Keiko Part 3 with Brianna Bowman

Would you ride on the back of a random orca at the beach? For the final part of this series on Free Willy star Keiko, deep sea correspondent Brianna Bowman tells Sarah about his rewilding and return to the open ocean -- something that up until that point had never been done before. Digressions include introducing adult cats to each other, Fyre Fest, and the 27 club. Produced + edited by Miranda ZicklerMore Magpie Cinema ClubMore Brianna Bowman: Brianna's Website Support Brianna's new podcast Rewilding Keiko on Patreon Submit a voicemail with your memories of Keiko at [email protected] (Brianna's Note: yes, Outlook! I’m a weirdo) Linkedin (Brianna's Note: yes I am a double weirdo) @rewildingkeiko on Instagram Buy her a coffee! Watch Kampen Om Keiko More You're Wrong About: linktr.ee/ywapod Bonus Episodes on PatreonBuy cute merchYWA on Instagram Support the show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sarah Marshall?

  It's a hell of a day at sea to quote the movie Overboard.

• 0:14Sarah Marshall?

  Welcome to You're Wrong About. This is the grand finale of our Keiko trilogy with Brianna Bowman, and we cannot wait to share it with you. We have a bonus episode out now about Ishtar, the worst movie ever made, or is it with Paul Scheer and Amy Nicholson of the Unspooled Podcast. And that's about it. Let's go hang out with that whale.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  So Keiko's the dancing queen.

• 0:44Sarah Marshall?

  Yep, he really is.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  They were working on his physical health, on, you know, improving his stamina, because as I've mentioned a few times, wild whales swim tens, if not hundreds of miles a day. So they need, he needed to work on that.

• 0:58Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, right. And he doesn't know how to do that.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's never done that.

• 1:02Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, no.

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Except when he was like two. But yeah, he hasn't done that. So he's got to, yeah, he's got to work on, on his health.

• 1:09Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, it's like you taking me, who like is, you know, within like a 12-foot radius of my couch most days, and be like, Sarah, you're gonna walk the Pacific Crest Trail, and then you're just gonna keep doing it for the rest of your life, because that's what you do.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  Yep. Yeah, that's a, that's a very good analogy. Yeah. He's been in a tank since he was two years old. He hasn't gone further than really a few feet for his whole life. And so this is, it is quite a big undertaking to improve his, his physical stamina at this point. So they were working on that.

• 1:44Sarah Marshall?

  And again, apparently, basically unprecedented, you know, because you've been researching this for years. If there was some like major obvious precedent, you would know about it, I really think.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would think I would know.

• 1:55Sarah Marshall?

  I'm sure there's things that like kind of apply, but like, yeah, this thing of like, it feels like, can it be done the way we're envisioning it?

• 2:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:04Sarah Marshall?

  A very major question this whole time.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And then the other big thing, and this started in Oregon, was training Keiko to eat live fish. Both, uh, well, Kenneth Brower, you know, he's an author. He wasn't directly involved with the project, but he would dip in and out and met Keiko in person a few times and saw how the project was going. And even he said-

• 2:26Sarah Marshall?

  I'm sorry, the phrasing is just so great because it's like, I don't know, it makes me think of other celebrity memoirs. And it's like, yes, they had three meetings at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Like, it's like Nancy Reagan or something.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I like the idea of Kenneth Brower sitting by the side of Keiko's tank and like, holding up a microphone.

• 2:44Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, exactly.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  But, uh, he, even he said, like, when he went to Oregon Coast Aquarium and supposedly Keiko was kind of eating live fish, then Brower said he wasn't too impressed with what he saw. And it was mostly that Keiko wouldn't eat a really vibrant, alive fish. They would usually have to stun it first and so-

• 3:14Sarah Marshall?

  He would eat a fish that had been really depressed for a long time.

• 3:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that was like, moving a lot slower and yeah, had been like, kind of smacked on the head or something. And so, yeah, I think he would kind of like, mouth them. Like, he wouldn't really eat them. But then sometimes he would and people would be like, oh my gosh, he's eating live fish. But it wasn't very convincing to a few people.

• 3:39Sarah Marshall?

  Or just like, maybe not super consistent behavior. Like, he could, it's like, I could, I could eat a bell pepper, maybe on a whim one day, but like, I hate them. I'm not going to start eating them all the time.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if something was like, dependent on you eating a bell pepper.

• 3:56Sarah Marshall?

  Right. If everyone was staring at me and they were clearly going to be really happy if I ate that bell pepper, like, I'd do it. But I'd be like, all right, you enjoy that. I'm not doing that tomorrow. That was weird.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It would, it would take time.

• 4:08Sarah Marshall?

  Again, not that we know what he was thinking, but the consistency of him, like, seeming to not pick up that behavior is interesting.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. You know, and they worked on this at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. And then they worked on it more in Iceland. But there seemed to be some people that were really excited by Keiko demonstrating, yes, he's eating live fish. But then there are other people and- Notably, Mark Simmons, he writes a few times in his book that he wasn't very convinced by Keiko's enthusiasm for eating live fish and being able to feed himself. Because that was such a big, that was like, one of the main questions that persisted throughout the project was whether Keiko was eating live fish and whether he was hunting or showing,

• 4:56Speaker 01

  you know, the capability of being able to hunt and feed himself. And Mark made an interesting point. He felt that it was actually less important to emphasize whether or not he was able to feed himself, because he felt that what was more important for Keiko's survival was his ability to integrate with other whales. And if he was able to integrate with other whales, then he would be able to learn from them how to hunt, or, you know, at the very least, they could help feed him somehow, you know. And when wild whales, like whales in Iceland, if they go after a school of herring, a lot of the time, they're,

• 5:37Speaker 01

  I believe Icelandic whales kind of use this tactic of smacking their tail through a herring school. So they just stun a bunch of fish at once, and then they swim back and able to just eat the stunned fish, which is kind of funny when you think about it, because that's actually what Keiko wants to eat, is stunned fish. So I never really thought about that.

• 5:58Sarah Marshall?

  Just got there a different way. He's like, this is the goal. I already have it.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So even if he didn't know how to do that, he would maybe be able to like, pick up little scraps here and there, or something like that. But yeah, so Mark Simmons, and I believe Robin Friday as well, they felt that it was much more important for Keiko to integrate with wild whales. Other people didn't seem to think that was like, as important, or just didn't prioritize it.

• 6:26Sarah Marshall?

  Which is interesting, because I would say, again, knowing nothing, I would say that learning how to integrate with other whales does seem like the most important to me, because as a social animal, it's like, as a species who kind of doesn't have a choice but to be social, generally, it seems like, you know, with like, some rare exceptions, that if he can't integrate with other whales, then that would be really bad.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Right. It's not that other people thought that he didn't need to integrate with wild whales. I think it was more that They felt that that wasn't something that would need to be taught or need to be

• 7:04Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, that's interesting.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Guided by people, that it would be something that Keiko would figure out.

• 7:09Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, I guess it would be convenient to come to that conclusion because how would they teach it if they decided to do it?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Well, exactly.

• 7:16Sarah Marshall?

  But also, I would, I would not necessarily have confidence that he could figure it out.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:20Sarah Marshall?

  Because it's not like we've seen a whale do that before.

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, there's a lot of like, these really unknown paths of how on earth are we going to get to this goal?

• 7:31Sarah Marshall?

  Right. Because also, how often do pods of whales like adopt solo whales?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:37Sarah Marshall?

  Is a relevant question. Is that a behavior that they have? Or would they be like, who the fuck are you?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  I'm not aware of a pod adopting another whale. There are instances of like killer whales coming together as large groups. I'm thinking of southern resident killer whales. There's JK Nell pod. And they, for the most part, you know, don't interact with each other. But then you'll have these super pod events.

• 8:03Sarah Marshall?

  They have Camberies.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  And they come together and they hunt and socialize. There was actually a super pod event back in like, November, I believe.

• 8:12Sarah Marshall?

  Super pod.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  So in that envi- in that environment, you could possibly have individuals that like, don't know each other that well, interacting with each other. But I'm talking about these super pods specifically because that was seen as a possible route of like, how to introduce Keiko. And I'm kind of like imagining a situation where he's like a wedding crasher. It's just like, everybody assumes like, he's a part of somebody else's family. And they're like, I don't know, he's cool, whatever. Anyway, so like, there's these different attitudes. And then I'll say two. A person that I've mentioned a few times is Dr. Lanny Cornell. He was a veterinarian. He was specifically a killer whale veterinarian.

• 8:59Speaker 01

  At SeaWorld, I believe he was currently, at the time of the story, still working at SeaWorld as a veterinarian. He is often described as a kind of challenging personality to work with. And Mark Simmons definitely had his own opinions that he is very explicit about in his book about Dr. Lanny Cornell. Obviously, he had extensive experience working in this field. Very few people, again, going back to like, how many people have direct experience with killer whales? And then how many veterinarians have direct experience with killer whales? Like, not very many. So he was the right person to be involved with this.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  But he, from what I can tell, has a very strong personality and he had a tendency to rub people the wrong way. And he was a very strong voice in what he thought were the correct ways to go about with the release side of the project, which, if you think about it, he's a veterinarian. It's not to say he doesn't have experience with killer whales, but he has it in a very particular setting and with very particular goals and outcomes in mind that are really different than the question of how do you release a wild whale? But he had his own opinions and his approach, from what I can gather, he strikes me as a guy

• 10:24Speaker 01

  that would think like, the best way to teach a dog to swim is just to just throw them in a pool. It's like, they'll just figure it out. Like, you just throw them in. And I've met, I have met people like this. Like, oh, yeah, you just-

• 10:37Sarah Marshall?

  God, I thought you were exaggerating for comic effect. Yeah.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  No, I like, I have, yeah, I, I don't interact with these people anymore, but they just think like, yeah, if you, if you want to teach a dog to swim, just like, throw them in and they'll figure it out. And it's like, yeah, or else, or you might actually just severely traumatize an animal.

• 10:56Sarah Marshall?

  Right. They could, yeah, they could be scared of water for the rest of their lives. That could be good. Yeah. Just like, get a, get a kiddie pole and chill out in there to begin with.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Right. So anyway, Lanny Cornell, I believe, from a few different sources I've read, his attitude about releasing CAKO was to just cut the net open and let him go and just see what happens.

• 11:20Sarah Marshall?

  No handouts. When I was a young whale, that's what I did. And I liked it.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that that was his attitude. I find it funny because I, in reading about Keiko and how things went, I think if they had immediately put him in a bay, I think he would have just hung out in the bay. Like, I don't think he would have gone anywhere.

• 11:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I was wondering that earlier. I feel, yeah, he probably would have just like hung out where the people and the food was.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe he, you know, he would have wandered off, but I do think, well, we'll see that like Keiko does tend to gravitate towards people. So that that approach just seemed a little bit not realistic or really what was appropriate for Keiko. And so, anyway, Lanny Cornell had this attitude. Mark Simmons and Robin Friday had a much different attitude. And then there were people that were kind of somewhere in between. And so there was a lot of people with really strong feelings about what was best for Keiko. And they were kind of at odds with each other. And I believe this kind of contributes to the kind of fraying

• 12:32Speaker 01

  of the narrative thread at the end of the Keiko story.

• 12:35Sarah Marshall?

  Okay. And when is that? What's, where in time are we at this point?

• 12:40Speaker 01

  So he went to Iceland in 1998, in September, 1998. They arrive in Iceland. It's immediately winter. It takes a while for them to kind of get their bearings with this new stage of the project and everything. Keiko's in his sea pen. They're doing some training with him. All this like interpersonal nonsense is happening above the water. Keiko's just chilling out below the water. But they're making forward steps in the project. It's just a matter of like, with every step forward, there's just this sense of, for some people, and when I say step forward, I mean, like, going, like Keiko going from being in the

• 13:22Speaker 01

  sea pen to then being in the larger Kletsfig Bay. So they, they actually were able to wall off part of the bay with a net. So he went from a little sea pen about like, I want to say, I mean, it was like, half a football field or something like that. So it's a little contained area to having this wide open bay that was still closed off, but certainly the largest area Keiko's been able to swim in since he was little. And there's a lot of attention with each step of like, oh my gosh, he's getting this much closer to being out in the wild and we gotta have a lot of media involved and

• 14:03Speaker 01

  a lot of people documenting it. And the big next step that took place was going out of Kletzvik Bay and into the open ocean for the first time.

• 14:15Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, boy.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  And the main reason that that happened when it did, which I want to say that was in like, spring of 2000, I believe, that step of the story happened when Keiko finally went out into the open ocean, mostly because there was construction happening in the harbor. And there was going to be explosives going off, there was going to be pile drivings. So they were worried about Keiko's hearing. Hearing is really essential for whales. This is a conservation issue around the world with marine noise and traffic and all that interfering with their ability to hear, which for an animal that uses sound to get around,

• 14:57Speaker 01

  it's pretty devastating to not be able to hear anymore. So they wanted to protect Keiko's hearing. They're like, oh crap. Okay. Well, I guess we gotta push this permitting process through quicker. That was the thing that was kind of slowing things up was they hadn't gotten the permits to actually release Keiko, but they reached a compromise with fisheries people and they were able to take Keiko out into the open ocean. They took him around the corner, which would kind of protect him from some of the sound. And that was successful as well. But there was even at that stage where Keiko was, had been trained at that point to follow another boat. They called it a walk boat and they called him, taking

• 15:39Speaker 01

  him out to the ocean, his ocean walks. So like walking dog. He was trained to follow this, this boat, the drop near. And even with that, there were a few people that were not just hoping, I think, but expecting Keiko to just take off.

• 15:56Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Which, I don't know, I guess, yeah, that was. Possible, but also just seemed kind of improbable just knowing Keiko as an individual.

• 16:07Sarah Marshall?

  Right. And it feels like there's this sort of like this wishful thinking at play that humans have the ability to completely undo what humans have done to an animal.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:19Sarah Marshall?

  You know, that we made him captive and now we can make him uncaptive. And it feels like, you know, yeah, but like there's, there needs to be room at the table for the question of, if we can't undo what we've done, what, what else can we do?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  I actually like thinking about Murphy earlier. I was like, maybe actually Murphy and Keiko's personalities were really similar. Cause

• 16:39Sarah Marshall?

  I think so.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Murphy's a sensitive soul and very sweet and loves people and

• 16:45Sarah Marshall?

  And you wouldn't want to have Murphy try and go live in the forest.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  No, like actually, this is specifically the, the thing I thought of was one time, the gate to the backyard got left open. And, you know, some dogs, again, like speaking about individuals.

• 17:02Sarah Marshall?

  Some dogs will just end up in another town if you do that. Yeah.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  But Murphy, Murphy just went and sat by the front door. Like she went out and was like,

• 17:12Sarah Marshall?

  She was like, I did all my homework already.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And she just sat by the front door.

• 17:18Sarah Marshall?

  She was like, mother, you left the gate open.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  So I, I feel like a Keiko's actually very similar. Um, there is, there are stories about how even in the bay, you can imagine there, it's like concentric circles. So there's the sea pen, the small place he started at. Then there's the big bay that he had access to after a certain amount of time. And then he would go out of the bay with his people on ocean walks. And even when he was like in the bay and he had access to the whole bay, sometimes he would go back to his sea pen and just like hang out there. It was like his, I don't know, like a, like the equivalent of a kennel. But yeah, so he's, he's going out on these walks and

• 18:03Speaker 01

  part of the permitting process too. He had to have two tags attached to him. So you mentioned that earlier that like, Part of being able to determine whether he's successfully released or not, we would need to be able to track him and make sure he's okay afterwards. So he had a

• 18:19Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  He had a VHF tag and a satellite tag. So the satellite tag would give his position from anywhere, but this being, you know, in the late 90s or actually 2000, the satellite tag would only give a position once a day. And I think he would have to be at the surface, I believe, to be able to like transmit to a satellite. So they would only be able to get a position once a day. So if you were trying to really hone in on where Keiko is specifically, the satellite tag would give you the general area, but then to get him more, uh, more dialed in on where he is, you'd use the VHF tag. So the VHF tag, that would

• 19:04Speaker 01

  transmit a signal over a radio wave essentially, that was a line of sight. So you might not be able to physically see Keiko. He might be pretty far off and like, you know, behind a, a wave or something like that. But the person holding a piece of equipment that would receive the signal from his VHF tag, they would like scan their horizon with it. And if it was lined up with Keiko's tag, it would beep. So they could be like, oh, he's in that direction. And that's how they could like hone in on where he was if he wandered off. So these tags were a condition of his release as well. But they got that all figured out for that first time out when he was, uh, when they were trying to avoid construction.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  And then shortly after that, they got the full permits to actually take Keiko out and start introducing him to wild whales. And I have to say, like, even this step of him going out into the wild ocean is really incredible. Like, I mean, every step of this story is amazing. And I really admire the people that like,

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Really put their heart and soul into getting this whale to this point.

• 20:16Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, and I don't want to come across as too critical about it for my part because I really don't know anything and it is amazing and especially the degree of dedication happening here.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  It is. And to think like Keiko was now swimming in an environment without walls and without borders and

• 20:35Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  in water that, you know, he hadn't been in since he was little, like since he was two years old and hearing things that he hadn't heard in 20 years and, you know, the, I guess the even like even being in the bay, like he, uh, the first day he was there, there was like a harbor porpoise that swam by and apparently they were vocalizing at each other. Like that's really incredible. And, uh, and the fact that he got to swim for, you know, miles and miles instead of just in a circle in a tank. Like it's really all really wonderful and it makes me a little emotional thinking about it.

• 21:22Sarah Marshall?

  How dare you?

• 21:23Speaker 01

  I know. I just think it's such a beautiful thing that we did for

• 21:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  one creature.

• 21:28Sarah Marshall?

  And it just goes to show how much we can do for creatures sometimes.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Right. How much we can do for the, the natural world for

• 21:36Sarah Marshall?

  Of which we are a part.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes, exactly. We have the potential to address these issues. It's just, it's a matter of, well, it's a matter of money a lot of the time, but it's also just, it is a matter of will, like really getting people behind a singular goal and message.

• 21:59Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  And the beautiful thing about the Keiko project, like there is a lot of criticism throughout the project of like just how much money was being spent and, and resources being used on one whale when it could have been used on, uh, that money could have maybe been

• 22:16Sarah Marshall?

  Many smaller fish.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or even just whales as a whole, you know, across the world, you know, it's that issue that David Phillips brought up of like, he wanted to help. The larger population of whales, but people love what they know and they felt like they knew Keiko and they wanted to, to help him.

• 22:37Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, we love what we know and we love what we love to quote the last unicorn.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. But, uh, yeah, it's just, it is incredible what we can, what we can accomplish. And Keiko, I mean, he was just one really, he was just a very lucky whale that he got to, even to this point of just being able to swim in the open ocean that where he was born is really pretty spectacular.

• 23:07Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  But so he had his first encounter with wild whales in June 2000. And like I explained before, Mark Simmons and Robin Friday, they wanted this to be a low key event, which makes sense to me like you're.

• 23:25Sarah Marshall?

  Just being real chill about taking your indoor kid to the mall, you know?

• 23:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, like Keiko has not encountered another orca since, you know, since he was in Canada, uh, all those years ago. And also something I thought about that I didn't see pointed out was that the last time he was around orcas, he was bullied. So, you know, this introduction was going to have to happen pretty carefully. The other people involved, the leadership and the donors and the media all saw this as Keiko's going to find his family and he's going to swim off into the sunset and we just need to let him do that. And because it was seen as like, oh my gosh, this could be it. This could be the moment that he leaves. There was like a bunch of people that wanted to document the whole thing.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  There was, I think, two boats that were just full of VIPs and like, you know, mostly like donors for the project. And then there was two additional boats, one with Mark Simmons and Robin Friday and a few, a couple others, like on the training side of things. And then another one with Dr. Lanny Cornell and then a researcher, a whale researcher and another couple of staff. And Mark Simmons says what happened was, oh, in addition to these four boats, there's also a helicopter. So it's already like not low key.

• 24:48Sarah Marshall?

  It's a hell of a day at sea to quote the movie Overboard.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's, there's just a lot going on. Mark Simmons describes that they wanted to do this in a very specific way where they would stop CAKO kind of near the whales and kind of let the wild whales pass by. And if they interacted, great. If they didn't, whatever, you know, the goal was just to have a positive interaction.

• 25:13Sarah Marshall?

  Like he's a reactive dog at the dog park.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, like he just, he had to go about it with little baby steps.

• 25:20Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, which I agree with for most things in life.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it made sense, especially for the initial interaction. So what it sounded like was that Lanny Cornell and the other people on one boat, they spotted wild whales and were essentially guiding them, I guess, towards CAKO. And the researcher on that boat was also trying to collect genetic samples from the whales, which involves a tool that is used by many whale researchers. It's a crossbow essentially, and you're to get a, yeah, it's a little intense. But that's how you get a genetic sample from a whale.

• 26:02Sarah Marshall?

  So do you like crossbow in a big syringe and then you like yank it out and you're like, thank you?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  A kind of, not a syringe. It gets like a little, just like tissue sample from the whale. And it is what whale researchers use to get this kind of information. And I can see where the researcher was like, yeah, if we have this information, then we can like figure out if these whales are related to CAKO and that would help us.

• 26:27Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, I see.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  You know, like, I get it. But also, I totally understand Mark Simmons frustration in that. You are, I don't want to say harassing the whales, but you're not exactly like creating a calm environment.

• 26:41Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  And it's like a, a couple of mothers and calves and a bull whale, I think. And, and, and like, that wasn't ideal either. Cause like mothers and calves don't really love having a stranger around.

• 26:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And again, like I, I don't ever want to question the dedication of this, but like, yeah, nobody knows how to do any of this.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Everyone's, you know, everyone's figuring it out.

• 27:03Sarah Marshall?

  And that's fair of the mothers and calves. Yeah.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they kind of guide these whales towards Keiko in a manner that was not really what had been planned in advance. And from what it sounded like from Simmons' account, Keiko had no idea that these whales were coming and the whales had no idea that Keiko was there.

• 27:25Sarah Marshall?

  Cause what were they gonna do? Take him aside, be like, hey, Keiko.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:28Sarah Marshall?

  Today's gonna be kind of a big day. Cause we're gonna try, oh, you don't know what I'm saying.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  I know. If only, if only we could have explained it to him. But, you know, I think, I mean, the idea was just to have him in the vicinity and then he would like hear their vocal, them vocalizing and just like, from a distance, be like, oh, what's that?

• 27:46Sarah Marshall?

  And then like in the movie, he would just kind of run right on over there.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:51Sarah Marshall?

  Cause yeah, that would be nice.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  But apparently what happened was Keiko and the wild whales surprised each other. And how Simmons describes it, cause he was right there. He was like with Keiko. He was like staring at him. Like Keiko was waiting for instruction from, from Mark Simmons. And he said that Keiko plunged explosively into the depths and this other whale did too. And they don't know what happened under the water. But for a few minutes, there was nothing. And then this group of whales, they spotted a few hundred feet away. They were taking off in a different direction, but they couldn't find Keiko for a little bit. Eventually they did find him, but he was taking off in a different direction.

• 28:37Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  And some people interpreted this as, oh, Keiko's going free. He's, he's going, he's a, he wants, he wants to go and be free. He's leaving. We should just leave him and let him do his thing. Mark and, and Robin, they did not see it that way. They saw it as like a scared. Animal.

• 28:59Sarah Marshall?

  Mm hmm. So he was like booking it by his standards?

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he was booking it and then the helicopter spotted him and apparently he would like swim a little bit and then he would like swim in a circle and then he would swim a little more and then he'd swim in a circle.

• 29:14Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  It kind of reminds me of like Dory in Finding Nemo at the end where she's like, oh, oh, and like,

• 29:25Speaker 01

  again, I don't know what Keiko was thinking, but that's what it made me think of.

• 29:29Sarah Marshall?

  No, we don't know, but it does feel a bit overly optimistic, maybe to be like, wow, Keiko had one interaction with a whale briefly for the first time in 20 years. And then he thought to himself, gee, fuck all these people. I'm leaving. I'm going to go and in the opposite direction of everyone and be free on my own.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. And so Robin and Mark and then a couple of the other people involved, they actually went to find Keiko and a few people on the other side of the project were saying like, don't go after him. You're supposed to leave him be. And they're like, no, he's, he's not doing well. He's still in our care. Like, we still

• 30:06Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  need to take care of him.

• 30:08Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, it makes sense. No one can agree on what human children need and

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:12Sarah Marshall?

  we've raised billions of them.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. Actually, even Kenneth Brower in his book, you know, he inserts his own opinion often in the book and he expressed that he felt like some of the trainers that were involved with the project were kind of like a overly doting mother that can't let go of their child's hand or, you know, I think he described it as like a mom showing up at their son's college dorm room, ready to clean their room for them. Like, he just, he thought the trainers were just a little too attached to Keiko and were reticent to let him go.

• 30:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, but arguably by the same token, I, it does feel like a kind of attachment to sort of be. Maybe not attachment exactly, but to be invested in a certain outcome and in the idea that that is definitely what the animal.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 31:03Sarah Marshall?

  Because there's like intent implied by the idea of like, oh, he's swimming away. He's being free.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 31:08Sarah Marshall?

  It's like where there's some kind of a belief that you're interpreting an animal's emotional state in a way where it doesn't seem like you have enough data to say that necessarily.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, that's very true, and I agree with that. But I guess you can make the argument that that's exactly what the trainers were doing too. They were arguing like-

• 31:25Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, well, I guess really it's that everyone, including me, right now is doing that.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:29Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just, it's a, it's a hard situation.

• 31:32Sarah Marshall?

  That's the beauty of the beast, yeah.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, anyway, they go and retrieve Keiko, and, you know, he seems to them really distressed. And the other part of the team, they're ready to like, bring him back out with more whales. And Robin and Mark are like, no, like, Keiko, he's like tired, he can't, he can't keep up with us, he's exhausted, he seems totally wigged out and stressed, he, he just needs to, you know, recuperate a little bit. So, when Robin and Mark get back to the headquarters, back in the, in the bay, they have a conversation with the project manager, a man named Charles Vinick, and Robin and Mark are basically like,

• 32:17Speaker 01

  look, this was not how we wanted it to go, this is not how we believe as experts in our field, that we should be introducing Keiko, this needs to be a calm, iterative process, it's gonna take months, if not years, to accomplish, this is not a one and done thing, and we have like these demands, one of them being that the next time we do this, only like a maximum of two boats can come out, we can't take out everybody who has enough money to pay for it, like, we just-

• 32:47Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  This has to be just about Keiko and the whales, and-

• 32:53Sarah Marshall?

  And their new hit single.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Keiko and the whales.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  But, uh, and Charles would kind of relay this to the board. And apparently it was like going back and forth between like hotel rooms, like being the messenger. And there was a couple of other people that were on Robin and Mark's side of it. But at the end of this discussion, the board did not want to concede to what Robin and Mark wanted to do. And so they ended up resigning from the project right then and there.

• 33:24Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, yeah, that's interesting. I didn't expect that.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were really, really unhappy. And I guess I can't, I don't have enough time today to go into the like, the level of just.

• 33:37Sarah Marshall?

  Yes, but perhaps on another investigative type, multi-part program, if you will.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And another, another project in my rewilding podcast, I'll, I'll give more of the details. But yeah, it was quite dramatic from Mark Simmons' point of view of how this went.

• 33:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, boy feelings.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  But, uh, yeah. So, yeah, they decided to not be a part of project. And they, and honestly, they were kind of using that as a, their resignation, they were kind of using as a bargaining chip of like, okay, well, we'll tell them this is what we want. And if they don't, you know, give us what we want, then we'll resign. And they thought that that would convince the board, but apparently it didn't. So the board felt they didn't need them anymore. And he just describes in a lot of his book, how he just felt like the conflicting motivations and agendas of people involved were really frustrating to him.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  And he felt like led to this kind of, like I said, like this kind of narrative thread sort of starting to fray a little bit. Like it's just not as clean. It's not as satisfying.

• 34:48Sarah Marshall?

  Like people have differing kind of versions of what they say happened, maybe.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, exactly. Yeah.

• 34:54Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And also, and not to say like, not to say this cuts across the board at all, but it does seem like, you know, with Mark Simmons and Robin Friday, that you do have two people who are like pretty well qualified to know what they're talking about, but who because of that are.

• 35:10Sarah Marshall?

  Not even pessimistic, but maybe like less convinced that the specific goal that was stated from the outcome like is achievable than people who know less. And maybe there's a name for that distribution. I'm sure there is, but that seems noticeable to me.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:28Sarah Marshall?

  Right. But like, the more you know, generally, in any project, I mean, this is like a, you know, not to compare this to Fyre Fest, because again, it's, you know, like, people were dedicated. They knew what they were doing to the greatest extent possible in many ways. And like, the amount of love and care that went into this is really clear. But like, there are projects that people can take on with great confidence because they don't understand how hard the different elements of it are going to be individually or to bring together. And like, that's not the kind of confidence you want usually. Like, sometimes it works out, but like, that's just maybe the same thing as luck when that happens.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:05Sarah Marshall?

  Or I guess that beginner's luck of not psyching yourself out too much. But like, that's such a big part of the American character that like, you can come in as a novice, fake your way through, and be amazing at it. And it's like, yeah, I mean, kind of like for some things, like, there's definitely sort of workplace cultures that like, require fresh eyes kind of continually. And that's, you know, there's, there's a certain logic to that. But also, that can also just be ego talking, right? That can just as easily be someone who's like, on a kind of a power trip and chooses to believe that about themselves. I think it really, it goes in both directions.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  Right. And I think that's especially true for a project like this, where there's...

• 36:43Sarah Marshall?

  Like, such a specific science background that you need.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, a specific science background. But then, like, the project as a whole has this almost like fairy tale quality to it. And so, being able to

• 36:53Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Pull it off, like, the appeal of that, I totally understand. Like, I, I would love to be involved in a project like that now. Like, I, I'm not saying like, it's not worth pursuing, but it's just like...

• 37:09Sarah Marshall?

  It's very worth doing things imperfectly. That's the only way to do it.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yeah. And it's just a matter of, maybe... Being a little bit more observant of like how things are actually happening in front of you, rather than

• 37:26Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  how you think they should, or you want them to play out in your head. Because reality is always messier.

• 37:33Sarah Marshall?

  And this is maybe, I mean, okay, not to get into like, what is science? But just a sec.

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:38Sarah Marshall?

  If we may, just for a quick sec, because I feel like this is such a, you know, kind of a running joke at this point. And I love the sincerity of this, you know, when people have a sign that's like, in this house, we believe science.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:50Sarah Marshall?

  Et cetera, et cetera, you know?

• 37:52Speaker 01

  Science is real.

• 37:53Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, and it's like, great. But also, like, the point of science is not to be believed unequivocally. Like, that's what's great about it. Like, the point of science is that it's not a practice of faith or a belief, but of constant, like, iterating and experimenting. And that doesn't mean that evolution is a theory, like, it is a proven theory to the extent that we can ever know anything as human beings. But it feels like that is part of why science, I think, is like, I don't know, that we have this fallacy that, like, kids can only learn something if they're going to do it for their whole lives and be really good at it. And it's like, no, there's like, aspects of the things that we do that just help us to be happier and better people and to, I would say, actually adapt better,

• 38:36Sarah Marshall?

  speaking of what we've been talking about to our situation as humans. And one of them is this thing of like, teaching people the kind of, I don't know, like, mental and intellectual resilience to be able to like, have theories and ideas, and then use those ideas and those passions to gather information, to have experiences, to collect data, and then to analyze that and revise their viewpoints based on what they learn and see, which is a wonderful thing to do. And not as many people seem to think, a shattering blow to your ego that you could literally die because of.

• 39:11Sarah Marshall?

  You know, like, it's a delight to be proven wrong.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:14Sarah Marshall?

  It's definitely hard at times, and it's definitely like a major act of bravery, especially if you're talking about a belief system that you've been raised within or something on that scale. But just in terms of like day to day life, just like realizing how little you know about something and getting to learn something, like, it's a delight.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. And what you're saying, too, kind of reminds me of this thing that I think of often when people say, "I love science," or, you know, "science is real," or kind of leaning into that, "Oh, science is a representation of unequivocal facts," or something like that.

• 39:50Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 39:50Speaker 01

  It's that the word "science" defines a process.

• 39:56Sarah Marshall?

  Right. It's not like a set of beliefs.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:58Sarah Marshall?

  It's like a way of interacting with the world, maybe more accurately.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  Right. It's almost like, I feel like, science, instead of it being a noun, I feel like we need a verb, because I think science is an action.

• 40:13Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, you're sciencing pretty hard.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:16Sarah Marshall?

  You're sciencing right in front of me.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  You're sciencing so hard.

• 40:18Sarah Marshall?

  That's true. It should be a verb.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Right. It's an active thing that you do. It's not, I think when people say, "I love science," they, they love facts, and that's great. I love facts, too. And like, there's really interesting facts about the world. But I think we need to kind of distinguish between facts and the process at which you...

• 40:40Sarah Marshall?

  But maybe like, if you love science, then like, you're loving science in the way that I loved science when I was on a really long road trip and I drove away from a gas station. And then I think there was like a, like a bandana or something that I wasn't sure what had happened to it. So I wondered if I'd left it on top of the car. And so to test my theory, I found like a microfiber cloth and put that on top of the car and then drove around to see if it would fall off. Like, that, to me, is science.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:09Sarah Marshall?

  It's not even useful or productive or relevant science.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Well, it's useful to you.

• 41:13Sarah Marshall?

  But it's perhaps science.

• 41:16Sarah Marshall?

  I had a theory and I tested it.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 41:18Sarah Marshall?

  And then I was like, well, I don't know.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Which honestly is most of science is testing something and be like, huh.

• 41:27Sarah Marshall?

  Well, hard to say.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  That didn't work.

• 41:29Sarah Marshall?

  Come see, come saw. A little of this, a little of that. Yeah. Just and the hard to say's are kind of the best because the pressure to produce results. I mean, it's like the process of questioning and learning is a joy unto itself. I really think, I mean, not always. And especially, you know, if it's your work, then like work isn't always fun. If you're in academia, if you're chasing grant funding, like a lot of stuff in any profession is drudgery, but like that, that act of trying to learn and that spark that you feel like that's the point.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that process of learning, that was integral to this CAKO project. That this really was a process of trying something new and doing something that hadn't been done before and getting the best people on it that you can find with the best expertise, but still kind of stepping into the unknown. And I think there were a lot of people involved that were very grounded and understood like, okay, like this could go in a lot of different directions. And then there were some people that were really hopeful and aspirational and perhaps clung on to the idea that CAKO would swim off into the sunset with his family.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Maybe a little too, you know, they clung on a little too hard. So where we are at right now in the story is that after this negative interaction, it seems as though CAKO had a few more interactions with wild whales that year and the following year as well. And for the most part, from what I can tell, wild whales would kind of swim by CAKO and he would kind of look at them and watch them and maybe follow a little bit, but he was, he was never. You know, really going off to swim with them.

• 43:16Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, that was about as much as I knew about socializing in middle school.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:20Sarah Marshall?

  It took time for me personally.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was probably like, okay, this is interesting, but I can imagine, I don't know. Maybe it was scary, like for a social animal, social anxiety exists.

• 43:32Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, you sure can't introduce adult cats to each other.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 43:36Sarah Marshall?

  That's neither here nor there, but it's very true.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:38Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, you can, but as anyone who's done it knows, it takes sometimes forever.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so they're, they're doing this over the year, but I think over this time period, well, I think the morale of the project started to lessen a bit, like people were a bit like, okay, maybe Keiko won't make it. And then this starts to translate into, well, notably Craig McCaw, sort of being like, all right, well, we gotta wrap this up, like.

• 44:08Sarah Marshall?

  Do you? Why do you? Just stick it out.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:12Sarah Marshall?

  What else are you going to spend that money on? You're gonna buy yourself some more wine?

• 44:17Speaker 01

  I, well, apparently he was going through some of his own financial troubles at the time. He had to sell his yacht.

• 44:23Sarah Marshall?

  Got it together, Craig.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  And his island in Vancouver, B.C.

• 44:28Sarah Marshall?

  Oh, mon dieu.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  I know. I think he's doing okay now, but you know, it was hard, hard times on the farm then.

• 44:35Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, he was, he was weeping into his bleak moonlit pillow.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, uh, but anyway, he was, he was looking for his way out of the project. And he asked Phillips, like, hey, do you, do you want your whale back? And Phillips was like, sure, whatever. And also a part of this was, um, sure.

• 44:55Sarah Marshall?

  He left this whale at my house.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  No, I'm sure he was more enthusiastic than that, but they had this benefactor and now he was walking away.

• 45:04Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  And part of that was Craig McCaw and his wife at that time had recently gone through a divorce. And it was rumored that Wendy McCaw was the one more invested in the project. So as soon as they got divorced, Craig McCaw was like, okay, I'm doing other things now.

• 45:20Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, look, it would not be the most shocking thing that I had heard today if that was true. I'll tell you that. Yeah.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  But anyway, so that was kind of the atmosphere of the project. It was sort of, there was, I, in my sense, it was almost like this feeling of not completely yet, but like this, like winding down. So there was a lot of big changes in. Staff because there were huge budget cuts and it was funny because they, I don't think they wanted to actually lay anyone off. So they made very significant cuts in other departments.

• 45:53Sarah Marshall?

  Hmm.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  And it just put a lot of stressors on the project. And then the people that were most qualified to be involved with the project stepped away because they were like, well, I can't do my best work with not enough resources. Like you guys need to figure this out. So that was kind of the attitude or the atmosphere of project. And this was around, you know, 2001 and then into July 2002. And they're continuing to bring CAKO out to interact with wild whales. They have a new setup where they actually have a large boat that they can stay on for like, I guess, weeks at a time. It's like an old fishing boat. And so then they can actually stay out at sea for long periods if there's whales around

• 46:38Speaker 01

  and not have to return back to the bay all the time. So that, and then they had their smaller vessels that would kind of go out with CAKO.

• 46:46Sarah Marshall?

  And are they still feeding him while they're on these excursions?

• 46:49Speaker 01

  I believe so, but they're like also really reducing the amount of food that they're giving CAKO to.

• 46:56Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, they're like weaning him kind of.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they also had the attitude, there was attitude like, well, we can't keep feeding him because then he'll keep relying on us for food. Like if he gets hungry enough, he'll go and get his own food. But sometimes that kind of backfired and that kind of just made him hang out around people more. There is, again, just this apparent misunderstanding of just animal psychology and like what the best way forward was to actually train CAKO to do what they wanted him to do.

• 47:26Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah, I guess like a lack of consensus.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:30Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  But somewhere around this time and about like July 2002, he has been kind of on the outskirts of a pod of wild whales and has been kind of, you know, doing his thing where he's kind of watching them from a distance and. Kind of wandering off, but then eventually wandering back. And then at one of these points where he wanders off and he would wander like, you know, a few miles away and they would just kind of let him wander. Uh, but he would always eventually wander back. A storm comes in and is coming in really fast and, uh, the crew is like, oh my gosh, we have to get back to shore like now. And they all go back to the bay and they try to signal Keiko to come back to the boat. They have this little, this thing that makes a, a tone underwater that calls Keiko back.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Um, kind of like a, a whistle for a sheepdog or something, but he doesn't come back. So they go back and then they start tracking him with his satellite tag. And they see that he's moving east. So from Iceland, like moving out east, he goes towards the Faroe Islands and then he-

• 48:35Sarah Marshall?

  He wanted to get a sweater.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  And then he eventually makes his way to Norway. And they're kind of like keeping an eye out, like seeing if they hear any, the, the people are seeing if they hear anything. They're like, okay, I don't know, maybe he's with whales, maybe he's swimming with whales.

• 48:53Sarah Marshall?

  But they're like separated from him kind of unintentionally, basically like they weren't planning for that to be it.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I didn't get the impression that that was intentional. I think they were like hopeful and very, you know, they were like this, it could be it, but it wasn't. They'd had so many instances of this happening of like Keiko kind of wandering off, but always wandering back that I think it was hard to, you know, believe that this could be the time that they don't see him again.

• 49:21Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  But anyway, he wanders off to Norway and Keiko, and this is like three weeks later. So there's three weeks where Keiko is maybe with other whales, maybe not, but he's out in the open ocean. Which I don't know, that is also just an incredible thing for me to think about.

• 49:40Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  For this whale that, uh, was in a tank and now he's literally traveling across the ocean to, I believe that part of the ocean is called the Norwegian sea and he's, uh, making his way to Norway, whether he knew it or not. And he gets there and he immediately finds a boat with a family that's out for a day of fishing.

• 50:02Sarah Marshall?

  Well, what do you know?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  And the, and the family apparently was like really freaked out. They're like, what the hell is this whale doing? You know, killer whales have a reputation.

• 50:16Sarah Marshall?

  If they're Americans, they would have called the cops.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Oh no. Don't call the cops on Keiko.

• 50:23Sarah Marshall?

  But that really happened once. There was like this viral video like 10 years ago of a couple calling the cops on a whale.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Really?

• 50:29Sarah Marshall?

  Not that they want, wanted the whale to be arrested, but yeah, they're like freaking out and they like called the police.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. That's like, I, I, I love my dad, but he did, um, I mean, actually, actually don't think this is totally misguided, but my family has a boat and they were on the Willamette River in Portland and the engine cut out, they lost power and my dad called the coastguard. And, uh,

• 50:54Sarah Marshall?

  That does seem hasty.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  And the coastguard was like, no, you gotta try a few other things first before you call us. Also like, are you in immediate danger? It's like, no, we're just kind of like floating here and we can't get to shore.

• 51:13Sarah Marshall?

  Okay. Do you want to hear about the whale video from Time Magazine or Scuba Diving Magazine?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Oh, Scuba Diving Magazine.

• 51:21Sarah Marshall?

  I figured. Yeah. Okay. Um, let me read this to you. I feel like you'll like this.

• 51:27Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:27Sarah Marshall?

  A beautiful humpback whale encounter turned into fodder for a viral video after a woman called the cops on the cetacean. A group enjoying the day on Washington's Puget Sound got spooked when a whale came close for a visit. The video, which is drawing laughs and some criticism after going viral online, ends with one woman calling the police. "I'm out in Puget Sound and there's three huge gray whales underneath our boat and I'm afraid that we might get flipped over," the woman says on the phone. "I don't want to die right now," says another passenger in the background.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 52:02Sarah Marshall?

  So if you're kayaking around and you see humpback whales, and if you feel scared about that, um, is what, what should you do, Brianna?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh, just watch them and enjoy them. They're not going to do anything. I mean, there is a very small risk that a humpback whale could jump out of the water and hit your boat. That has happened. There is like instances of that. That is so incredibly rare. Just enjoy being in the presence of like an amazing animal who's also probably looking at you like, oh, you're pretty interesting and acting really strange and and is probably just curious about you, too. I would just, I would love to be there and see these humpback whales.

• 52:44Sarah Marshall?

  I would too.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:46Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. So there, so Keiko finds a family in Norway.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  He finds a family and they basically, he basically follows them back to their village and like their little fishing village. And he just like hangs out in this bay or in this fjord. And immediately the whole town is like, oh my gosh, there's a whale here. And there is incredible footage and pictures of kids, like, you know, nine, 10 year olds riding on Keiko's back.

• 53:16Sarah Marshall?

  What? Wait, could we watch that?

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Yes, I've got it. It's a Norwegian documentary that was made called Kompen om Keiko.

• 53:26Sarah Marshall?

  I'm so excited. Oh my God. Oh my God.

• 53:33Sarah Marshall?

  Ah, look at him go. He's so big.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  I know. He's got three little spots on his chin. So this was all, I think this is all footage in Norway of him swimming. So he's like jumping out of the water.

• 53:49Sarah Marshall?

  Oh no, he's like near a pasture with cows. There's like a pasture next to a bay, which you don't really think of.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And there, there's a person on a boat. And can you see his tag?

• 54:00Sarah Marshall?

  And Keiko's, yeah. And Keiko's like swimming alongside the boat, it looks like.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  The person like reaches out to touch him when he like comes up for a breath.

• 54:10Sarah Marshall?

  This is beautiful footage.

• 54:12Speaker 01

  I know.

• 54:12Sarah Marshall?

  We'll put a, we'll put a link to this in our description.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Okay, here's the kids playing.

• 54:19Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my God. Oh my God.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  I know. Isn't this incredible?

• 54:24Sarah Marshall?

  It is just a Bobby Hill looking child, just literally in the water on Keiko's back.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And now there's like kids in a boat. They're gonna like row out to him or something.

• 54:38Sarah Marshall?

  And the kids are like, kind of partially submerged too. So they're not like standing around on him or something, which feels different.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  But he's just kinda hanging out near their little rowboat.

• 54:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And we have like two kids in the water, kind of treating him as like a, like a floating dock a little bit.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:56Sarah Marshall?

  Just kind of like lying on his back in their bathing suits.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 55:01Sarah Marshall?

  Oh my god.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  And he's just sitting there. Like he could, he is a large, powerful animal. He could easily just toss them off.

• 55:09Sarah Marshall?

  This is amazing. And this is a 12 year old girl in a bathing suit, just like lying across Keiko's back while he's just, and I have no, you know, but yeah, like, not that I know what he's feeling, but he sure is lying very still, allowing this to happen.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  I know. He's, yeah, I think, I don't know. I think it's safe to say he's really enjoying it. And he like, you know, he's been through all these, he just swam, you know, maybe by himself, maybe with other whales, but across the Norwegian sea, he was, when he was in Iceland, you know, there was all these protocols about not interacting with Keiko very much, like trying to detach from him. And then he arrives in this town and immediately is all these people are just like giving him all of this attention and love and affection and.

• 56:01Sarah Marshall?

  And to the envy of every Oregonian child.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  I know. Seriously.

• 56:06Sarah Marshall?

  I know. I know.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  But yeah, this whole video is worth a watch. It's like 45 minutes long.

• 56:14Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And again, like a case here where like he's giant compared to these children.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:19Sarah Marshall?

  You know, like it's just, it feels, I don't know. It's actually very much like Sam Neill in The Triceratops.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. Yeah.

• 56:27Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. He could, he could easily swim away. Like, I mean, if anything, the kids may want to be a little concerned that they might get hurt.

• 56:37Sarah Marshall?

  And again, like, and it gets us in trouble that we see an orca and we're like, I want to lie on top of that guy.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  I know. I know. I know. We, we definitely shouldn't.

• 56:47Sarah Marshall?

  Because it's like, we want these things. We don't want to want them. And maybe we don't want to want them so much that we project that sometimes. And like, I mean, in your opinion, did Keiko get separated from his people during the storm? And just like, keep on swimming until he found some kids to play with?

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Honestly, that is what I think happened. I, I, I don't know. That's my opinion.

• 57:09Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  My opinion is that maybe he followed some whales for a while, but I think he ended up on his own. I mean, when he was found in Norway, he was by himself. And I think he saw a boat and was like, oh, that boat probably has people on it. And he just, he's just conditioned to want to socialize with people.

• 57:30Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  I'm not sure at this point in his life that that could have successfully been deprogrammed from him.

• 57:37Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  You know, and this was something that we learned in this project. I, I think that was a big learning step. Like, people were hesitant from the beginning. They're like, wow, he's been in captivity a long time. I don't know.

• 57:48Sarah Marshall?

  I mean, it's kind of like the genie experiment in linguistics, where you have this child who's been a victim of terrible abuse, where she's been isolated and not taught how to speak, literally. And then the question is, can you teach someone how to speak after this kind of theorized critical period of language learning has ended, like kind of mid and post puberty? And it's this weird thing where you don't really have, it's just this one isolated study, but it does still, there's like the thing of being able to test a question and then the phenomenon of people kind of moving on when the answer, it turns out to be no. And then the question of what happens to this test subject who is stuck the way they are, for better or worse. And can they be protected for being exactly that thing?

• 58:33Sarah Marshall?

  And whatever those needs that they have now are, you know?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, I think that was, you know, at the end of the CAKO project, that was the question that kind of needed to be answered. And it was written into some of their protocols. It was like, okay, well, if he shows that he can't successfully integrate with wild whales, then he's going to need care. Like, we're going to need to take care of him. We can't ethically release him. And also, it's just for his safety because obviously, he's going to seek out people. And the thing is, is like, I think some people are like, well, what's the big deal if he like, wants to seek out people? Like, isn't that okay? And the issue with that is that it can be a safety hazard for CAKO. It could be a safety hazard for people too, depending, but I mean,

• 59:15Speaker 01

  CAKO was such a friendly whale. I don't think he was, well, I don't know. He wasn't at risk of like, being aggressive, I think. But the issue was, you know, people are weird in like, if there's this whale hanging out, who knows? Someone could try to hurt him, or someone could hurt him unintentionally. That unfortunately happened with the whale Luna, who was a little killer whale off of British Columbia that it was a wild whale that became very friendly and was kind of similar to CAKO. Wasn't letting people ride on him and wasn't allowed. But he was interacting with people like this, like coming up to boats and everything.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  And there was a lot of debate on what to do with him because he was a wild whale, but he was interacting with people. And then in the end, he got hit by a boat in the harbor, and it wasn't intentional. It was just that he was hanging out

• 1:00:11Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  near a boat, and the guy didn't see him, and the guy who did it felt terrible.

• 1:00:16Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. But our environment is very, I mean, humans have a very hard time surviving the environment that we've built for ourselves. So imagine

• 1:00:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:00:24Sarah Marshall?

  how much harder it is if you don't, you know,

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Sarah Marshall?

  if you don't even have that going for you.

• 1:00:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. How do we strike that balance of wanting to give this animal as much as their own autonomy as we can, while also still providing for them because we've kind of taken away their ability to take care of themselves?

• 1:00:44Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  And I don't know, I don't know that anyone could ever have like, a really clear, articulate answer to that, you know? It's just something you have to

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Feel out and do by trial and error. And I think actually, you know, I'm saying that the end of the Keiko story is like a little sad. The project continued and people stayed involved and continued to care for him. It was just that the level of resources that were there previously weren't there anymore. So like, the amount of staff involved was really reduced. And, and that kind of translated into, okay, well, was he getting sufficient veterinary care in the end? And like, what would be sufficient veterinary care, you know, if you're like, trying to kind of have this half wild whale? Like, what does that look like? So when Keiko showed up in this town, some new staff and trainers, a couple

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  of people showed up and found Keiko and they were like, oh, Keiko.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Why did you do this? But, you know, they were like, okay, well, we got to find like a plan B. Obviously, he's gonna try to seek people out. We'll try to set up a station here in Norway somewhere. So they brought him around to a different bay nearby that was more isolated. And that sort of became the base of the Keiko project for the remainder of Keiko's days, which wasn't really much longer. It was like, so he arrived in Norway in August, September 2002. And he was there for about a year and a half. And, you know, they continued with his ocean walks. They'd take him out. He would interact with some

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  of the whales coming by. But again, in that kind of distant kind of way, he would wander off occasionally and they would just follow him just to make sure he was okay. He had a incident where he got trapped under some ice in the winter and

• 1:02:44Sarah Marshall?

  Okay, girl.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  I know. And he, it's really sad because he like, he got trapped under the ice. And yeah, he couldn't figure out like, where to go to breathe. And apparently, he was like, Punching holes through the ice and he ended up just mashing up his head like it became really bloody and scarred, I believe. Yeah, like he was in a really, he was in a very desperate situation in that moment. But they're doing his thing. There, there's a couple of people, an Icelandic woman named Toba and a man named Frank and another guy named Dane, I believe, and Colin, Colin Baird. They were the kind of remaining staff during

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  that last year with Keiko and they really loved him. Everyone who worked with Keiko loved Keiko. They just like, he was a creature that they had a personal connection with and they would really do anything for him. And I really mean like they would do anything. And so they're doing the best they can, taking care of him. And the leaders of the project are trying to figure out, you know, what they're going to do next, trying to keep funding going. But, you know, the, the motivation and the enthusiasm for the project has kind of waned at this point because it's just kind of clear that it's a messy ending. It's not the clean ending that everyone wanted.

• 1:04:05Sarah Marshall?

  And it's easy to fundraise to make a great leap or do something heroic and it's harder to fundraise for, we just kind of need to take care of this whale for the rest of his life because it's our responsibility.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:17Sarah Marshall?

  And people get less excited about that, but they should get excited about it because it's very exciting to keep taking care of creatures and places in an ongoing way.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, I believe it was in Mark Simmons' book, he made the point that, not to be too cynical, but there was a financial incentive to have Keiko go free.

• 1:04:38Sarah Marshall?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:04:40Sarah Marshall?

  Say more about that. What is the incentive for people?

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  That if Keiko goes free, then we don't have to pay for his care anymore, you know?

• 1:04:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah. And also, everybody gets to pat each other on the back and feel really accomplished as opposed to feeling immersed in the complexity of like interspecies relationships, which is where we got stuck here.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:59Sarah Marshall?

  It seems like.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  I want to say that when it was brought up, like, well, there's a possibility that he won't go free and that we'll be having to take care of him for, you know, potentially the rest of his life. I feel like the attitude about it was sort of like, yeah, yeah, that's a possibility, but he's gonna go free. Like, it's gonna happen.

• 1:05:18Sarah Marshall?

  But it's like when you're signing a prenup, when you're marrying that billionaire whose family seems so nice.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Right. Yes, exactly. Yeah, you just.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  You don't want to think about the kind of negative outcome, I guess, even though it wasn't necessarily, it's not a negative outcome. It's just a, yeah, it's not what we wanted necessarily. But again, it just ended up being messier. And so I kind of remember this period of the project because my ears would always perk up if I heard anything about Keiko. And I remember feeling as a kid that there was kind of like radio silence for a little while. And I was sort of like, okay, I don't know, maybe he's, maybe he's fine. I don't know.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  And then later in 2003, Keiko, throughout his adult life, had been kind of plagued with a recurring respiratory illness. I want to say they saw symptoms of it as far back as in the Oregon Coast Aquarium, but definitely in Iceland, they would see this kind of flare up of a respiratory illness. And when he would get sick, he would get antibiotics. They'd be taking blood samples to monitor his white blood cell count and making sure that he got the care that he needed. And the thing with animals, and I think especially with a not domesticated animal,

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  because even though Keiko was captive, I wouldn't, I don't know if I'd say he's necessarily

• 1:06:52Sarah Marshall?

  Right.

• 1:06:52Speaker 01

  domesticated.

• 1:06:53Sarah Marshall?

  He's not born of thousands of generations of creatures that are used to living with people. Yeah.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Animals are really good at hiding symptoms because they don't.

• 1:07:04Sarah Marshall?

  Like chickens.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just, it's amazing how far along an animal is in an illness before you really start to notice that they're, they're not doing so well. And especially with a whale, because even though, as you and I have talked about a few times, like we feel like we can sense their feelings and maybe project our own feelings onto them. It would be hard to look at a whale and be like, hey buddy, are you feeling okay? Like, how would you, you know, like the demeanor of a whale? I'm sure people that spend time around whales would be able to tell, but.

• 1:07:36Sarah Marshall?

  But even so, yeah.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  But even so, and that's the thing too, that the people that were involved that were taking care of Keiko at the end, like Tobush, this was her first time working with a killer whale. She had, she had worked at an aquarium in Iceland, but she had never worked with killer whales before. So, I mean, they're doing their absolute best, but they just don't have the experience and they just have limited resources at this point. So after a year of being in Norway, in this, in this bay, they noticed one day that Keiko just seems to be pretty lethargic. You know, they take him out for an ocean walk and he's lagging behind and they bring him back and they're like,

• 1:08:18Speaker 01

  oh man, he doesn't seem to be feeling very well. They do what they can with, you know, getting whatever tests they can run and antibiotics, but it was sort of at the point where the infection had kind of reached a point of potentially no return. In December, he's getting worse and he's just kind of doing what they say is what they call logging. So like a whale just kind of hangs out at the surface and isn't swimming. They're just floating there. And he was doing a lot of that, conserving energy. And he eventually just passed away

• 1:09:00Speaker 01

  from this respiratory illness and beached himself on the, on the shore there, like where was like trying to like make his way onto the shore, but I feel like there was a net in the way. I'm a little unclear of what happened, but yeah, it was a pneumonia or some other virus that got him when he was about 27 years old.

• 1:09:25Sarah Marshall?

  I'm not even gonna make a Janis Joplin reference. That's how sad this is.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. I've thought about that too. Put Keiko on the poster with all the other

• 1:09:34Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  27 Club people. But yeah, it's a, it, it feels like a really, I don't know. I guess sometimes it just feels like a, like an underwhelming ending to this incredible story.

• 1:09:48Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:49Speaker 01

  But that's in reality, what happened. And he had some people with him that, that really loved him and really cared about him. And I remember seeing the newspaper article in the paper. And I remember crying when I was a little kid. I, um, it just, you know, this, this beautiful animal that we put so much of our heart and love and attention into and had so many aspirations and had so many dreams for him. And, um, again, like, we actually did achieve a lot of that. That's the thing. Like, I, I think in the process of researching this story,

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  I think in the beginning, I was quick to call the Keiko Project a failure because he didn't swim off into the sunset with his family. But in, in really diving into the story and really understanding all the different complexities of it and all the different motivations and what people were trying to achieve. Like, I really do believe that there were huge successes in the Keiko story. Like, we really did put a whale back in the ocean and back in his home. And I can't, I can't understate how important that is in terms of understanding how we can,

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  how we can, I don't know, try to put the world back the way we found it. And maybe we learned that we can't totally do that, but we can get. Really close and we can, you know.

• 1:11:30Sarah Marshall?

  Well, and also, we don't have to to give up because we don't get to have

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:34Sarah Marshall?

  Exact result that we imagined, you know?

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. And so one of the main things, actually, I think one of the really important legacies that CAKEO left was all of this stuff that people learned throughout this whole project. And one of the things that we learned was like, okay, we really, really tried to put a captive whale back in the wild and captivity just, it's almost impossible to reverse that and their dependence on people. And so there is a happy medium that people are trying to strike with current captive orcas in this project called The Whale Sanctuary Project.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  And it actually involves quite a few people that were involved with the CAKEO project. So The Whale Sanctuary Project is going to be a large sanctuary in Port Hilford Bay in Nova Scotia, where whales and dolphins can live in an environment that really maximizes their well-being and is in their natural habitat. And so we can take animals, these really intelligent, socially complex animals, and have them live out a retirement in this whale sanctuary project. So they won't be having to perform in order to be fed.

• 1:13:03Sarah Marshall?

  Which is what we all want, really.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Right. And we're, you know, they're going to be in the ocean again. And we can just try to right a wrong as best as we can in using what we learned. And and part of what we learned is that, well, okay, full reintroduction into the wild may not be realistic, but we can still provide a good life for these animals.

• 1:13:28Sarah Marshall?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  When we've taken away so much from them. So I'm really happy to see that that project is underway. And of course, they're, they're looking for funding. Big projects like that always, as we've learned, always requires a lot of money.

• 1:13:46Sarah Marshall?

  And they don't have a movie to put a number at the end of, so it's gonna be a little trickier, maybe.

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  Oh, and actually also. There's another kind of retirement quote unquote facility for whales and that's in Keiko's old sea pen in Iceland. So there's a few, um, there's some belugas that live there now and they're just, you know, living out their days.

• 1:14:11Sarah Marshall?

  Would you say that they're swimming so wild and swimming so free?

• 1:14:15Speaker 01

  Yes, they are.

• 1:14:17Sarah Marshall?

  Of heaven above and sea below?

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're, uh, you know, I think it's just, it's the best we can, we can offer. And I think it's actually pretty, it's a, it's a pretty generous thing for us to do. Um, after the harm that we've exerted on, on these animals with the captivity industry.

• 1:14:40Sarah Marshall?

  So the everything. Yeah.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's the story of Keiko and I love him.

• 1:14:48Sarah Marshall?

  I love him too. And I know there's more to it and you're working on a, a podcast series about it and we're going to have you come back on here and tell us when it's out. So nobody misses it.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. I am currently working on it. If you would like to support my work on this project, you can go to the Patreon. It's called the Rewilding Keiko Podcast. And also another place I would love to get people's memories of Keiko. If, you know, if you were a kid in Oregon and you remember visiting Keiko.

• 1:15:23Sarah Marshall?

  Or Norway.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Or Norway. If you were one of those kids riding on Keiko's back, I want to hear from you. Um, and you can email me or submit a voice memo to [email protected]. That's my spiel.

• 1:15:40Sarah Marshall?

  Thank you. And that's your whale.

• 1:15:42Speaker 01

  That's my whale. That's Keiko.

• 1:16:48Sarah Marshall?

  And thus concludes our three-part journey with CAKO. You're listening right now to a cover of "Will You Be There", performed by Magpie Cinema Club. Magpie Cinema Club is a band featuring Miranda Zickler, who is also the editor and producer of "You're Wrong About", and musician A.J. McKinley. Thank you to Brianna Bowman for being our Dolphin Girl and Orca Woman. Thank you to Nicole Ortiz, our administrative assistant. And thank you for listening. We'll see you next time.