even think he was making a joke. I think he was seriously serious. Yeah, come on. Yeah. So there was, yeah, there was some conflicting sentiments about K-Go, but then David Phillips spoke to the prime minister and prime minister was really on board. There was this shift in Iceland as well at the time of people recognizing like, hey, we can still like make money on whales. We just take people to go watch them. Right. Yeah. It's, it's the inevitable outcome of any American industry. We're teaching them other ways. Yeah. Yeah. That saga is, I do find pretty interesting. And Icelandic saga, if you will. Sometimes people in comments are like, Sarah, you missed this pun you could have made. And I'm like, I know. I know. I know. I know. And you're, you're really good at it, Sarah. But there's so many that you miss. Yeah. Yeah. I know. We can't get them all. Unfortunately. Moment of silence for the puns we didn't do. Yeah. Poor one out for the puns. The other thing about Iceland, of course, is that the narrative of this whole endeavor, the most satisfying ending is for K-Go to go back to Iceland. Like it would have been a little weird to be like, and now he lives in Ireland. Right. He's not from there, but he's learning to love fishing ships. Yeah. And Guinness. He's, yeah, he's now, now loves the Irish. But even though there's all these things, also Iceland was like, the weather is just really difficult to deal with. There's a language barrier. So just logistically, it was going to be challenging. There was just like a lot of logistical things that were, it was not appealing to people. Right. And so Phillips putting on his media campaign hat from back in the day of like, oh, this could be an opportunity to shift hearts and minds in Iceland to nice of one of the few remaining whaling nations in the world. This is our Tom Hanks character. And he can't be stopped, as we know. He can't. No, he's he's very, very persistent. So David Phillips and his colleague, Catherine Hanley, they were the pro Iceland team. And then there was another team with Jeff Foster, who was another trainer. He was a former sea world trainer that got involved with the project. And he went and scouted out Scotland and Ireland. And he was very pro Scotland and Ireland. And what happened is that they presented their cases to the board. And remember Craig McCaw is the executive director of the board. Sorry, Bell Paxton. Yeah. And David Phillips is making his case for Iceland. Jeff Foster is making his case for Scotland and Ireland. And I'll just read this from Kenneth Browers book. David Phillips had noticed that when McCaw came out in favor of something, suddenly all his corporate people were enthusiastically for it too. As the meeting progressed, Phillips glanced at McCaw occasionally, trying to gauge the billionaire's mood. I don't understand. McCaw broken finally. Kiko's from Iceland. And we're thinking of bringing him somewhere else. When Jeff Foster started to explain the logistical difficulties, McCaw broken again. No, no, no, we're bringing him to Iceland. This is why I don't do group projects. Phillips, Hanley and Dr. Cornell, who's the veterinarian, tried to not look at one another and they fought to stifle Grins. They had expected to have to battle fiercely for Iceland. But the fight was over before it began. So it was just funny because there were so much. So much. So much. So much gouting. Yeah. Of locations. Yeah. Okay. And then a guy is like, hey, what if we send him to Iceland? I like the sound of that. Basically. Yeah. And that's the world we live in in a big way now, right? Where it's like, we're kind of at the mercy of the whims of billionaires. And even when they happen to be right, maybe it's still like, well, it's just still uncomfortable how we got here. Yeah. I've noticed that, you know, I've been working with a few nonprofits and then, you know, I work for a public radio station and it does feel like there's this shift of, okay, all the grants are kind of drying up. So now we kind of figure out where all the rich people are. And to be fair, you had to know that before. But now it's just like, you have to rely on that even more. You have to rely on the whims and interests of rich people. And then let them transfuse the blood of our first born children into their desiccating bodies. Or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a great system for getting things done. Unless you have really binding contracts, I guess. I mean, when people call something medieval, which of course is like a very oversimplified term. And really, we shouldn't do more episodes of this show about like what the Middle Ages were actually like. Yeah. And what we're wrong about, which I'm sure is cool. It's a bit. But that like what we're really referring to is this, I think idea that we have of how the Middle Ages function, which is of course true to an extent, just not in every way. And without nuance, where I think one of the things we're describing is the concept of might making right. Right. And this idea that I think the way that a lot of people have distinguished today from what we feel to be kind of the darker intellectual ages of, you know, various periods of history is that you can no longer theoretically use the alleged God-given power of the monarchy to try to stop science from proving what it absolutely does. Right. Like the enlightenment that we're living in such as it is like that isn't like a gift granted to us by the fact that time has progressed. It only happens if we continue to protect actual scientific findings from being changed by people who have a master lot of power and don't like it. Yeah. We live in very weird times, but it's not actually something that we haven't seen before. And I think that we've been unfortunately perhaps lulled into a false sense of security that those days were behind us. And now we have like all these institutions. Well, that's the thing about growing in the 90s. People are moving whales around. You're like, well, God, I guess things are kind of figured out. And then you grow up and you're like, it's great. No, we got to we got to keep an eye on everybody. Yeah, we sure do. But we have to do it together. Yeah. Okay. So we have, I guess the random rich guy whim that happens to go with what the kind of some of the experts on this team are wanting to do anyway, which is always nice when that happens. Yeah. And it aligned well at the time. So it was fine. And they were like, cool, we're going to Iceland. We're taking Kiko to Iceland. And I just love this little story where two of the board members went to Iceland to scout out locations. Like, of course, a new Iceland, but like where in Iceland, are they going to put it? Yeah. They had a couple of different ideas. David Phillips and Catherine Hanley had a couple of different places they had in mind. But a couple of board members went and they ended up in the Westman Islands, which is a little island off the southern coast of Iceland or a few islands off the southern coast of Iceland. Famous for a volcanic eruption that happened in the early 80s, I believe. But they're like, okay, well, this place has a harbor and you know, they have an airport so we can get Kiko here. And they have facilities and all that. So it seems like it would be a good good location. And they go out with a guide in the bay in what's called Klettsvik Bay, which is where Kiko will end up eventually. And they go out on the on the boat. And I'm just imagining them in their suits, even though I'm sure they didn't, I just imagined board members in like the lawyer and Jurassic Park. Yeah. Yeah. And the guide takes them out. And so this bay has these, I've seen pictures. It's got this amazing rock wall feature from the, you know, many volcanic eruptions that have happened over the millennia. And it's just like this really high flat kind of enclosed space or concave space at the north end of this bay. And so they're kind of scouting out the bay. And the guide takes them over there. And the guys like, hey, check this out. And he opens up a case on the boat and the board members are like, what's he going to do? He opens it up. And there's a saxophone inside. And he proceeds to play amazing grace on his saxophone. Wow. And it's like echoing off the rock walls. And that's when these two board members are at look at each other and they're like, yep, this is the place. This is a story from Kenneth Browner's book. And I don't know. It's hard for me to confer whether that actually happened, but I just love it so much. Why would anyone make that up? Exactly. Why? But anyway, so we're about to bring cake out to Iceland. They sort of scouted it out and thought, oh, this looks like a nice, this could suit our needs. There's, it's a big bay. It's pretty protected. There's a small harbor, but a really small town nearby. So there's services and places for staff to stay and all that sort of thing. Right. And what are their needs and like how, like what level of staff are we talking about here? Like maybe this is a good time to talk about what their goals are exactly. So there's going to be the large sea pen that where cake goes going to stay inside the bay in the klutzfick bay. You're going to need food for cake. So there's going to need to be a warehouse with like hundreds of pounds of frozen fish accessible daily for him. Staff were rotated in and out of Iceland. They were staying within whatever the labor immigration laws were for Iceland at the time. So staff were on a three-month rotation. As you can imagine, there's not many people in Iceland that know how to train a killer whale or have done any kind of killer whale husbandry. There's probably been a handful, but not many. It's probably not that many in any country should be honest. And that's the whole problem. Yes. I think actually, yeah, the US kind of had that market at the time. Because we were the ones who decided to abuse killer whales to begin with, and they were like, well, crap, we got to learn how to keep these guys alive a little bit longer. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I mean, it was once killer whale started to be in captivity. Once we started to put them in captivity, it was a new job in animal husbandry and training that was appealing to people like, well, this is like, this is like a question I always have about Jurassic Park, right? We're like, how many times have you seen Jurassic Park? A few. Okay. I've probably seen it like between 30 and 50 times. Okay. Not that many times. Not to brag. I'm not bragging or anything. You should. You should. And I'm not proud to quote Arlo Guthrie. But there's a part, because you know, the premise is that they're calling in Sam Neal and Lordearn is like the preeminent paleontologist and paleobotinists in their field, or possibly Sam Neal is the preeminent paleontologist and Lordearn is his girlfriend. But she seems good at what she does. And I mean, not to insult her abilities, we just don't get any sense of her having a reputation. It would have actually been nice. Yeah. But there's that sick triceratops that they're treating like a, you know, dog who got into the garbage, right? Because she ate something she shouldn't have. And like the people who dilated. And they have like a vet on staff at Jurassic Park, which hasn't opened yet. Being like, no, the triceratopses don't eat the African lilac berries. They're toxic. But that's all right. And you're like, and my first question honestly is like, where did they hire this guy? Like they didn't bring in the preeminent paleontologist like consult on dinosaur health, but they did find someone else. Do you see what I'm saying? Where it's because if you're like going to start a dinosaur theme park, like how do you find people to take care of the dinosaurs? Right. Exactly. Because people can't even find vets for their chameleons half the time, like right now. And that's a lot more modest of a need. Yeah. So I feel like that has bearing with with the cake of a thing where it's like, yeah, it's worth remembering as you're saying that like this is a field that didn't basically exist maybe like 30 years before this was happening. It seems like right. And of course, there's been large animal veterinarians for a long time, but you know, a whale is on a different scale. And then every species has their own physiological needs. Yeah. Because horses aren't giant and aquatic and they couldn't eat a great white shark probably right. Most horses. Okay. So they so they've decided on Iceland for good and and random reasons. Right. Yeah. How does this go for Kako? Well, okay. So obviously the next step in this huge project is to now bring Kako to Iceland, which they did once again with a plane. And once again, Kako had a farewell procession from Newport and a welcoming procession in Iceland. He's like the royal family. He just does a special little guy. Yeah. He has a welcoming committee everywhere he goes. As you can imagine, when he gets to Iceland, I mean, there's a huge amount of media presence there. The community is like in a lot of places kind of divided between the older generation and the younger generation. So the kids are just stoked to have Kako there. And of course, older generation is more like what are these Americans doing? This is I think Kenneth Broward said that the Icelanders found the Americans enthusiasm off-putting. Which I guess Americans are the most enthusiastic people in the world. We are. Yes. Yeah. Well, okay. So two questions. What is the goal here? Right? Because we're bringing him to Iceland. Yeah. But what do people want to do? And is there kind of disagreement already about how this is supposed to play out? And is like one person in charge of this? Or is it like a group effort where people are, you know, where it's not necessarily clear if there's a leader or something? Yeah. So what I have gleaned from the reading and the research that I've done is that so far up until Iceland, there's been this very clear, almost like a narrative arc to this project of moving forward. And yeah, there's little challenges along the way, but we still manage to make forward progress. And then Iceland, there's still forward progress, but it's, it gets a whole lot messier. And that is because there's just differing opinions on the way to go about this next stage of the project, where the goal is to release Kiko back to the wild. And in essence, it seems like, yeah, we know what that means. But when you start to really tease that apart of like, okay, well, what does that look like for Kiko? Right. And this idea of finding his family, which is clear or his pod, I guess, which it seems like it's no one can really say how they're going to do it exactly. Yeah. So like, actually, I have a question for you, Serret. Yes. If you were in charge of this project. Oh my god. This is too much pressure. Do you resign already? Yes. Sure, it is 10 or whatever. Like the guy who was king of Spain for 15 minutes. Right. Well, I guess, yeah, my question is, if you were going to try to define what successful release for Kiko would look like, what comes to mind for you? Well, it's tricky, you know, because I do feel like, I mean, I don't know, because I'm not in this field at all. Just some trivia for you guys. But I have dealt mostly pop culture. We're very much armchair quarterbacks for this. Yeah. But it feels like having an animal who has lived captive for perhaps basically his whole adult life that maybe there is an open quest can still at this point of whether being in the wild is what's best for him, because it does also seem like he's become extremely social with humans and acclimated extremely well with them. And also, it also seems like he hasn't had that many opportunities to socialize with other killer whales. No. And so I feel like if I were in charge of this, I would leave a, I would maybe kind of like see the first perhaps like 12 months as like a research period where we're going to attempt to gather whatever data we feel is potentially relevant to the question of whether his best quality of life is being released and living without humans or whether he knows how to live that way or would thrive that way anymore. And I'll of course obviously I kind of, I have a feeling based on when I think I remember that I wish Keko had been around for a longer because he's not with us anymore, not that he would be listening to a podcast if he was. But yeah. And I guess we're going to get at the end to kind of maybe what you think about all this. But that would be my concern because I do feel like perhaps we haven't really tried to do this before. I mean, have we released other killer whales to the wild in the past at this point in time? I've come across some stories of releases, but I think one of the main points and whether those were actually successful or or not is unclear to me. Because like they weren't tracking. Yeah. Afterwards. Right. So yeah, that's not really informative. I don't think really. Yeah. And I could be wrong. Like if someone out is out there like, well, you didn't know about this. Yeah. There could be one that I'm not aware of. For taxi. Yeah. And he lived for 13 years and became a mother. That would be nice to hear. I am aware of a release project that happened after Keko that actually involved some of the same people involved with this project. And it was successful. But there was a couple of really key differences. One, this young whale, whose name Springer, she was, or he, I believe was a part of the Southern resident killer whale population. He was only in human care for like a couple of months, I believe. Oh, yeah. That's like how my parents took care of a pigion for a month one time. Yeah. Yeah. Like I don't think that pigion had time to forget how to be a pigion. Like I'm not that I know anything about pigeons. Right. If someone is an expert on pigeons, like please, let us know about pigion memory. I assume it's got to actually be pretty good because if you think about homing pigeons, like they never forgot how to get back to where they're from. So. Yeah. I'm sure pigeons are like, it's one of those species where we kind of dismiss their intelligence, but I'm sure they do things all the time that would. Not that that means they can do wordle or anything, but you know, right. Because I also speaking of anthropomorphizing, I feel like we want animal intelligence to manifest the same way human intelligence does. And it's like no, they're intelligent. And so many different and frankly better ways than us, you know. Yeah. I think it's hard for us to comprehend that something we're always thinking of intelligence as this hierarchical thing and we're at the top. Right. Because that's comforting for us because we're so crispy, crunchy, peanut, buttery, new giddy, delicious to all the other big animals. Yeah. But it's probably just more of a difference in types of intelligence more than right. Or you know, adaptation to your environment. Yeah. You, you, you as a species, you adapt specifically to your environment. And there's with things that we probably just can't even understand. Yeah. And I feel like it's probably like, you know, when you're like learning animal trivia as a kid or at least when you and I were kids, not every kid does this, but it's I think probably most it's just fun where you learn because like, the trivia about animals, like who can leap the farthest proportional to their size? And it's actually a flea. And who has the biggest penis? And it's a barnacle because he has to reach the other barnacles. I'm sure you have you seen that video. I saw that video. I'm pretty sure I have. They showed it to us in eighth grade. And it's like, look, you asked for this. And so I feel like maybe you could also measure intelligence in terms of like, who is best adapted to their circumstances? And it would not be humans. It would probably be like razor clams or something like that. Yeah. I mean, when I think of the notion of like different of animals with different types of intelligence, I always think of, are you familiar with mantis shrimp? Yes. A little bit, but tell us about mantis shrimp. Like the peacock may, I think it's peacock mantis shrimp is one of the species. But there this shrimp, I mean, they almost, they're, they're large. I'd say they're like, I don't know, almost like the size of like a rodent, like a rat or something. Gross. And I know, well, there, I think rats are cute. So no, I like rats too, because the, the, the idea of a shrimp, the size of a rat is like, oh, that's gross. Oh, I see. That's fair, that's fair. But they're incredibly colorful. And they've done a few different experiments measuring their, quote unquote, intelligence. And they are like very smart. I just remember at my college where he did my undergrad, there was actually a mantis shrimp in the zoology lab. And you just always got the eerie sense that, you know, there's animals that'll kind of like look at you as you walk by, but it really felt like the mantis shrimp was really looking at you and like really observing what you were doing. It was kind of spooky, but also very cool. And also, and another thing with mantis shrimp is that the spectrum of colors that they can see is way beyond what we can see. I think they can see in like infrared and ultraviolet and all these other spectrums of the light wavelengths. So you're missing out on so much. Yeah. And how would that affect how you move through the world and how you interact with the world? And whether you stare at Brianna. Yeah, like what if I'm giving off some crazy ultraviolet light and I'm just not even aware of it. I don't know. What if that mantis shrimp is like the little girl in the exorcist and it's like, you're going to die up there? That is kind of the vibe I got from it, honestly. He just kind of felt like that mantis shrimp new things. I love thinking about you having this kind of like ongoing like nemesis really with a shrimp. I spent a lot of time in that zoology lab. I had to I was the TA for for zoology and I would be grading like papers and quizzes and that mantis shrimp was just always watching me. It's always just never you know just like what happened with that duck's woman in bokehito. Except with the mantis shrimp, I felt like I was trying to avoid eye contact. It's like someone staring at you really intensely. Right. No, look, you're your bokehito in this situation and the mantis shrimp is sexual. Okay. So anyway, all right. Back to cake. Okay. So we have kind of precedent for like, or I guess after the fact where like humans have released a couple of work as back to the wild. But perhaps not one who's you know at this point spent like close to 20 years in captivity. It seems like right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he what year is it where so when we go to Iceland it's 1998 and he was yeah, he was born in 78 and then caught a couple of years after that. So yeah, he's been in captivity for about 20 years. That's a very very long time for an animal or a human to be institutionalized in some way. And yeah. And so there was amongst the people involved and the staff involved. There were a lot of different ideas and feelings about how to approach this next stage of the project. And I will say that when they first got to Iceland, it was acknowledge fairly quickly like, Hey, we don't have we don't really have the expertise to do this. We don't have a lot of people that have worked extensively with killer whales on our staff. We have a couple of people, but they wanted to have additional staff that had that specialized experience because some of the people that were involved in training with Kiko at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, they had never had any experience with a citation whether it was a dolphin or a killer whale because contrary to Star Trek 4, there aren't many captive citations bigger than dolphins. Yeah. Human history. Yeah. No, I'd say killer whales are the largest ones that we've been able to quote unquote successfully having captivity though, you know, their survival rates are on average lower in captivity than they are in the wild. So whether or not you could say that's successful or not is, I don't know. I wouldn't say it was I can hear you saying successful in quotes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So yeah. So there's just kind of not really enough people with much experience. It seems like right. And you know, this is a very unique project. There wouldn't be a lot of people on the planet that could really pull this off. Well, it's like starting a space program. It's like you don't start the first space program and then try and hire people who work in previous space programs because there isn't any of that. So it seems like you kind of have to cobble something together based on existing fields partly. Yeah. And that's a good point because there are people that have worked with killer whales at this point, but they are a part of an industry that people involved with this project are very uncomfortable with. People are really uncomfortable with sea world and their motivations. Right. And so I totally I understand like I don't think it was necessarily a bad gut feeling to have for people involved with the project, but they did recognize that they needed some people who really understood how to train killer whales because that's essentially what they were going to have to do with Kiko, which is kind of funny. What were they training him to do and what was the kind of because it's like if you break it down into steps. So he's in the sea pen, which is like, yeah, does that have like netting underwater to keep him in or what's what does that look like? Yeah. So on the island where there was cleats big bay where they ended up setting up shop. They installed a sea pen, which you could, I don't know if you're familiar with salmon farms, but I believe the contractor that they didn't not very much. And there are about there are people listening who even don't can't even visualize a salmon farm. Essentially, you have a platform or a dock out on the water and then yeah, basically a net hanging down and the net would hang down to the sea floor. And it was a large area, I believe it was larger than his tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. And there's the platforms where the trainers could interact with Kiko, do any, you know, veterinary care, that sort of thing. So that was going to be where he started. And there is a key point of that too is that when Kiko arrived in Iceland, there were permits that the project had to apply for with the National Marine Fishery Service in the United States. I guess because he was an American whale. Yeah, I guess I guess maybe he became an actualized US citizen like Johnny five. I guess yeah, maybe Kiko had a few passports at this point. I don't know, but he there was a permit that had to be filed with the National Marine Fishery Service, which is the service that manages marine mammals in the US. And I believe because even though he was going to Iceland like waters, he was leaving US jurisdiction and it was a US project. And then part of that though was that Kiko had to meet some criteria before he was released. So he couldn't just they couldn't just put him into the bay without any kind of barrier. It wasn't it wasn't a step. But there were some things with some of his training and showing that he was feeding himself and showing that he was continuing to improve in health and not rely on veterinary care. And that he was demonstrating that he was not relying on people nearly as much. And there's a few other criteria as well. But all of these things needed to be met in order for Kiko to then actually be released to the wide open ocean. So that's why they couldn't just plop him in the bay and and see how he does. Oh, and with the veterinary care, an important important point with that is, you know, say that three times fast. Most importantly, they have lines don't sell paps. Newsy sell paps. I love you. Make sure he was healthy also not just to show that he wasn't relying on people for health care. But that he wouldn't pass anything on to wild whales. That was a concern. That was like a concern with that papilloma virus that he had. According to the veterinarian, Dr. Lanny Cornell, he said that that virus has been shown in other populations of wild whales. It's just kind of present kind of like HPV is in humans, I guess, and how extreme it got was mostly dependent on Kiko's living conditions in Mexico. That's why I got so bad. So that was shown that like that wasn't necessarily going to be a concern, but there were concerns. They wanted to make sure he was going to be healthy and not introduce some weird pathogen to the wild population of whales. So that's the first stage of Iceland is he's in his CPIN. They bring in some new staff that have been involved with killer whale training at SeaWorld, notably a pair named Robin Friday and Mark Simmons. And there's two main books you can buy about Kiko. One was called Freeing Kiko by Kenneth Brower and I've been citing his beautiful book a lot during these episodes. And then the other book was written by Mark Simmons. And it is called Killing Kiko. So you can imagine that Mark Simmons was not pleased with how the end of the project went. And he decided to write a whole book about it. Mark Simmons is not going to make you wait until the epilogue to let you know what he thinks. Yeah, I appreciate that. And an author. Yeah. And you know, like Mark Simmons has his very particular point of view and his role in the project. And his book is is also really well written. And he obviously has a lot of experience. He started working with Orcas at SeaWorld. I believe when he was 18, like he just went straight into it out of high school apparently. And he really values the science of animal behavior and understanding animal training from that perspective. And as like a particular skill set and field that has its own body of literature and, you know, best practices. And that was the attitude that he and his colleague, Robin Friday, brought to the project. They actually had recently left SeaWorld. And they were starting a consulting business, probably the most niche consulting business you can think of where they're providing their services to other zoos and aquariums on animal training. And I suspect also like specifically for killer whale training. So they were brought on to the project. And because they were former SeaWorld trainers, there was some skepticism among some of the staff of like what their motivations were. But from what I can gather from Mark Simmons book and also from interviewing him, like they very much believed in this endeavor of releasing Kiko to the wild. They just had a very particular approach that they wanted to use. And from what I understand, they were very systematic. It was like if Spock, I think, and I believe Mark Simmons used that comparison in his book, if Spock were to run this project. Like what he and Robin Friday noticed when they arrived on the project was that they're the impression I get from how he describes it is that there just didn't seem to be many systems in place in terms of like how we're going to interact with Kiko. What kind of reinforcement and animal training strategies are we going to use? Having it very clear like who's interacting with him and who's not? He wrote in the book that when they arrived on the project that they felt like anyone in the vicinity that was involved with the project could just walk out to the platform and interact with Kiko and that that was counterintuitive to what the end goal of the project was. If they're going to try to limit Kiko's dependency on humans and seek out human attention, you're going to need to limit the amount of interaction that he has with people. And I totally understand too that that would feel really hard. Like I would have a hard time with it. I don't know. I ignored Kiko. I would have been great at this. They should have hired you, Sarah. I know why didn't they? I can't believe I didn't like they should have been like what if I had a lesson girls with no experience who have ignored Kiko previously. I would have been off like a shot. I am right. And I would have been the worst candidate because I probably wouldn't leave Kiko alone. I mean, I saw three coyotes on my neighborhood the other night while in a walk. And it's very hard when you see a coyote net go here, kitty. I know. Yeah. I mean, and especially if it's like an animal that you have a relationship with. Like, and Kiko was a very friendly whale. It likes people. So it's one of those things where it feels like logic and sentimentality are a little bit at war where and is that what they're saying in terms of like dependence on humans and it's mainly dependence for like attention and relationships? Yeah, I believe so because of course there's the issue of food too. Like Kiko at this point has been relying on humans for food for his entire life. And part of it was just the relationship aspect of it. They wanted him to learn how to seek out the attention of other wild whales. And somehow essentially lose interest in people, which I understand that that's like, yeah, that's exactly what needed to happen for this project to succeed. I think, you know, hindsight is 2020 and it's easy to be critical from, you know, 2026 looking back on this project. But that does seem like it was always going to be nearly impossible. And also, I'll say that it would have depended on the whale. I think that's something that I've come across like reading a little bit about animal training and animal behavior. And this is true for people too that you can say like, okay, this is how the project is going to go. We're going to, you know, limit our interaction with Kiko and then he's just going to slowly lose interest in us and then he's going to move on or whatever. And I'm grossly oversimplifying. But I would say that when you're asking an animal trainer, like a dog trainer, like, hey, does this approach, would that work for training my dog how to you know, for better recall or something? And I think the sign of a good animal trainer is they'll say, well, depends on the dog. Depends on the individual, you know, for some individuals, positive reinforcement is all you need. Like my dog Murphy, I barely have to raise my voice and she is cowering in a corner and I have to be so careful because she's just such a sensitive little soul. And I know. And she just needs positive reinforcement because otherwise it just any kind of negative reinforcement. And I know there's really strong feelings on both sides. Like I know there's a whole camp of people that really believe in only positive reinforcement. And I'm not here to argue for against it. But I'm saying that it just depends on the individual. And so for Kako, I think like some of the attitudes about how the release side of things was going to go could have worked for a different whale. Right. For Kako, what everyone talked about from day one was just like he was just a very affable, friendly, you know, golden retriever of a whale even to the point of being passive and not showing a lot of motivation, I guess. And I don't, I'm not saying that's like a flaw. I just, if you're looking at Kako as a whole and whether the approaches they were, you know, flinging at him or, you know, trying to see what would work. It probably just, I don't know, I just think it was maybe not going to work for him. Could have worked for somebody else, but maybe not for Kako. And I think like a lot of people involved with the project and certainly a few of the trainers definitely mark Simmons. They all expressed their doubts about whether Kako was going to be able to be successfully introduced to the wild. And so when Simmons and Friday first arrive, they kind of shake things up and say, all right, we're going to, you know, what this team in the shape and we're going to. There's a new sheriff in town. Yeah, which kind of also, according to Mark, didn't make for the best camaraderie at times. Like some of the other people that were involved with the project didn't really love their new approach, but part of it was having much stricter protocols about like, who's interacting with Kako and when and what kind of behaviors are going to work on and reinforce one behavior that Mark said he had a problem with. If something that they started at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, and I remember hearing about this as a kid, and as a kid, I was like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. And now as an adult, I'm like, I can't see Mark's point. So they introduced this thing at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, which they called the innovative behavior. And it was basically they just made him do Odyssey of the mind. No, no, they wanted him to just do something new and he couldn't repeat it. So he could go, I don't know, breach in the corner. He could slap his tail. He could do a barrel roll or something. But he just like couldn't do the same thing twice. And the idea like when I heard about it as a kid was, well, if he's going to be a wild whale, he's going to have to be creative. He's going to have to exercise his imagination. And so we want to encourage that. And Mark Simmons and reading his book, he was like, really, all it really does is just confuse Kiko. Because Kiko is like, what? Yeah, do you want to make you think about right? Because again, dogs are very different. I know. But even a dog, and I think of dogs as being kind of like the animal that understands humans the most, or at least has had the most time to like, you know, for I think dogs and humans very much kind of evolved together. I can't think of of many dogs that I have known that wouldn't hate that. Yeah. And I don't know if that's even a meaningful thing to bring up, but that is what that makes me think of. Right. And so you bring up a good point that, okay, if a reaction from a dog or a whale is that, like, oh, God, I hate it when they tell me to do this. Or just like, I don't know what's happening. I don't know because again, it's like training is about repetition. Right. And if I don't know, I feel like training was a concept that made me a little bit uncomfortable. And that sort of like born free free is the wind blows kind of sentimental child brain kind of away. And now as an adult woman, I'm like, everyone needs to be trained, especially me. And I like woke up this morning and immediately made my bed. And I was like, that was some good training I did on myself. Like, I had to teach myself how to do that over a very long period. And it feels much better to wake up and have like automatic things that your brain does. And to be like, what do I do? Right. In the morning. Yeah. Do I breathe? Do I swim in a circle? Do I eat a salmon? Yeah. I, that's funny because I feel like that's my New Year's resolution this year is, you know, quote unquote, developing, you know, healthy habits. But it's really training myself. Yeah. You're just behaving like you're exercising yourself. You're, you're a, you're a skinner and the pig. And all in one. Right. But as you mentioned, so like if a dog or a whale hates it when they say, hey, go do something new. And you're like, I don't know what you want. You can see how that would start to incite frustration. Yeah. Kiko actually was starting to demonstrate, according to Mark Simonsum, behaviors that would say that he was frustrated. And he was developing this thing called a thrashing behavior. We're basically kind of tossed his head. And I think he actually started doing that maybe at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. I'm sorry. It's making me picture him with like emo bangs. Yeah. So it should conform us. I mean, I think Kiko was a little email. He's just a sensitive, sensitive little emo kid. Yeah. He's a sensitive boy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm so sorry. He's listening to his Walkman and his pen. Oh, little emo Kiko. And he's already got the right outfit for it too. Yeah. But yeah, he started doing this thrashing behavior, which Mark said was a sign of frustration. And so Mark and Freddie sort of tried to get the team a little bit more in sync, a little more cohesive about what their approach with Kiko was going to be. And one little moment that I loved in his book, there's lots of little scenes. As I mentioned before, if I was writing a movie about this, this is a scene I would include. But there's literally a training montage. Oh my god. Where Simonsum is describing all these things. Okay. Wait, what are he setting? Okay. What song is this set to in your movie? And then yeah, tell me what he's doing. Okay. Mark Simons already told us what the song is. What? So, okay. What do you got? I didn't know you're being so literal. I know. Okay. Just imagine, you know, people in like their wet suits, splash suits out on the dock. And they got their whistles, you know, to do the bridge when Kiko does a correct behavior. Kiko's, you know, jumping out of the water, swimming in circles, whatever it is. So the song that Mark Simons mentioned in his book was Dancing Queen by Abba. Oh, no, yes. It's amazing. Dancing Queen. Yeah. And so, you can dance. He can gyve. He's having the time of his life. See that whale. Dig that scene. Oh, oh my god. I know it's so perfect. But yeah, I guess they would actually play that song to like hype up people when they're about to go out on the on the water with Kiko. Because I mean, I remember this from watching SeaWorld Trainers. Like, it's very, you have to be very expressive and you have to be, you're like running across, you know, platforms and trying to keep it's a very physical thing. You're not just standing in one place and, you know, you have to get the energy up, get people excited. And also on top of that, Iceland, this came up many times in both Browards Book and Mark Simons books that Iceland is a difficult environment to work in outside as you might be able to imagine. It is very, very exposed to the harsh North Atlantic winds and storms. And they had to be out there every day, rain or shine or snow or sleet. God, that would have been a good chapstick ad. Oh, my god. That would have been amazing. Yes. Oh my gosh. I can picture it. We should go back in time and pitch this idea. I think we could make this happen. I think we could have a butterfly effect. Yes. This is such a side note and it probably makes me sound like Andy Rooney, but like I really was annoyed by that tick-tock trend that turned into like, because everything devolves in meaning, you know, and gets squishier. But where it was like the butterfly effect is crazy. Because if I hadn't gone to Tulane, then I wouldn't have met my roommate and be in her wedding now. And it's like the butterfly effect isn't what colleagues you choose. It's like a butterfly flapping its wings in Indonesia causes, you know, a hurricane in Houston. It's like, well, the butterfly effect is crazy because if I hadn't left my chapstick on the subway, then I wouldn't have ended up playing Mimi and Rent. Like that's the butterfly effect. Yeah. There has been guys that's been over for months now. No, I see what you mean, though. It's not, yeah, just listing a sequence of events. It's not like back to the future. I don't think was like a butterfly effect movie. Because like, when you make a massive choice in your life, it actually is kind of predictable that other large changes will happen because of it. Yeah. Or the thing of, you know, the butter, or I guess this is like a separate butterfly metaphor, but like the time traveler butterfly where like you step on a butterfly in, you know, the satatious period and it changes the entirety of the future, which is a treehouse of horror premise, which I know is a parody of something, but I don't know what the original is. I guess know it because of the treehouse of horror because that's how people got their cultural education in the 90s. So if we had pitched this chapstick ad, we might be living in a democracy right now. It's hard to know. We might. Yeah. But you know what? We're gonna have one again. Yeah, we are. It's, it's a, we're working on it. Everyone's, you know, doing their best right now and we're fighting for it. I saw a high school production of newsies last night. Of course you did. The kids are, the kids are okay. The kids are gonna be all right. They were singing and dancing about soaking scabs. Oh. Oh. Wait Sarah, you did that, which is quintessentially you. And then I went to a Marine Science Film Festival and I watched movies about whales yesterday. So which is quintessentially boo. So we all just, we both just had a great Saturday night last night. Really did. Yeah. Do a Saturday night if you tell your friend about it later. They'll be like, yeah, of course you do. Yeah. Yeah. You'll have a great time. And that is our episode. Thank you so much for listening and we're gonna have the thrilling conclusion to our trilogy out in one week. We can't wait to share it with you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you to Brianna Bowman for being our guest and orka lady. Thank you to the people who helped make this show. Thank you Miranda Zickler, who is our producer and editor and the Cole Ortiz, who is our administrative assistant. Please make sure to check out Brianna's website. You can find it in the show notes and you can find our bonus episodes on Patreon and Apple Plus. And right now you can listen to our Janie Rebonus with Paul Sheer and Amy Nicholson of the unspooled podcast, who came on to tell me about Ishtar, the worst movie ever made. Or is it? We'll find out. Thank you again for joining us and continuing to share this experience of just caring a whole lot about things. Keep on doing it. We'll see you in one