Keiko Part 1 with Brianna Bowman

We are a tune of amen and we are going to be here till 11 o'clock when our dads are picking us up. Welcome to You Wrong About. It's a new year and we are talking about everyone's special little guy, Keko the Killer Whale. If you don't know the story, don't worry, you will and you're going to learn it from our guest this week. Science communicator and journalist Brianna Bowman. We also have a bonus episode coming at the end of the month about the famous flop Ishtar, a movie that failed despite starring both Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman. And I get to talk about it with Paul Sheer and Amy Nicholson of the unspooled podcast and you can find it as always on Patreon and on Apple Plus. We had a really good time making it. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for being here. Now let's go talk about Keko. Welcome to You Wrong About. The podcast where sometimes we just talk about everyone's favorite orca and apologies if your favorite orca is a different orca. We're talking today about Keko and we're talking about him with my friend Brianna Bowman. Brianna, hello! Hi! Oh my gosh. I can't believe I'm here. I'm sitting down in Sarah's playhouse. I've dreamed of this day of telling you about my true love of Keko for so many years. So have I! Especially because for the past many months, you've been like, I'm not ready yet. There's still things that science is figuring out about Keko. Great. And I respect that so deeply because much as that guy in Jurassic Park said about Sam Neil, you're a digger. That was not the Jurassic Park line. I thought you're shining. Ooh, which one did you think it was? I don't know. I guess I was just going for the low-hanging fruit of life finds a way. You stood on the shoulders of giants. Oh, there we go. Yeah, I've kind of agonized over this story for many months, many years. Well, it's called journalism. You know, that's also to get out of the side of the way. You and I have known each other since 2003. That was going to be the other way. I was going to introduce myself and be in say, I'm Brianna Bowman and I am a journalist slash former fishery biologist. And most importantly, I was your lab partner in senior year of high school. Yes. And here we are. And here we are. And so we're going to talk about Kiko. And I want to imagine for a second somebody who has no idea who we're talking about. Someone who said, as my dad famously once said, as I left the house very early in the morning in 1995 to go see Kiko at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, as my dad famously observed Kiko. You go in to see something called Kiko. And I said, no, dad, his name's Kiko. Not Kiko. Not Kiko. Kiko. But Brianna, who is Kiko? And also, why was I a small child in Oregon going off very excitedly to see Kiko on a very important field trip? Well, I guess to start from the very beginning of how a child would encounter Kiko. Kiko was in the lead role of the movie Free Willy. He was the killer whale that played Willie in the movie Free Willy. And do you prefer because I use Oregon killer whale interchangeably and tell me which you prefer. Scientists aren't that concerned about whether it's killer whale or orca. It is used pretty interchangeably. I haven't come across anyone saying, oh, you should use orca because killer whale is prejudicial. Yes. Yeah, like giving them a bad rap. And as we learned in jaws, where Quince Little Boat is called the orca, or at least as I think I know, orcas are kind of like, I don't know fairly unique for the fact that they are on the same level as big ol' sharks. And they can kill a big shark if they feel like it. Yeah, that was a very scientific, accurate statement I bet. Very, you know, if they feel like it. And they don't have to, but they could. They could. They have the power to, but they choose not to use it. And what does an orca or a killer whale look like? Well, you know, a description that I love. So in researching this story about Kiko, there are two main published books about him. I will get to one of them later on in the story. But the one that kind of sums up the story as a whole that's out there that you can read is a book called Freeing Kiko by Kenneth Brower. And he is a description in that book where you said something along the lines of orcas are the original art deco animal. They have this striking black and white markings. They're a beautiful, large citation. They are related to dolphins. They're more closely related to dolphins than other whales. And they are a toothed whale. So they are then more closely related to like sperm whales and pilot whales. And that's everything. But they get to around 30 feet long. I think females maybe are tend to be a little shorter than that. And they have these just beautiful black and white markings across their body. They have this big white eye patch above their eye and white belly. And they have what's called a gray saddle patch, which is like this little whisp of gray behind their dorsal fin. And actually scientists can use the pattern of their saddle patch to identify them to an individual. So the saddle patch can kind of vary from orca to orca. And I think in explaining how what orcas look like, I think something that is kind of special about Caco, the whale we're going to talk about today, is that it seemed almost serendipitous that the most famous killer whale in the world who became this huge movie star and then the symbol of this conservation project. He was easily identifiable to the layperson to the average member of the public by his three chin spots. He had these three black spots on his chin. And that made him just immediately identifiable to an individual. So you could pick him out from other whales. I mean, besides the fact that he also had a curved dorsal fin. Yes. He had a lucky fin as is depicted on the Caco plush that both of us own. Yes. Yeah. Mine sitting behind me right now and it has the three dots on his chin. But I think that the markings I just have thought about that in so much of this story is about people coming together for this astronomically huge project that is really on the scale of like the lunar landing. When it comes to the amount of money and planning and time and orchestration and I guess like moving of a really large not object in this case, but you know a big trip. Yeah. What was your TLDR of the Caco story? What did I tell you? I forgot you tell me. It was something like the Caco story where they moved a whale around a lot. And you know what? You're not wrong, Sarah. That is kind of the gist of it in one sense. They're like, this whale should go here. No, we're moving this whale here. No, this whale needs to go to a third place and America's children looked on. Right. I also should point out that this is just I don't know to like put this in a timeline of recent Orca events that this is in a pre-blackfish world because something I remember us kind of learning. I remember this being about when we were in college, so the late 2000s, that Orca's actually seemed to really really not like doing shows for people generally at SeaWorlds and of course we had at least one famous Orca incident where in Orca killed his trainer Telecom I'm thinking of. And then there was this amazing article and I want to say outside. Yeah. That was kind of like an incredible piece of almost true crime journalism that's like Telecom has done this unspeakable thing. But what happened to Telecom? What is Telecom's story? And then you're reading it and you're like, oh no, no wonder Telecom did that. You know, part of the concept here that I know, or I imagine we're going to get into is that Orca's from what I recall and this is going to be me telling you what I remember and you can give me the more nuanced version from your expertise, but that they're extremely social animals who live in like matriarchal pods, I guess. Yeah. And that for them to live in isolation the way they do and places like SeaWorld is like basically psychological torture for them. Yeah. What we know about Orcas and we've studied, especially the Orcas in the Pacific Northwest, a lot, especially a group called the Southern resident killer whales. We know. Well, ha. So Southern resident killer whale. That has never occurred to me. No, I'm going to think of it. Southern bells. It's like Dixie Carter. And that so you may know and so your children may know was the night the lights went out in Georgia. And now I'm also picturing like real housewives of Atlanta. It's whatever you want it to be. That's what's great about it. Yeah. Like who knows maybe maybe the Southern resident killer whales are having their own little, you know, personal dramas with each other. I feel like killer whales are like real housewives where you're like, wow, so beautiful so majestic so charismatic. Don't fuck with them though. Do you know how fuck with them? Yes, that's in a nutshell. And of course humans spent a lot of the 20th century being like, what if we fuck around with these whales? Yeah. Yeah. So the Southern residents, they are made up of different families. There's the J pod, K pod and L pod. Their family structures and each pod has a matriarch who's basically the person, the person, the whale making the decisions of like where they are going to go to hunt and you know where they're going to travel or whether they're going to just chill out and rest and don whale. Yeah. And they stay in these these family units their entire lives. Young male orcas may kind of leave and form their own little kind of bachelor pods for a little while. But otherwise they'll kind of disband in the male's will as far as I know, also spend basically their whole lives in their mother's pod. What's the thing about them putting fish on their heads? That's a thing, right? That's a thing. I don't think anyone really knows other and in the conclusion is just like it's a behavior. How do you get the fish to stay on your head as when how do they put it on their heads? Very talented orcas. It's like a kid like spinning a basketball on their finger. Yeah, I don't know. They I mean orcas and other like dolphins and other whales too. But I think especially orcas and dolphins have been observed. They'll take objects in the water and play around with them like that. So like another thing that orcas love to do and dolphins too is find a piece of kelp and like swim under it so that it gets caught on their dorsal fin or on their pictorial fin and then kind of like pass it around to each other in a little game. So I think the quote unquote wearing the salmon on their head is maybe an extension of that. It's just like fun to balance something on their head and salmon happened to be around. Right. It's not about fashion. It's maybe just sort of about playing. Yeah. Well and that kind of gets into a topic that I think comes up very strongly throughout the story of Kiko is the risk of anthropomorphism. Oh my gosh. Anthropomorphism is that I can't say it. Anthropomorphism. Establishmentarianism. Yeah. Anthropomorphizing animals. Which is. Anthropomorphizing is projecting human behaviors, our feelings and our emotions and our I think also just it's really hard for humans to disentangle ourselves from these structures and systems that were immersed in all the time and we just think of it as a normal way to exist in the world and it's hard to imagine ourselves in a place like an animal would be where they don't have like art and culture and I think that's why I'm saying that story with killer whale and the salmon on their head. Like people are saying, oh it's wearing it like a hat and it's like well that's one idea but that's also to put a diplomat in parenthesis. You fucking idiot. But jumping the gun a little bit and assuming that orcas have such a thing as yeah that is like wearing an item like we would wear an item. When like why would they why would orcas have a concept of clothes? Right like it would be hard for us to imagine or it's hard for us to like imagine that from the get go of existing in the world in that way and so with the risk with anthropomorphizing in science especially is especially like animal based science where you're trying to describe animal behavior or even animal psychology is you have to be very very careful about distancing yourself from the subject that you're studying and only taking observations that you can make objectively and not trying to assign intent behind a behavior and it's to the point that anthropomorphizing in science it's almost like a I've heard it referred to as like a cardinal sin like if you if you're if there's even a hint of any kind of anthropomorphizing going on in your your study your data then it can be the end of your work of your career and that's understandable because that is a very real risk I'm not saying that's not a very a real risk like we don't want to assume we know what animals are thinking and feeling that being said I do think that in reading about this story about Kiko and in talking and reading to people that are involved in this kind of work there is also the risk of taking that idea of like avoiding anthropomorphizing at all costs there is also the risk of like taking that a little too far as well and ignoring information that is in front of you for example I have a book here from Carl Safina who's working as an ecologist he's a writer now and he did a lot of work with reducing seabird by catch in fisheries in the Atlantic I hate to leave you on a cold attack but what is by a catch we have to know because you're like everyone knows what by a catch is and would that were true what's by a catch Brianna no that's fair by catch is in commercial fishing and also I guess in sport fishing too let's say you're going out and you're trying to catch tuna because you know that's what you have quota for as a fisherman and it is most valuable thing that you want to catch and sell basically anything that you catch that isn't tuna is by catch so there'll be other species of fish that you'll catch instead because you can't just you know catch tuna that precisely with a tuna magnet yeah now that's a band name tuna magnet that's our squad band the tuna magnet we are a tuna magnet we are going to be here till 11 o'clock when our dads are picking us up but uh yeah Carl Safina he wrote this book called beyond words what animals think and feel and it's basically addressing this topic of yeah we as scientists shouldn't anthropomorphize we shouldn't assign any thoughts or feelings that are primarily human to an animal's experience but at the same time humans are animals so we can't also say that we don't know what they're thinking or feeling all the time like there is some sort of middle ground right or at least we can act as if we can't make an educated guess occasionally especially if we've because there's also I feel like the distinction like to use dogs as an example right the like people will be like oh the dog loves the baby she's wagging her tail and I you know I know enough to know that you could also correctly say well till wagging is really more of a sign of like excitement which could be like good excitement or it could be like bad excitement like what the fuck is this thing right oh my god yeah you know and so the so there's a thing where like I think probably dog owners are a great case study because we do a lot of projecting of our emotions yeah on to our pets I do every day I mean just pet owners in America generally but then also there's the fact that like it is possible to learn to and extend like what your dogs like actual sort of baseline consistent species translated body language is telling you and you can like learn to a degree they're kind of like physical dialect I would say and also they know what we're feeling like they understand when our wrists are scared most of the time but they also don't understand like our taxes yeah I probably probably who knows Murphy's pretty smart I would give Murphy full allowance to go and do my chores for me I don't know if she'd want to though I mean she certainly wants the best for you I think she wants the best for you in a general way but maybe only some of the you know it depends yeah but I feel like this is kind of the bedrock of what we're talking about today that there's this sort of story with Kiko I would love to get next and to kind of the free willy part of this if this is the right time yeah of like people coming together to try and do what's best for an animal and also inevitably and frustratingly projecting our emotions onto an animal on mass the same way that we do arguably I mean what's interesting too is a comparison is that I'm obsessed with tiny harding historically and you're obsessed with Kiko and these are both like majestic creatures of the Pacific Northwest who the media fixated on and ultimately meaningfully you know misunderstood in the 90s and we should really take she course on that we should yeah I would love to teach a course on on Kiko I think this point probably good it's time yeah okay so we have so that's the Orca of it also who's Kiko Kiko was a whale when we all as children first encountered Kiko it was in as I mentioned in the movie free willy yeah so actually Sarah would you like to explain free willy in a nutshell god I would love to yes oh I mean you know it much better than I do so mine will be more general okay basically and what's funny too is that even as an adult rewatching this I was like wow they really moved that whale around but it's all just like special effects and footage that's like cut together the whale was like only ever in one place yes so okay free willy is one of those 90s movies that's filmed in the Pacific Northwest this one was like edited and sex away were a character catches the max and pioneer squaring downtown Portland and then gets off it in a story yes a few stops later which like can you imagine I would love that this fictional town that they've created is like this Pestie show Portland in a story and Cannon Beach and I'm like yes I want to live there so what's it about that's I had to go think geography issue out of the way just seeing you okay but so free willy is about a troubled kid which is like a staple I feel like in 90s movies like an approximately 11 year old boy who's like an orphan in some way and who's like adults who've given up on me if only I could have like an angel on a baseball team or a bond with an unusual animal to teach me the love and trust again yeah is a really standard 90s family film yeah and I feel like he like gets busted for like shoplifting or stealing or something and so he gets sent to live for what is that he gets busted I just rewatched free willy yesterday okay so I'm fresh he gets busted so he and his friends famously this movie opens I mean for me famously after the beautiful documentary footage of Pacific Northwest Wales and they show willy getting captured then they go to immediately pioneer square in downtown Portland yep he has some other kids that I guess they're all runaways or something and they're begging for food and the Baker Street are regulars yeah and later on that day they're at the Burnside skate park hanging out and the police get after him for stealing a cake or something I don't know that's right he steals a cake it's very John Valjean he runs away from the police and he and his friend it kind of like open a random door and this is the part the movie that I find really funny they just kind of wander into a random door no clue that it's actually the door into he goes underwater like they just stuck the door to whales accidentally we're like here in this door diving here and and they're like oh cool what was this place and as a kid were you like why does this never happen to me no matter how many random doors I open they's never a whale it's always mobs I know and how is there like like there's not an outer perimeter wall of security on this place maybe they hopped it and I forget well that's I mean that's why everyone's so scared of Portland because the media taught us to believe that any door downtown you could open and there'd be a killer whale because actually it's the cashier of a gentleman's hotel right but it's like a classic meat cute I guess yeah so and so they go and they're like oh weird it's like this underwater pool they're like this is we'll just hang out here until the cops leave and so they start graffeding oh no they're graffeding yeah graffeding and then Jesse is like wait what's that in the tank and then Willie comes up to the tank and he opens his mouth and he's like rar and there's like flashes of light like there's lightning or something and it's like a monster even though it's like the least scary monster possible yeah that's the mashup we need fan of the operand three Willie I can't believe it hasn't been done honestly right so anyway the cops catch Jesse they bring him to his case worker cake stealing breaking entering and harassing a whale yeah and they well and so like Jesse's been on the run but you know the cops catch him and he gets to his case worker and his case workers like like what have you been doing oh my god well we got this nice couple that's gonna take you in and and Jesse's like I just want to be with my mom and you guys like we haven't sent heard from your mom in six years and we don't know where she's at and she doesn't want to be found and so then they take Jesse to the foster family which is Michael Madsen you live in the Astoria side of Portland, Doria yeah we've quickly gone to the upper hills of Astoria and they have this beautiful house that overlooks the Columbia River which hits him in 80s and 90s got really a story a pill because we have the goonies short circuit and free Willie yeah you know what a fun fact about free Willie what the guy who played the father in the goonies um co-wrote the script of free Willie yeah Keith Walker I think he was like I was in this wonderful town and I thought what if there was a whale yeah yeah I don't know like I I think maybe he was approached like around the same time oh yeah can you're going crop gosh I feel like there's others that I'm forgetting but those are like the big four yeah which makes sense because it's just like a town that photographs while it has these big steep hills leading down to water you know it's just like very photogenic I think yes and also very fun and if you go there you can go to free and scoop yep anyway also the Oregon film museum where you can learn all about all these film sites from all these movies and all these movies that we are remembering and also not quite remembering yeah exactly anyway he is told that he has to clean up his mess at the aquarium he has to clean up the graffiti and then he bonds with Willie who is also a grumpy uh misanthropic whale who doesn't want to perform trail and that's how they connect with each other he's like I get Willie I understand where he's coming from and there's the evil aquarium owner played by Michael Ironside oh my god I forgot it yeah isn't there a lion where Michael Ironside is like I hate that whale he says it at least twice in the movie it's like his final line he's like God I hate that whale Michael Ironside has had the most incredible career he really has but he is just a caricature of a capitalistic tycoon like he just opened this aquarium purely to make money he doesn't care about the joy of children he's like wants to get rid of Willie um and they're like no we'll like take him new tricks and then we'll get more people to come to a show so they like put on a big show for the aquarium owner and he's like cool can you do that again and like we can sell tickets and they're like yeah he can do it and then it's the big day and Willie gets stage fright but it's mostly because little kids are like banging on his window you know in the underwater viewing area and he's getting like freaked out and scared and and they're like Willie what what's going on why why don't you want to perform he's just like he's a highly sensitive whale yeah and then Jesse's all upset because he feels like Willie let him down and then as he's like kind of having like a talking to with Willie he hears out in the water beyond this fictional aquarium that doesn't exist that is on like a hillside it looks like near a coal estate park somewhere there's a pot of whales that swim by and they call out and Willie calls back to them and he's like and Jesse's like oh my god it's your family they're like we look to up on find my phone but I forgot that when Willie freaks out because all the kids are banging on the glass underneath Willie rushes the window and he like causes damage to it so it starts leaking and then so the evil aquarium owner Michael Ironside is like wow I could collect insurance money on can go and so they're just gonna let his their kids go let him die there's gonna let it leak and be like oh whoops god I guess I guess the tank leaks and yep we can collect our insurance money now Pat 90's kids movies are amazing they're like you know how you have some issues with adults while you're correct some of them were so needlessly evil that it they're like Roman emperors that's how extravagantly you hold they are they're killing whales for fun I know I feel like you go through a period in like I don't know young adulthood where you're like people aren't that bad that's just something in movies and then I feel like no I feel like I've met people like this in my life oh yeah politically we are being shown a lot of evidence like daily right which you know certainly yes yeah tips the scale a little bit for certain certain president owned an aquarium you can be sure he would be trying to collect insurance money on a whale oh my god there would be so many clam assassinations and so forth yeah so anyway they're just gonna let him die so Jesse's like we have to save Willie so he gets the clock is literally it is it's literally taking and so he and his friends the the trainer and Lori petty I think is her name yep tank girl herself yeah and which when I think of this movie I think mainly of Lori petty going salmon is like his chocolate yes that is like one of that's a great line they bring it back in free willy to also there's all the salmon's his chocolate and it's true the Pacific Northwest whales do love their salmon but he and Lori petty and August Schellenberg who's the handyman at the aquarium also like the I don't know stereotypical mystical Native American kind of character who lives and breathes to help annoying white children yes yeah exactly anyway they band together they're like okay we gotta get Willie out of here so they they steal Jesse's foster dance truck and they somehow will manage between three of them to get him on the back of the trailer of this truck one of my favorite details about this part of the movie where they're like they were gonna take a forest road to a beach to release them but then it's blocked because of tree fell down that road apparently is a section of the road up to the Astoria column they just like filled it in with dirt to make it look like a forest road but anyway so that's where they filmed that scene yeah I love movie magic especially when it involves people moving around large quantities of dirt and snow and stuff yeah when we actually used to do that sort of thing make it look real I know what some people still are yeah and you can tell when they do to create an illusion yeah yes they have to drop a whale off real quick at the ocean which is hard to do yes they're like plan b take him to what is the it's like the end of nodding hill they're like yeah exactly let's give me some love in everyone thank you yeah but they take him to a marina which is the Hammond marina near warrington yep near the wreck of the Peter Irredale my favorite Pacific Northwest shipwreck well and also I love this scene because you know I hadn't watched free wellay for years like most of I don't know I must have been at least like over a decade and then when I rewatched it like three or four years ago and seeing this scene I was like what I had a job as a port sampler for an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife and I was standing in this marina almost every day for a summer I and I had no idea this was the marina worth Kiko famously jumps over the wall to freedom to his family and anyway I just it just really felt like some sort of full circle moment I think the weirdest thing about movie locations as they don't even announce themselves is special unless you know what you're looking for a lot of the time or you know they're special but you don't know that they were like immortalized in some way right yeah I know yeah I had no clue there was nothing there's no like sign or plaque being like hey there is this fun scene that's why I have a plaque in my home saying that Jamie Loftus wrote a chapter of Rodog here it's made out of paper and I taped it to the wall but it's still a plaque it still counts make plaques in your home commemorate events yeah I'll have a I'll have a plaque of this recording up in here so yeah and I also just I okay this is I feel silly asking this just to be clear because there's so many questions I have in my life that are like no silly questions thank you because I feel like a lot of people when you ask a question do you ever feel like you ask a question and someone's like you should never do that or like you should always do that and you just have no idea whether it's gonna be one of the two yeah and so my question is like an orca couldn't really do that you know it's funny when I was rewatching this I had a thought like I wonder if Sarah's gonna ask me if that's possible and I'm gonna say no it's okay tell us what what could an orca do what would be a realistic version I mean I think an orca could jump over a like a net hanging in the water I just don't they can't get that much clearance right okay so when is frame will you come out like 1993 yes July 16th 1993 a month after another wonderful movie came out Jurassic Park oh my god what a summer for movies honestly what a summer for giant creature features yeah willy goes out to see and finds his pod and then we hear hold me like the children yeah I remember watching the planet earth episode about the whales that end this with what is it David Attenborough I should never remember which Attenborough speaking of Jurassic Park saying you know something like soon these whales will be extinct if we don't take our thumbs out of our butts and you were like let's not listen to that let's listen to the song from the end of free willy it's yeah I just turned off the narration and listen to listen to the free willy soundtrack yeah I mean we learned a lot and yes okay so my question to you because I was we were both like when this was all going on great time to be a five year old incredible toddler clothes absolutely and so I remember vaguely just like seeing this movie and liking it and then hearing about Keko you know more as a actual whale and the the story that unfolded from there but like what was the response this movie and did it as I kind of imagined from my adult perspective involved people being like wow we'd love to know more about this wonderful whale who is in the movie about his needs and rights and him being freed like what's his living situation like is it good yeah that's basically in a nutshell and so I don't know if you remember at the end of free willy oh my god there was a phone number I do know that you're saying this yeah there was a phone number 1 800 four whales and it says something to the effect of like if you would like to learn how you can help the plight of whales around the world call this number and do you want to try calling it I would love to okay four whales 494 2537 I guess is how you do that okay oh it's a call failed so I'm gonna oh man yeah what are we how are we put then who do we call about whales hold on who we gonna call we're gonna call I'm just gonna try it one more time and then we'll and then I'll give up because I really think that was just because I have terrible phone service at my place we can also do this like kind of in post okay and you can try it later and we can kind of pack that at the end or something yeah okay shoot let's blame you have reached the one 800 four whales line maintained by the free willy kiko foundation and the International Reminal Project of Rufihe and Institute our groups let the successful rescue rehabilitation and release of Kiko orkastar of the movie freely to learn more about Kiko is remarkable and our efforts to protect orkaz around the globe visit our website kiko.com that's keikko.com you can also order our all new free willy kiko discovery kit for yourself or I think it's so cool check it out at kiko.com thanks for your interest you are welcome to leave a message after the beat do I leave a message or you should leave one done hang up or press down key hi this is prana foam and and sarah marshal and we're recording a podcast about kiko because I love the story of kiko so much and I and why are all the work that you guys did to try to release them back to the wild and I will be sure to check out kiko.com though I'm fairly certain it's not an operating website anymore I don't know the phone number still up I think we'll find out we will never forget kiko yeah we'll never forget kiko thank you so much and send my love to all the whales around the world okay bye and all the ships that see that was so nice that was nice wait I'm just gonna quickly look up kiko.com because I swear I looked this up and I thought it wasn't operating but maybe that was a different website oh oh it is up kiko.com it's the International Marine Mammal project okay and now it redirects to save dolphins dot eii dot org yeah I think the failed experiment of orca captivity that's a charitable way to put it yeah all right they're keeping the lines open god bless so yeah this is the organization that was in charge of this kiko release project so at the end of free willy there was that phone number people called it and the person that came up with the idea for the phone number there's a little story behind that and it really gets into like why the movie free willy was made in the first place so it all kind of started with with people and especially the author Kenneth Rauer brings up in his book it started with potentially the movie lethal weapon too will be surprised to know logically right you know I've never seen a lethal weapon which is very out of character yeah there is like a certain kind of sense to it where you do feel like the backstory of a lot of Hollywood stuff is like well this guy had the same dry cleaner as this other guy and that's why we have to see or something honestly that's that is kind of the feel behind this but it's like buddy cops right it's smell uh mil gibson and melton and mary glover and do you know i love her yet mel robins and tanny clover mo robins is like when someone's trying to arrest you let them haha yeah the the buddy cop movie we never knew we needed yeah but in that movie there's a scene where murta denny glivers daughter is wearing a save the dolphins t-shirt okay and he's about to eat a tuna sandwich and his daughter's like don't eat the tuna because there's dolphin by catch oh hey we learned all about by catch that was that was handy look at see yeah right i remember this being section major she in the early nineties and the idea of dolphin safe tuna and like you know there's no such thing as dolphin safe tuna mm-hmm i think we didn't figure that out until later and it was like i feel like it was a thing in rom coms of like oh i would never date a man who doesn't care about dolphin safe tuna like that was in the truth about cats and dogs oh really was it i don't think of something like that dolphin safe tuna like comes up that's so funny so the moment in lethal weapon two was suggested by an actress or model and also dolphin activist and moss who was friends with Richard donner who was the producer of lethal weapon two and Richard donner and his wife mourn chula donner they wanted to use hollywood as a tool for activism and i think specifically like environmental activism and like i said they were friends with and moss and her husband jerry moss and and was the one who's like hey you should put this little scene in your movie and that did well and the save the dolphins t-shirt that the daughter was wearing was made by an organization called the earth island institute so that movie was successful and then after that Richard donner wanted to do another movie that kind of leaned into this environmental activism and specifically like save the whales kind of story even more so he started toying around with the idea of a story about an orca being released from captivity and he started putting together script and that's when he brought in Keith Walker who was the like i said the dad and the goonies and also Cory blackman and when they were getting close to this movie being finished Richard donner thought to reach out to earth island institute the people that made that save the dolphins t-shirt and he thought to reach out to them and ask like what kind of particular message can we put in this movie like what kind of call to action can we do like something similar to that you know tuna sandwich scene and so Richard donner calls a very important character very important person in the kegho story david phillips he was the leader of the earth island institute it was led by david brower who was a really famous environmentalist he was the executive director of the cire club and just like a side note you know i mentioned that one of the main texts that's available out there to read about the free willy kicko story is written by a man named kenteth brower his father was david brower so that's how kenteth brower was kind of connected to all these people and had you know those contacts when he was writing the book so rich of donner calls david phillips who is the executive director of the earth island institute at the time and david phillips is he's had a career in campaigns for whale conservation don's a dolphin conservation he was instrumental in leading the campaign on dolphin safe tuna so that was a lot of his work i mean of course the work of many people but he was the leader of of those campaigns and he was the also the director of this international marine mammal project which was kind of housed within the earth island institute which if you're looking if you're happened still be looking at keiko.com that's exactly what you see it's the international marine mammal project and it says a project of the earth island institute. Well i really want to know at this point like when they when they made this movie like how did they cast the whale how did they find keiko and maybe this is a good point to get into like what was his story and why was this called action necessary. Yeah so this is something that i'm a little still a little unclear of whether the producers on this movie so Richard donner's wife Lauren Schuler donner and Jenny Lute Tuggins i think is how you say her last name i found some interview where they kind of it seemed like they had keiko on their radar even before they cast him. Okay so it's like air bud where they're like aware of the stag that can play basketball and they're like we can write a movie around the stag. Yeah possibly but then also i also read it in i think browners book that Warner Brothers it was the responsibility of the Warner Brothers props department to find a whale to star in this movie and they initially of course reached out to places like sea world in the US which would have you know just logistically made a lot more sense but as you can imagine when they were like hey sea world we want to do a movie about a whale that's in captivity and then we release it because it's unhappy and it wants to be free and sea world was like um what if instead of him going free in the end we built him a nicer better talent. I love doing shows for tourists. Yeah so as you can imagine sea world was just not interested. Yeah so they had to look elsewhere. Prophetic. Yeah when did we start putting orcas and tanks for our own amusement anyway? The first orca was caught and put in a sea pin in the early 1960s it was a whale named that was named Moby doll. This is a little upsetting but he was harpooned because he was going to be the skeleton was going to be on display at the aquarium like that's why they were harpooning this whale and then he didn't die so they were like yeah and they were like hey he didn't die let's see how long we can keep him for yeah and he lived for 87 days in a temporary sea pin made by the aquarium and then there was another one caught I think like the following year off of a location called Namo or Namo British Columbia and that whale survived for about 11 months and so then that just kind of planted the seed of like huh maybe we could we could catch these whales and people think they're cool and like want to come see them so it really was just purely a money making venture right and it's like having like a dancing bear in the middle ages or something right yeah everybody comes see the bear don't worry about it right yeah and so in the 70s the business of capturing and selling whales for like tens of thousands of dollars maybe even more than that like tens of thousand dollars in 1970s money you know so it was it was a very lucrative venture why your evil deadbeat dad could be set for life with wearing lucrative whale sales yeah even a seal deal yeah it was it was just a little too tempting for a lot of people and kind of like the waters outside British Columbia were like a big center this right yeah and this is the thing with the southern resident killer whales was that this time period is acknowledged as like a really traumatic event to their population and that in some ways you could say they're still recovering from that god i never thought about that there was a story like six months ago or so so there was a particular i think there was a few different events where whales were captured in Puget Sound but there was one there was a cove where one of these capture events took place and i forget which pod it was that was targeted but anyway that pod whether it was jk or l pod hadn't returned to that particular cove like since the 70s and they had only returned to it for like the first time last summer so it's like again not to anthropomorphize but i think we could say that this is some almost like generational trauma they learned something from it yeah i don't know i don't think it's too anthropomorphizing to call something trauma but you could also just say like while they figured out that they can't go there anymore yeah it seems like that's become generational knowledge which is interesting right you know to speculate yeah and it was like it wasn't just like a handful of whales there was right maybe 50 and just to get perspective for the southern resident killer whales now there are 74 individuals yeah their their population has struggled over the years and part of that was this initial these initial capture events in the 70s and then recently in the last like 20 30 years it has more to do with prey availability with fish the availability of salmon yeah but yeah so that took place in the 70s in the US but then there's you know the save the whales movement we had to go get our whales elsewhere basically so we passed a piece of legislation in the US called the marine mammal protection act and i believe that was passed in something like 1973 or 76 or something like that anyway it stipulated that we can no longer do live captures of whales in US waters so basically what happens is that the demand for that and for those hippies but the demand for that just essentially shifts elsewhere yeah and one of the places that shifted to was Iceland so there are really robust populations of killer whales around Iceland even to this day like the southern resident killer whales I think for those of us living in the Pacific Northwest we're like we're aware that they're maybe as a population not doing so well and we're very concerned and their their population is listed as endangered but elsewhere in the world orcas are actually doing okay and one of those populations of orcas that are doing okay is are ones in the North Atlantic around Iceland so captures started happening there and that's where our friend Kiko was captured in roughly around 1979-ish maybe 78. Wow is it Gen XR? Yeah he is he was about two to three years old which was kind of the ideal age to capture a whale you wanted to capture them when they were younger so that they would adapt to captivity better what kind of lifespan do killer whales have in the wild approximately? The average that I found was that females live a little longer and the average is around like 50 the max for females can be up to like 80 years old and then the average for males is around 30 and then their max can be around like 50 or 60 years old and then there's many accounts of whales and captivity not living nearly that long though I will say Kiko did live to about 27 years old and you know part of that might have been all this effort that was put in to get him back to health and you know to his wild home so he was caught off of Iceland and he was caught by a vessel called the the guru if anybody's Icelandic and listening to this I apologize yep somebody is please let us know we love to hear yeah the way you say it I listened to a video you did our best yeah I'm very aware of it now like hosting on KLCC will never be Icelandic it's just this is just the situation yeah there's got there's gonna be many more Icelandic words that I'm definitely not gonna get right yeah it's kind of a blanket disclaimer yeah we're we're trying we're trying the mark of a really quality language that yeah foreigners sound like idiots when we try yeah oh yeah I've been listening I've been streaming Icelandic radio recently just to get like my head and the how is that I just love the sound of a Icelandic language it's really I don't know it's just very pleasing to me and then like of course Iceland has incredible you know musicians and anyway I've just I've enjoyed listening to that but Kiko was caught by the gootheroon which was a hearing per sainter which is type type of fishing boat was he caught on purpose yes okay they weren't just like oh boy that's a big hearing no so at first when whales were caught in Iceland at like the first couple of times it was an accident or cuz would end up in the nets so this is a behavior known as depredation it's when a wild predator is targeting a resource that humans are also trying to harvest or extract oh yes because we got the thing that they like all kind of in a big pile yeah we we make it easy for them you know and this is this term is used when talking about orcas that are targeting fish that are being caught by a commercial fishing boat sperm whales do it too this happens in in Alaska and in other parts of the world what a sperm whale eat well sperm whales love to follow black cod longliners in Alaska I've seen it myself I don't like cod no black cod which is not technically of cod oh okay that's right well why do we have to keep naming all these fish all this made up stuff you know like Chile and sea bass that was a whole PR thing it is an issue it is actually something that some people are working on because there's kind of it's actually like a consumer fraud issue of like labeling something something as halibut when it's not actually hot halibut and charging someone like it's halibut it's like when they have like balsamic vinegar and the ingredients are like balsamic vinegar and three other things and you're like oh so okay how did they get Kiko and who captures him yeah so he he's captured by this boat that was kind of retrofitted I guess to capture whales so it was primarily a fishing boat and then they were like hey we can actually make more money in one go capturing some whales right I'm just imagining like a thousand like dads and uncles simultaneously that it's like this is you know like every few years there's new stupid things for people to try and make money on as a side hustle and it's this for a little while yeah you know which is just you know seems I don't know like I don't want to I know way I don't want to make fun of it too much because I think it is like genuinely horrific what we did to these animals yeah but it also is very dumb you know just to think about these random guys apparently like who had been inheriting being like you know what let's get let's just let's let's get a whale and flip it like the hubris of that is because so over the top I guess it becomes absurd oh absolutely I mean this whole time period of hey you know those beautiful majestic animals that are top predators in the ocean like what if we caught them and put them in essentially a fish bowl yeah and taught them tricks and uh charge people money Tracy is not calling me back but when I'm making a whale jump through a little hoop I don't think about it so much I don't think they can jump through hooves it's just kind of an you know it's a good image though if they need a pretty big hoop yeah and like I said they'd have to be loaded they loaded the surface of it's not their best trick no but yeah it actually reminds me of um so yeah I've I've been to this is why circuses are so great because it's the only you know animals doing trick exhibit that I can think of where part of the appeal is that the animal doesn't exist and isn't there right or like Cirque de Soleil you know it's a it's a surreal French Canadians and they fall but there's no animals involved that's true we only torture humans but um it just reminds me of the last time that I went to see world which was back in I don't know 2012 or something like that um or 2010 and I remember at the time feeling like okay this could be like my last time going because I don't know how I feel about this and I'll just speak specifically about the killer whale show that we went to I was so upset I remember being like tearful because I thought well okay here's these like incredible beautiful really fascinating really interesting animals and there was not a god damn thing in that show about their life history about their biology that a single fact about like what what's it like to be a killer whale what are they like in the wild you know and nothing about their social structures nothing about like echolocation or something you know just anything nothing about who they are you know what they had was a guy playing an electric guitar and a jumbo tron and it said words like believe and magic you know that was the gist of the killer whale show yeah where it's like the point of this giant animal is the stupid things that we believe that we get to feel in his presence and that all sort of about our most commercialized emotions I guess the idea of like a guy playing an electric guitar being like believe magic it's just like I cannot think of something more brain dead it's like believe what you got exactly like it's like they're commandeering the feeling of awe that you see when you're like in the presence of a large animal like that and especially like right it's such a charismatic animal like that and also I feel like kids are like fairly easy to please in terms of spectacle like it's really yeah I think it's more for adults these things that like can penetrate when your senses have been really dulled you know because like I feel like kids get pretty excited about marine animals if they simply swim sort of near them you know in a tank where nothing else is happening yeah I think generally kids are just naturally really interested in the natural world like I think they're right they love animals they love like you know for the most part being outside like kids are naturally curious and then we teach them to be curious because it's inconvenient and then we send them to school and ask them to be curious again but only about boring things right my analysis I think something I notice with kids and I remember this as a kid is the fascination with animals was also about like connecting with animals on an individual level to like bring it back to that idea of oh yeah I don't know the idea that like oh this whale or this snake whatever it is could like be my friend yeah and we will take on the world together and I think it's just every kids fantasy and this is like the entire fantasy of free willy or like the fairy tale free willy is the feeling of being chosen by a wild animal yeah like this wild animal chose to be your friend which means your special and troubled kid meets troubled whale and they have which I do feel like there is like you know like a lot of us like weird dogs and we like weird dogs because we're weird people you know and there's something to that although I but I also think that I don't know I would love to know what you think about this because where I land right now is this idea that like that there's some kind of experience of like growing up maybe that like is developmentally necessary or at least I hope that everyone has the capacity to get there where like you begin by thinking of animals not everybody but I think many human beings begin by thinking of animals as important or having and interest in them partly because of this idea of like them as a proxy for our feelings or something that could choose us and befriend us and validate us in that way and like like for example it was out for a walk in my neighborhood recently and speaking of like a recent Lulumiller episode we did there was a daylight coyote that I saw and then saw again just like walking around in the neighborhood and like you know pausing to look and I was like thinking about that thing where like there will always be a part of me that's like the kid at heart that's like what if this coyote and I become best friends and we're just a girl and a coyote just live in and loving live in the sunlight look away live in the sunlight live in the moonlight you know but then there's also the part of you the like adult brain that I think that you get to develop if you have you know the right teachers and stuff of like this coyote needs to continue to fear people and not the friend the people in the neighborhood and I have to continue and not try and get them to pause for longer than they are basically yeah it's almost like a tragic gay like 1950s love story you know where it's like Rupert you'll always know my heart better than anyone else but for our own safety we must live separate lives my love for you will always dwell in my heart they're British I got that no I no I think you're right because even though I I have this fantasy of like oh well the friend like a dolphin or a harbor seal or something and they like me and nobody else and or yeah coyote or a wolf or especially I think sometimes we have that fantasy with like predators yes having something that's like so in our minds like scary or powerful or mysterious because humans are predators and we seek solidarity I guess with the other one yeah maybe or I think it's again just like well I think what is lurking under the surface of this fantasy of connecting with an animal like that is it is kind of wrapped up in our ego yeah because we it is really just about or it's not the only thing but it a lot of it is about feeling special in some way right yeah and this like asking nature to choose us and then maybe there comes a moment where a time when the mature perspective becomes and I think a lot of kids understand this from the jump but they guess that there is the kind of like I think growing up partly involves learning to not project your emotions and the way that maybe we do more as children when when it's safer for sentimentality to be kind of the logic of our lives and that I don't know that emotional and maturity involves being like I need to value this animal more for what I'm able to do you know in this world that my species is controlling in so many ways to help protect their ability to live an autonomous life basically yeah because I think if we let go of our ego in this fantasy and we really make it about what is best for the animal and realizing like the best thing for a lot of animals is actually probably to not interact with humans all that much right and even though we like crave that attention it is the thing that can actually be the most detrimental or harmful to wild animal maybe this is being sentimental right now but it feels like we like humans have this like homesickness earnest logic for animals that like live more fully in nature than we do because like I like I don't know I kind of like to think that I'm some level we recognize that we are animals and that we are of them and yet that we don't get to be with them right and also to be clear like it would suck to live in the wilderness in many ways as like an animal because like most of your life is about eating enough food and survival and potentially getting eaten by something and as a human I like hardly have to worry at all about something eating me and I really love that as well you know so not to like romanticize it too much but it does feel like there's this like lost Eden feeling that's driving some of that longing that we have I think so I think there's a lot of push and pull in these themes of like well yeah the best thing for an animal like for a wild animal is for them to probably not interact with humans as much as possible that being said being a wild animal is really difficult and like they are exposed to a lot of things that we aren't that's why we shouldn't stress them out because they're already under so much pressure yeah how can I do it all how can I have it all as a coyote I'm just trying to collect all my nuts before the winter and also find a suitable mate how can I have it all that's what a squirrel saying when she's stuffing nuts in her shoes she's going I can come at all I can't have it all but yeah it's a that's what I find so compelling about this cake of stories that it brings up all these themes and it's like going too far in one direction it's never going to be the answer right and everyone kind of rallies around a really particular like pointed perspective on how to address this issue of like how do you put an animal back in the wild and the answer is that well a no one knows what the clear answer was right and also I believe that everyone involved in this story truly in their heart of hearts had the best of intentions for Kiko along the way like everyone just had a very different idea of what was the best thing for him for some people it was you know well he shouldn't go back to the wild he should just stay in Oregon or come hell or high water we're going to release him and it doesn't matter like whether he's ready or not but it just him being in the wild is better than him being you know in captivity even if it's like a CPEN in Iceland and part of that is everyone again they wanted the best for Kiko they were acting with the best of intentions but it is also clear to me or it seems apparent that there is ego wrapped in it and I don't mean like I don't necessarily mean like arrogance I just mean that yeah the human inability to sort of see things totally clearly maybe whether it's just like we're always seeing somebody else on their needs especially if they can't articulate them through this kind of screen around subjectiveness yes yeah exactly a really great quote from a book that I love that is not about Kiko it's about wolves uh wolfish by Erica Berry she has this wonderful quote uh where she says to understand an animal exists neither to kill you nor to cuddle you is to untangle your ego from its life to see it as complex in wild worthy of existence independent of your feelings about it and I don't know I just I feel like that um encapsulates some of the the push and pull of we wanted the best for Kiko and we were doing our best really acting I think in a really commendable way as human beings like we really came together and tried to do something extraordinary and you know like real life happens it didn't necessarily go to plan and it didn't wasn't executed perfectly but yeah I just I think if we had sort of struck a middle ground in there somewhere then that could have been quote unquote the correct way to go about it behind sites always 2020 so yeah it's hard to say well I'm speaking about I mean this kind of gets to also my question of what's his life like between being um captured and Iceland and then ending up in a movie somehow about 15 years later but also I mean that brings us to something I realized we haven't actually you saying that as we realize we haven't talked about this yet which is like what is Kiko like like what kind of a whale yeah I know that's the that's actually a very important aspect of this story because like people like dogs like any animal I think whales orcas have personalities and they're they can be very different from each other and what is the strongest consensus about Kiko is that he was a really friendly whale he was really easy to work with he got along with people really well and it's like at some point in the book uh Kenneth Browner makes the point of like this character trait of his of working really well with people and getting along with people really well while it would have never been relevant in the wild and would have never come up it actually served him really well in his life he's like the dick fan die of whales yeah and he has been compared I think in one place he was compared to a golden retriever in another place he was compared to a labrador and in another book he was compared to a St. Bernard like he is just described as like a very sweet and very passive whale in some descriptions are kind of funny because they kind of make him sound I don't know like maybe he wasn't the sharpest whale but also was like maybe he just wasn't very motivated as my mom says of her dog not the sharpest poodle in the door yeah that's what I say about my my other dog precious like you know this is my daughter Murphy this is my other daughter Murphy sister yeah I know I haven't I haven't brought her up even though precious takes up a lot of my brain space these days with her many needs but um she's a retired endurance athlete I know exactly she doesn't have to answer to anybody it's like you're taking care of like Kip Chogi in there wait it's like taking care of what isn't that like the marathoner Kip Chogi who's like beating everybody's records oh you run like these crazy fast marathons oh maybe yeah yeah no she is I mean for those listening that don't know precious is a retired slide dog both my dogs are retired slide dogs and precious at least once ran the I did a rod so she is a professional athlete now retired she spends her days wandering the beaches of Oregon and eating dead bird carcasses when I'm not looking but uh she's uh he's the sled dog of whales yeah he's like the precious of whales he's uh he's very friendly and very sweet and loves people and does he get exhibited in Iceland after they catch him or is he immediately like sold on Teemo or whatever the equivalent right yeah he was held in Iceland from what I can tell he wasn't on display necessarily there are a few whales being held essentially waiting to be sold to the next place just like that guy in that weird Jurassic Park movie with the dinosaur actions yeah yes exactly this it's I love it there actually are a lot of parallels to Jurassic Park in the story yeah and so Kiko was held in Iceland for a few years his early years are really murky because there just wasn't much documentation he has lost years like Shakespeare did yeah yeah it's possible that like the confirmation of him sort of like arriving into the human world was in a Icelandic newspaper on November 6 1979 and the first place he goes actually after Iceland is Canada okay and he wasn't first named Kiko at first supposedly he was named SIGGI which was the name of the the son of the captain and while he was kind of like in this holding pen that's such an absent dad thing to do like not to profile this guy unfairly but being like right I named a whale after you I'm sorry I missed your play right I'm gone at sea fishing for herring and capturing whales for you know months at a time but I named a whale after you they're gonna change it they're gonna change it so pretty much immediately when he gets to Canada so he first goes to marine lands they're like he doesn't look like a SIGGI don't be silly I guess so I don't know why they changed it but he got some marine land of an Ontario near Niagara Falls and they changed his name to Kago K.A.G.O or Kago wow and that means little boy in Icelandic supposedly he's like the black beauty of whales yeah never black beauty like it's so hard for black beauty oh black beauty oh my gosh I need to reread that I think black beauty was like an important book in the history of the animal welfare movement like don't quote me on that but that I think I might have something there yeah yeah I mean it's kind it's in a way it's kind of similar ish to like the call of the wild from what I remember of just you know following a animal's life I mean for people who did not get to be sensitive little girls black beauty is a memoir as told by a horse about his various owners some of what were very abusive yeah horse memoirs we need more horse memoirs yeah just I can see how it would be maybe illuminating for a lot of people didn't really think about like the whole of an animal's life and like where that animal was before they arrived in your life and where they went after and how an animal is just like a horse or a pet especially is just at the whim of humans for their entire life and Kiko certainly was that's the the short story of his life as he was just he was he was a whale that was moved around a lot because humans you know made decisions for him for his entire life and he spent about five years there and they in these years are also kind of murky there's not tons of information but he shared a tank with about five other whales and he was reportedly bullied by the other whales this speaks to his personality that he was just a kind of submissive passive whale and even though the other whales there were other Icelandic whales and actually one of the other whales I think during this time in his tank was tillacum so he was another Icelandic whale though he wasn't like a part of the same pod that Kiko was from but Kiko was what one of the authors other authors of Kiko's story said he was at the bottom of the social hierarchy and when he had chickens yeah yeah there was a yeah pecking order of sorts and also like think about you know these animals are highly social and then you remove them from their family and from their pod and then you stick them in a tank with essentially strangers yeah it's like whale jail yeah so it makes sense that the whales might pick on each other again not to anthropomorphize but I feel like humans do this too if you it's like similar behavior we observe in you know jails or prisons you take a bunch of people and kind of force them to inhabit a space together then or British boarding school oh that yeah any situation where some of the choice of who you interact with on a daily basis has been taken away from you it's like boy by rolled doll yeah I love how I'm like passionately against anthropomorphizing unless I do it then it's fine then it's cool well you know what actually sums up like the issue of anthropomorphizing for me is it's a Sarah Anderson comic you know Sarah Anderson I think that's her name no she has this one is like four panels and the first panel is a scientist at a conference and she says something like and therefore we cannot definitively say what an animal is thinking or feeling and then the next panel is like her about to open the door to go home and her cats waiting for her and she opens the door and the cat leaps into her arms and the scientist says uh I missed you too to be let's just that's it in a nutshell it's like yeah we can't say it but also we do know on some level especially when we have but if you know in the conscious part of your brain that like yeah when you're thinking hard you're trying to maybe I don't know because then it's like there's a question of like what is empathy and when does it become something else or what are the varieties of it because I feel like for some people empathy is like well I value your perspective by considering it to be similar to my own or that like me valuing your life is assuming there to be similarities and I feel like perhaps a deeper level or a more capacious level of empathy is like thinking really hard about what might motivate someone different from you including if they're killer whale and also like accepting the mystery of just like the things that you can't know you know yeah like I think accepting lack of understanding is actually an underrated part of relationships yeah I guess being like I don't know why this is important to you but it's important to you and that's all that matters and I don't need you to like explain it to me in a way that makes it makes sense to me like I care about you and I'll do it yeah exactly that's exactly what I was thinking of like the most important or significant like gift I guess you can give in a relationship is just being like I believe what you're telling me I don't I'm not gonna like tell you I think I know better than you that what's best for you and I think I've struggled with that at times in my life of like realizing like oh I am not the arbiter of like what is best for this person in my life even though yeah you know my god sometimes you really feel that way about someone that you care about you're like man if you just did this one thing differently but it's just fully recognizing that this other being in your life be it an animal or a person they're the arbiter of their own life they are the final say of like of what is best for them and what they need yeah like how I make a nice bed for my cat and he prefers to curl up on an empty pizza box yeah that's his prerogative like he can do that and I think that is the issue with I don't know if we're trying to like dial in on like where the line is of the issue of anthropomorphizing I do think it's somewhere in there of like letting go of the idea that I know what's best for you and not fully listening right right so it's it's kind of I mean it's like parenting I got in a way this like attempting to live in a way where you can be a good steward of nature where like humility is part of that toolkit and being able to listen to the extent that you're able to which is harder if someone you know communicates differently because they're of a different species right I know so that's the whole issue right like I mean we have a hard time with this as humans and we can talk to each other right yeah we have a hard enough time understanding each other yeah even if we share a language and a dialect and everything yeah and then if we try to do the same for an animal that has no language at least as far as we understand language and it communicates in really different ways and doesn't even have like the same concepts that we do then it's a harder thing to figure out like how that you know your dog might be expressing what they need in a given moment right looking for clues and being observant is different from like looking for confirmation yeah of the emotion you assume they would have or you would like them to have or something right I think with whales especially what happens with projection is that whales don't have an expressive face and so I think it's yeah easy for us to project a lot of emotions on them like I really think what's that film device where it's like oh yeah the montage effects yeah where you have like someone with a blank expression in one frame and then in the next frame you have something sad so then you like or like oh that person sad even though yep their face is pretty neutral but then if the next frame was like something happy you might interpret their their emotion is something different just by the juxtaposition of those those images and I think that happens with animals especially animals that don't have like we just kind of I don't know we take like our feelings in the given moment and that's like the frame of like the happy thing or the sad thing adjacent to the animals facial expression we're like oh they're happy too or oh they're sad about this or you know we let our imaginations run wild right well and infamously that's why the not live action because it was so computer generated but that's why the like weird hyper realistic lion king I think part of why it weirded so many people out because lions don't have eyebrows like we gave them eyebrows in the animated version because animators recognize that they needed to be like made to like more like dogs so that they could have yeah facial expressions that people could read but if you just do like a lion with no eyebrows then like it's like those lions were not emoting no I mean I haven't seen it because I just on at this point refused to see it but your life is too short to watch a non-emotive lion yeah because I think that like the stage show of the lion king probably feels more real to people because then it's like these extremely stylized like basically puppet versions of the characters but it's like a story about human emotions right so if you if you're mapping that onto animals and then you go to the literal animal that doesn't convey those emotions because it was a human invention to begin with and like it's gonna be weird yeah it's kind of missing the point of like what made it a compelling story I mean yeah it's cool that they're lions like I'm not saying I don't love that aspect of it but we all love lions but it's yeah it's kind of missing the point of like what made it a compelling story and what made it a compelling story is the emotions of it right you know and then the stories that humans tell about animals are often about ourselves you know I mean with exceptions and like free willy is kind of an exception but it's also like the whale story is an allegory for the kid story yeah absolutely this whale and this kid have both been bounced around and then he's kind of a foster whale as in real life well and where does he go after he's in the scary holding facility in Iceland like what's what's the path that he takes to Hollywood he eventually again this this time of period is just a little blurry and he just from what I can read he was just sold to an amusement park in Mexico City called Doreno Aventura which is still around today it is a six flags now and it's in the you know middle of Mexico City which Mexico City is in a high desert the elevation is something like 7800 feet and you know really dry weather so basically like a whale has never experienced anything like that before and safely say will never dreamer even wanted to go to the mountains and yet here he is so yeah there he was uh and where Kiko my god it's like as far from the ocean as you can get in a way in a sense yeah especially like vertically he gets to he gets to uh Doreno Aventura they immediately have to change his name for the final time because well you'll remember his his name now was Kago or Kago oh yes I think I and I remember enough Spanish 101 to know where this is going so I'm sure that he arrived and they're like what's his name they're like Kago and they're like oh no no no no we can't have a whale that means I shit which is what I believe it means or like two shit it's just right themselves you have to admit it yeah or Kiko like he didn't know poor Kiko well he didn't even have a name you know who who knows right he doesn't care again we're I mean like we're gonna be dancing on this line the whole time yeah right but he um so they they changed his name to Kiko which is actually like a feminine Japanese name that means lucky one which feels very prescient um for his his story and Kiko by all accounts was just absolutely adored by his keepers in Mexico City he he had three young female trainers Claudia Turran, Renata Fernandez and Carla Cral so while Kiko was in Mexico City he did appear in a few telenovelas oh my god what what what what was he doing in these teleno honestly I don't even know like I my Spanish isn't good enough for me to follow but you can find him on YouTube okay we need to find out if it's at all possible because we're gonna do this in two chapters for chapter two just like did anyone get dangled over his enclosure in a telenovela was he used in a James Bond kind of a way was he friendly we got to know like I thought you died when you fell into the into Kiko's tank like no that was my twin sister right so he was loved by his trainers and he was loved by people in Mexico and I haven't listened in full to the serial podcast yet I've just kind of scanned the transcripts to make sure we're not like overlapping too much and um and I will eventually but I do I'm very excited to listen to the first episode because the first episode was done in collaboration with uh Mexican radio station radio abu ambuante and uh so the first episode was from what I can tell just like stories about Kiko from the perspective of people living in Mexico city and just like how much everyone loved him and he was like I think they said he was like Mexico's pet like Mickey Mouse which is so similar to the way Oregonians have felt about him and it never for some reason never occurred to me that people there loved him just as much right he spent like 13 years there I believe he he arrived in 1985 and then he would go to Newport in 1996 it's like 11 years yes yeah 11 years you know so he spent a good amount of time there yeah unfortunately the issue in Mexico is that as much as you know people loved him the park was not really well equipped to take care of an animal like Kiko um killer whales prefer high latitudes meaning like you know you're getting towards you know the sort of polar regions they like cold colder climates and inhabit more like further north and further south across a globe they're not really equatorial and the water in Kiko's tank was always too warm for him and so he became very it's in order to not overheat he just wouldn't move around that much hmm from what I understand like the water was just like the city water that had like chlorine in it and then they would add salt to it to make it salty but it just wasn't really the best quality sea water for him and then of course I think infamously his tank was really very small the tank that you see in free willy like where he is in the stadium that's his tank in Mexico city okay I love how that could open the door and organ and walks into a enclosure in Mexico the the wardrobe to Narnia it's a subtle life yeah well how does he get the curly fin so oh that's an interesting point because I think people including myself thought like oh that's just something that happens to whale to killer whales when they're in captivity and that's like sort of true but there's a little more nuance to it this was explained to me by dr. Naomi Rose who was involved with the project and she explained that male killer whales they have a very very tall dorsal fin that gets to like six feet female killer whales their dorsal fin never gets that tall they kind of stay in proportion to themselves like they they just kind of become a bigger version of a baby whale versus a male killer whale when they go through puberty their dorsal fin all of a sudden becomes really tall like yeah around six feet or so their pectoral fins get really big and their flukes of their tail also get really big and they get so big that they ask they like curl around and this is also a little different depending on whales killer whales around the world so you have what's called different ecotypes which is basically like an ecologically distinct population and they'll I guess kind of maybe this is a little bit of a stretch but I think it's just it's like similar to people they're all the same species and then depending on where you are in the world they look a little different from each other so like killer whales in Antarctica their eye patch is like really weirdly small when you look at it like it looks very different from a southern resident killer whale where you're like huh so the male killer whales they have this big tulfin and that happens during puberty so if they are caught before they hit puberty and then they are in captivity and they spend a lot of time at the surface their dorsal fin will likely fall over not like guaranteed but it's just that it's because it's spending too much time out of the water yeah there's not that I don't know like that hydrodynamic support they get from you know traveling long distances because killer whales in the wild they can travel like a hundred miles in a day they are covering so much ground all the time and they're not hanging out at the surface all the time I mean obviously they come up to breathe but they're not just like lollying around on the surface there are examples of male killer whales in captivity though that they were caught later in their life and so their fin shot up before they were caught and so kind of developed I guess more structural integrity and so their fin doesn't flop over in captivity but Kiko as I mentioned he was caught when he was like two or three years old so his his fin was likely gonna flop over no matter what so in Mexico he's not doing he doesn't have the best conditions his tank was 90 feet long by 43 feet wide by 20 feet deep and I believe when Kiko got to Oregon eventually he was 20 or 21 feet long he was still like a sub adult male so he could barely like if his nose was touching the surface his tail would be touching the bottom like they're just really wasn't his tank was designed mostly for bottle nose dolphins he shared the tank with a couple of other dolphins and no other killer whales he was the only one during this time because his tank was too warm he developed what's what's called a papaloma virus on his fins and I believe a little bit on his tailstock so papaloma virus is something similar to like a herpes virus Kiko developed these painful warts and now he's at an increased risk for cervical cancer yeah that's true how to get screened every so often but he if you watch free willy you can see it like they couldn't hide it and it just looks like these little lumpy growths where his pictorial fins meet his body Kiko and like a little bit again like on his tailstock and yeah it was just probably not comfortable for him and just you know his body is just kind of fighting a virus continuously so he was not in the best of health his food also was not high quality either I don't believe the park really had great access to like really fresh fish according to Kenneth Brower in his book the fish that he got was trucked down from San Diego like from Sea World in San Diego at times in an un-refrigerated truck that's got to be a long drive yeah I think it's like a 13 hour drive or no sorry 31 hour drive according to Google Maps well that's even longer so yeah the heat the poor diet and the virus this all just contributed to his deteriorating health and this is the state that Kiko is in when people see the movie and start calling that 1-800 for Wales number asking about hey whatever happened to willy and you know the movie did really well they made it for 20 million dollars it grossed 153 million dollars man 20 million dollars for a movie where you have to work with a large predator is you know we're never going to get back to there so like reading some of the like the interactions between reno aventura and like Warner Brothers or earth island institute sometimes I feel like I don't know I could be reading this wrong but I feel like reno aventura just wasn't fully briefed on like the financial resources that Warner Brothers had I just feel like they didn't really leverage their negotiations as much as they probably could have but the movie did way better than anyone was expecting and then the phones were ringing off the hook for 1-800 for Wales and they got supposedly around I'm not sure exactly the time frame philips said it was just within the next several months they received 300 thousand phone calls I believe it yeah no I do too I mean it's like we did it it was pretty easy to just call and leave message and I think an interesting and interesting point here is that philips he's done really great campaign work on other environmental issues regarding the ocean and Wales and that's her thing and I think he had a bit of a misjudgment here in that he thought in putting the number at the end of the movie people were going to call asking how they can help Wales in general and he was very surprised when pretty much every single phone call was just asking about kaco yeah which to me is like well yeah of course they are that's how human beings work right that's human behavior for you yeah you're like hey wouldn't it be great if you could think about Wales more and we're like what about that that one whale tell us about the one we were looking at for the last two hours we get attacked yes exactly we it's easier for us to empathize again with an individual rather than thinking of a population and I understand you know conservation workers they have to think about the population at large they can't really be too concerned about the suffering or trials and tribulations of individual whales and at the time like earth island institutes main concern in regards to whale conservation was whaling activity taking place in other countries to them that was like that was the tie in it was like okay we'll do this movie about a whale that will get people to care about whales and be able to push you know political leaders and legislation about banning products from countries that are continuing commercial whaling practices so philips recalls that the phone number he thought that this phone number would be sufficient and get kind of people galvanized around carrying about these whaling issues overseas but what becomes very clear is that people are and very notably to the kaco story children were very concerned about kaco do you remember this what's your personal experience of this part of the story i have been trying to remember like i followed the kaco story really closely and i wouldn't be surprised if i either called this number or wrote a letter or like sent a postcard or whatever being like you need to like you know make sure kaco gets released to the wild because that's what a lot of kids did what do you remember guess about that feeling of being invested in it like do you remember i don't know like seeing the movie and like what feelings you had about kaco at that age i think why it was partially really powerful to children is that i think kids can really understand the fear of being separated from your family i think it's a really primal fear that we all have and it is like you know being separated from your family for a child is you know like you are not going to do well without your your family your chances of survival are are definitely lower and i think that's just like ingrained in our DNA as social beings especially that we need our families to survive and so then you have this story about a very charismatic animal i will also say have we said the words charismatic megafauna yet because i'm surprised it hasn't come up more no we have not tell us about that for a second charismatic megafauna is a term i think mostly actually used in like the conservation and environmentalist space and using a charismatic animal like a panda or a tiger or a whale to inspire people to care about an environmental issue of some for so there's deforestation or pollution or climate change or whatever it is and megafauna usually comes from the fact that these are usually large animals because we're just we just seem to be drawn to a lot larger animals and using these symbols to then inspire change inspire action that would protect other animals that like are kind of under the umbrella that would be impacted so like if you pass legislation that reduces overfishing or something in order to protect whales well that's not just going to protect the whales it's going to have really positive outcomes for other species in the ocean too but you can't really get people as excited about like plankton even though it's a very important part of the ecosystem because we don't empathize with plankton sufficiently no yeah we could probably all spend an hour per day sitting around attempting to empathize with plankton but life has just gotten so busy yeah right yeah so it's kind of a like a shortcut like also like an emotional shortcut right or it's like that animals like president of the ecosystem or something yeah right yeah it's like there's probably like you know yeah like within I don't know cheese and earthwast as an example like probably lots of little mammals and bugs and like little clams that are like extremely important to the balance that we're trying to maintain but that you're not going to get people excited about them but that we will be excited about like what's an animal on the I don't know bears yeah yeah or like I think of there's a big push on the Oregon coast to restore sea otter populations there's very yeah we love an otter we'll do anything for otters freaking love otters I mean and they are an important keystone species in you know kelp forest along the coast and we do need them but they also just in bringing them back it's going to have a kind of cascading effect of things that are positive positive for the sea urchin populations and that they'll help control the sea urchin populations on the coast and which will have a positive effect on the kelp and you know it just has these domino effects which is nice because it's a case of humans being kind of like silly in our own way and being like I like that they hold hands but like our desire for cute things is actually causing us to accidentally do something that's helpful in many more ways than that so that's kind of nice yeah it's it's it's a useful tool that a lot of groups do use and whales are definitely a charismatic megafauna that has been used in that way I'm imagining whales being like oh I don't know I just like to tell stories my whale impression so yeah philips concedes that like all right this is going to be about kako as much as I think our time and effort would be better spent focusing on killer whales or just whales at large across the world he shifted his perspective and realizing like okay kako becomes a symbol that people can relate to he said but then I saw the power in it concentrating on kako as a metaphor getting kako back to his family or at least doing the best we could for kako we didn't know whether we could get him all the way back to his family but we knew getting him out of mexico was important right from the beginning the goal was rescue rehabilitation release we wanted to bring him back to health and we wanted to release him I started seeing the power in that I can talk about it the impact of fisheries on marine mammals until I'm blue in the face and lots of times the little kids nod off talk about kako and they're totally wide eyed I had never experienced that so from his perspective in this in the conservation work he's like all right this is the thing that's going to get people to care about these issues so he takes on with some conversations with Warner Brothers so like Warner Brothers is also getting a lot of heat at this time from the media because there's literal children being like what what's happening to kako in the media is like just eating this out for you kako is innocent and so the media is like putting a lot of pressure on Warner Brothers to do something about it and this is where I feel like Warner Brothers probably starts to feel a little bit like Michael ironside in in the movie where they're like god this whale's pain in our ass and notably after this is all said and done like one's Warner Brothers steps out of the picture they make it very clear we are never having a real whale in any movie ever again it's never had to do Michael ironside they don't want they didn't want him to die but they don't like you give these environmentalists an ink they take a biolite it's all transformers from now on or whatever we make next yeah well and like all the follow up free willy sequels they're it's all animatronic if we put a charismatic megafon in a movie it's gonna be better flag yes only only humans and CGI from now on or animatronics but yeah they're getting heat from it and they're calling David Phillips and being like we need help we don't know what to do and this is when Phillips is like okay earth island institute is going to take on this monumental task of helping kako and the the goal like he said was we're gonna try to get back to his family but they're sort of taking it in incremental steps so first they were like we just need to get him out of his situation in reno avan tuita because he's not going to last much longer and several people said that they said he's he's not going to make it if he stays here much longer he's a chronically algorithm yeah yeah he has chronic health issues so that's when this project starts to form so there's the formation of the free willy kako foundation which is a foundation housed by earth island institute and they immediately start trying to fundraise and trying to figure out okay well if he's not going to live in mexico anymore where is he going to live and they looked at several different options they had a few different bids on places that kako could go next one of them like they had these they had some applications from there's a girl from a place in canada who like put together this whole packet of like oh kako could come live in this bay by my house and they said it actually was like like I think they were like pretty impressed with this proposal she put together but for a few different reasons wasn't going to work out another notable option that wasn't really much of an option was neverland ranch so michael Jackson actually put in he he put his offer out of like well kako could come live at my place at neverland ranch michael no no um i'm sure this wasn't really entertained by anybody but one of the main legal reasons this couldn't happen is that within the marine mammal protection act marine mammals if they are in captivity have to be on public display they can't go inside at a private residence i don't know why we can't make this the case for every like wild animal or you know exotic animal i guess i assume because the precedent had already been set and it's harder to change it once it's already kind of you know so it's like we were like we already set it up so that weird shady guys can hoard big cats and we can't change it now yeah it's my impression of the american legal system it's good yeah it's uh so thankfully you know that was never going to be an option but um so there's a few places they considered but then and i am not positive exactly how the Oregon coast aquarium came up one story that i came across is you know the artist wildland of corny cambrana i lived in Honolulu as a kid it was wildland on every corner the beautiful murals of the apple cheat children writing or cuz around do i know wildland i think we had a wildland book when i was a kid but parents have that print in their house like this is yeah i loved wildland yeah i know i love wildland too i've my parents had this book because again they love wildland had that print they have a bronze statue uh like first breath or whatever it's like a humpback lifting a calf oh my god i've seen that section in parents house yeah my sister and i would hang christmas ornaments on it at christmas time which my parents were like okay but we also had this book and it was about wildland murals so if you go to almost any like major city on the west coast including Alaska oh yeah you showed that to me yeah there's likely a building with a wildland mural and it's of a whale and he called them wailing walls so there's one here in newport i can't believe it's taking me this long to mention that i live in newport but i do as of a year and a half ago and there's a wailing wall in newport on the bay front and it's of gray whales uh there's one in anchorage Alaska that i would see all the time that wasn't was of i think bowheads and blue gos there's ones in sandiego they're just all across and he was like doing this tour and it was a conservation message behind it as well he was trying to bring attention wildland's done a lot of work with environmentalists and activists that are fighting for conservation of whales and dolphins and he got the organ and he was uh at first approached by the director of the organ cause aquarium at the time philous bell asking if he could paint a wall on the side of the outside of the of the aquarium and he eventually decided to not do the aquarium but that was how he got in contact with philous bell according to wildland he was one of the people that suggested to philous bell like hey you should think about taking in kaco and he certainly thinks he had something to do with that and i haven't come across yet uh how david phillips came across the idea of organ cause aquarium i don't know if like philous bell reached out to david phillips after she spoke to wildland being like hey we'd love to have him and for those listening that aren't familiar with the organ coast aquarium this aquarium opened in 1992 in new port or in no idea it was so new that's amazing i know isn't that crazy it was really new and the organ cause aquarium has a special place in my heart for many reasons the kaco story and then i also volunteered there when i was like 12 years old and i really love it as an institution they're they're very education focused they aren't about big flashy shows with jumbo tronds that say believe in magic and a random guy playing the electric guitar they're about gently touching an eminion a tide pool display yeah yes and you know if they have like they they do have sea lions and seals and sea otters a lot of them were are especially the ones that are still there now are animals that were injured and were rehabilitated and then deemed like you know they weren't going to be able to survive in the wild anymore so they become an ambassador for their species in that way so they weren't like collected necessarily some of the animals are collected like the fish and octopus but i know the marine mammals are not and they do a lot of like they're involved in a lot of rescue and rehabilitation of animals on the coast they're actually in the process of building a marine wildlife rescue center and it's not it's not going to be a center that's available for public viewing it's just it's going to be a place for if someone finds a sick seal or sealant on on the coast then they have the appropriate facility and permits to restore that sealant back to health and then release it so anyway i just as an institution i have really love them and their work and this seemed and i think that appeal to david philips as well he was like okay this is the kind of place i could see keiko going and then all the the environment was more appropriate for keiko as well the water they were going to be able to pump in actual sea water from the bay from kwinna bay it's like when they filmed Titanic yeah yeah they were just going to have better access to resources and so once they landed on new port being the location for keiko's next home they started building his tank and again this is like where the money side of things really comes into play so Warner Brothers like they gave some money to help relocate keiko and earth island institute institute was really really starting their fundraising campaigns asking people to donate a few dollars here and there and you know a lot of kids donated money so there's like lots of stories of like classrooms getting together and like breaking open their piggy banks and pulling their money together and sending it to earth island is institute as you can imagine even with all of that goodwill and altruism demonstrated by the public and by these young kids it still wasn't nearly enough to fund this astronomically expensive project the success of a project comes down to leadership and to money and that's going to change fairly substantially and is going to set the course for really the remainder of the project that big decision is waiting for them when keiko finally arrives in Oregon which I will tell you about next time and you know what else is waiting a whole lot of gift shop stuff yes we can go over my my collection and we can talk about the time I saw keiko your experience with keiko yes oh my gosh with the acceptance that I am inevitably projecting my own emotions onto keiko I sure do love him me too I really do love him he's been my a kind of like companion to me all these years thinking about him and uh yeah I'm so happy to share his story with you where can we find more of you while we wait for installment too to come out yeah you can check out my website Brianna Bowman.com not so much on social media the way I'm on LinkedIn if anyone wants to find me there and I also am working on a podcast about this very story it would be a narrative uh limited series podcast so more of a kind of cinematic telling of this story I've interviewed a lot of people involved with the project and uh if you would like to support that project of mine uh you can go to the patreon for it the title of the podcast is rewilding the keiko story and you're also on the radio oh yeah that's right it's on the radio if you if you happen to be in central organ or the willamit valley or the central coast you can hear me on the weekends for a weekend edition on kale cc you can stream it online too so support your local public radio stations port and PR support your local whale the support your local whales yeah Brianna thank you so much for coming and and talking about keiko and being so generous with your time and enthusiasm which is the backbone of this show unbridled enthusiasm for northwesterners who know and could find a tank big enough for thank you until next time and that was our episode thank you so much for listening to part one of this whale of a tail and we're gonna have part two for you in two weeks thank you to Brianna Bowman our guest you can find her website and our show notes and thank you to the people who helped make this show Miranda Zickler is our producer and editor and Nicole Ortiz is our administrative assistant we can't wait to see you again in part two see you soon is