Killing Keiko Read online

  It appears most skeptics are pointing at the behavioral approach, yes, training. Why, they say?

  Because that is what experts around the world are saying should be done.

  No one is asking why we are not consistently documenting his physical well-being. It wasn’t behavior modification that almost killed him, it was health concerns. If a human patient had been in critical care within the last twelve months, under the treatment of the strongest antibiotics available, had a history of chronic papaloma viral condition, and was being prepared to make it on their own, one final treatment, then no more doctor, do you suppose this is the level of care that individual would receive before the door was shut off?

  Thought I was going to stop complaining, so did I, sorry. We will brainstorm more ideas. I will forward Lanny all recent developments of marine logistics and associated information.

  Hope you’re smiling, Robin

  Between the raging battles playing out on the computer screen and the never-ending meetings on the finer points of the barrier net, Keiko himself began to exhibit troubling signs. After months of progress and reaching new levels in physical stamina, he suddenly slowed. His interest in everything had dwindled, including food and the normally intriguing activity going on around the bay pen. His diet went from 120 pounds of fish a day to less than twenty. We saw a return of traditional lazy behavior such as floating at the surface and slow responses during interactions with the Behavior Team.

  Going off his food was not a good sign. It could be related to almost anything, but often the first concern is physical well-being. Was he sick? Was Keiko’s system fighting something? On the heels of recent foul weather and endless changes implemented in his conditioning program, it would not be uncommon for stress to compromise Keiko’s immune system. That, added to the surge currents stirring the pot, quite possibly introducing a plethora of bacteria or pathogens to Klettsvik Bay, meant anything and everything had to be considered. In August we had seen a flare-up of Keiko’s skin condition, a papillomavirus that acted much like the human herpes virus. Although the condition did not advance to the ugly cauliflower-like growths they had witnessed in Mexico and Newport, the early-stage pinholes appearing on certain areas of his body were surely indicative of a weakening immune system or heightened stress levels.

  Normal procedure dictates the collection of various diagnostic samples on a routine basis, such as blood samples, blowhole cultures (like a throat culture), cytology, fecal and urine samples and a host of other clinical metrics. Like many zoological animals, Keiko was well trained to provide these samples voluntarily. In the professional field of animal care, these sometimes-daily routines are called “animal husbandry.” Husbandry diagnostics are the front line in preventative care. Since animals cannot tell us, “Hey, my tummy hurts,” there are few other means by which to proactively discover and treat a potentially serious health threat. Even the most innocuous event can become life threatening if undiscovered and untreated long enough.

  Yet no routine medical evaluation existed for Keiko. Largely because he was considered a temporary resident, Dr. Cornell played a dangerous game of “don’t ask, don’t tell” with Keiko’s health. He did not pursue any regular husbandry schedule. In the time I spent with Keiko, blood samples and other health measures were only taken when there was a preexisting concern … a red flag.

  By the time Keiko had lost interest in his food, it was time to be very concerned. Why? Waiting until an animal loses interest in eating to investigate is like waiting until steam is coming from under a car’s hood only to find out that the engine is overheated. Many times it’s too late to reverse the damage. As gauges are to an automobile, so too is husbandry to zoological care. Constituting an end-run around Lanny, Robin immediately took blood samples from Keiko and had the basic levels analyzed at a hospital in Reykjavik. This action alone flew in the face of protocol. Yet Robin knew any samples sent to Lanny would be ignored or worse, reported as “within normal limits.” It didn’t take long before Robin had the results. We were lucky … this time.

  Keiko’s white blood cell count was normal, and his blood showed only a very slight decline in hydration level. The normal white blood cell count told us that he was not fighting an infection, and the mild deviation in hydration markers seemed to be only in response to his recent drop in eating. Normal for a killer whale, Keiko’s only material source of water was the moisture in his fish. If he didn’t eat enough, he would soon become dehydrated, starting an avalanche of other medical problems. Maintaining good hydration is paramount in proactive health maintenance for any animal or person.

  Our initial fears were allayed, but the problem was far from solved. What had caused the appreciable change in Keiko’s behavior and his loss of appetite? In zoological care, there are standards for evaluating this type of mystery; a process of elimination, analyzing the usual suspects and going down the list.

  Among the battery of customary tests, we ran water quality sampling, cultures around every conceivable husbandry area and finally analysis of Keiko’s food.

  It did not take long to find the culprit. After receiving the nutritional analysis results, we realized that a the original herring lot had been swapped with an untested lot. The freezer-house manager didn’t even consider that the change in fish mattered. After all, what could the difference between one box of fish and another matter to a whale. In fact it made all the difference! The new lot replaced the former 440 kilocalorie-per-pound fish with herring much richer in fat and nearly double in caloric content. Unbeknownst to us, the key ingredient in Keiko’s diet had changed substantially.

  Each lot of fish is different. Two differing lots may be caught at opposing times of the year and in different locations. They may even be processed and frozen using varied methods. All of these discrepancies have an impact on the nutritional content of the fish, from protein and ash to water content, and of course, fat and calories. Somewhere in the recent past, likely weeks prior, the lot had changed. We had been feeding Keiko the equivalent of a six-course holiday dinner day-in and day-out. It was no wonder he had lost interest in food. Worse, as he became satiated with the high fat levels, he had also become inactive, the majority of his energy drained in the process of burning off the excess nourishment. We weren’t unfamiliar with the symptoms.

  Frustration was an understatement. The oversight in Keiko’s diet was a stupid mistake and one that would cost us dearly in the advancement of his rehabilitation. Further complicating the situation, we had no other source of herring with which to replace the calorific lot. Our only option was to decrease Keiko’s daily intake to less than twenty percent of what it had been. At this level, even if he showed interest in exercise and activity, we had to be careful not to overwork him. The severely reduced diet meant he would not be receiving the water a whale of his size required. We immediately began sourcing a new lot of herring, one low in fat and calories and high in moisture. Ironically, the source we found would have to be shipped from Boston, and the process of importing a fish back to Iceland was not a simple one.

  Pressing forward, many of Keiko’s sessions involved no food at all. Initially, any interest he displayed in his trainers quickly dissipated if we so much as showed him a food bucket. On one side of the equation, we worked to carefully increase his calorie burn, to break him out of the lethargy, and to help his body to rid itself of the amassing blubber. On the flip side, lacking any better source of food for the time being, we continued feeding Keiko the fat pills. This 10,000-pound animal, typically consuming over 150 pounds of fish a day, was now only able to stomach twenty pounds in the same time. We were in a deep hole, and it would be a long slow climb out.

  People’s Feast

  At least some forms of progress offered a small but welcome respite from the setbacks with Keiko. August saw the advancement of barrier net plans, as they emerged from paper to reality. Robin, Charles and Jean-Michel Cousteau (a famous son of Jacques Cousteau and the head of Ocean Futures Society) had met wi
th net makers in Reykjavik, one of the few possible vendors that would consider the task. Like any undertaking that pushed the envelope on accomplishing the impossible, there were many contractors who would not touch the barrier net for fear of backlash and the risk of liability. Still, the organization was serious enough that the dredge of persistent obstacles had not yet deterred the way forward.

  No matter the commitment, progress was agonizingly slow. So many surveys of the bay, core samples, test materials and cross-examination of willing contractors dragged on, stifled at times by a season rife with holidays, traditional celebrations and festivals. One in particular virtually shut down the island of Heimaey for more than ten days. That was none other than the world famous People’s Feast.

  The celebration began in 1874 on the mainland commemorating the 1,000th anniversary of Iceland’s semi-independence from Denmark. Unable to attend because of inclement weather, the people of Vestmannaeyjar held their own small celebration. Eventually, the gala on Heimaey grew vastly more popular than the mainland festival with more than 10,000 in attendance in recent years. I had heard bizarre stories of this festival from staff and Icelanders involved in the Keiko project. I took most of the stories with a grain of salt, as many of the tales surrounding the People’s Feast sounded far too extraordinary to be literal. The thousands who attend the feast in Heimaey camp on the island’s only golf course (the second northernmost golf course in the world) and create a tent city, a mini suburb, erected overnight for the three primary days of merriment.

  Camping, barbecues, bonfires, fireworks, singing, dancing and even festival arts are there for the taking. Not on the published schedule, but informally known as a highlight festivity: sex in the open fields surrounding the tent suburbia. This I had to see to believe. Really. Surely this was but another grand exaggeration.

  Not so. In fact, should an Icelander ever scream “duck,” do not hesitate to do so, quickly. In my experience, their culture doesn’t know how to exaggerate. Most folklore I had heard initially came across as farcical. After all, I wasn’t just some gullible American. Wrong. Icelanders don’t do April Fools. They don’t have any interest in impressing their audience via hyperbole. A 100-mph wind is a moderate breeze. In their matter of fact way, they simply state what is. After witnessing multiple entangled silhouettes rhythmically dancing on the hillside at the People’s Feast, I never again underestimated the colorful stories I was told about Iceland. In most cases, it was safest to overestimate.

  The Storm

  Tue 9/9/1999 2:30 PM

  To: Mark

  From: Robin

  Mark

  Will call Lanny as soon as this storm is gone. It’s going to be a bad one here, my friend!

  Robin

  New digs, conceptions of a barrier net, staffing changes and advancing outlines of a formal release plan filled a busy August, brought to a close by the unforgettable People’s Feast. The end of summer also meant the arrival of winter’s foul weather. On the southern border of the mainland, we were the bull’s-eye for all northward bound storms following the Gulf Stream. Wind and rain, the most obvious of the elements that stirred up Klettsvik’s innards were not our greatest foes. Within the seclusion of the bay, currents posed the biggest challenge. Any notion of avoiding them was delusional.

  The surge currents of Klettsvik were elusive and mysterious. They could occur in concert with a clear and present storm threat, or they could rush into the bay on a bright and sunny day completely unannounced. The frightening strength bestowed an ominous reputation of the surge among the staff. No one took it lightly. No one wanted to be stuck on the bay pen when the nightmarish current struck.

  Somewhat in jest, but all too necessary, we often spent time lying on the floor with an upside-down perspective looking at the layout of the research shack’s interior. The exercise was intended to give us a familiarity with our surroundings should we ever have need of escaping an overturned and underwater habitat. The possibility of the research shack taking an inverted plunge was not far from reality. Should the bay pen’s superstructure give way, the resulting imbalance of the top-heavy segment holding the research shack would cause it to immediately flip. Tangled in anchor lines and tossed by a current strong enough to pull the bay pen to pieces, no one on the team had escaped the thought of being trapped inside a watery coffin. In the less than forty degree Fahrenheit water, even a survival suit can only sustain a person for so long. Certainly not long enough to get a rescue boat to the bay pen in severe weather.

  The Icelandic Coast Guard (ICG) contingent in Heimaey possessed one of the most remarkable spectacles of oceanic rescue any of us had ever laid eyes on. A thing of sheer utilitarian beauty, the jet-driven rescue vessel, aptly named Thor, was everything anyone on the receiving end of its hospitality could ever hope for, and it certainly lived up to its legendary Nordic namesake. Bright orange, so as to be easily seen under any conditions, the Thor was the quintessential masculine mechanical beast: an M-1 Abrams of the sea.

  Roughly thirty feet in length, the Thor was proportionally thin for its span. Its hull design gave it an appearance of a thoroughbred dancing at the start gate and ready to go all out. The perimeter of the boat was made of buoyant foam-filled pontoons called sponsons. The pilothouse (which consumed a majority of the deck space) sat just aft of amidships, centered on the beam. Upside down, the Thor was a submarine of sorts. The pilothouse was designed to be completely watertight. However, if ever capsized the Thor would not stay that way long; the vessel had a self-righting ability, meaning it could flip itself upright.

  We took the Thor out to sea a few times, though never under our own control; the ICG always manned this vessel—no one else. Those few outings were almost exclusively for whale watching or tracking the seasonal movements of the wild killer whales around Heimaey.

  Inside the pilothouse, the fixtures and accoutrements clearly illustrated its business-only temperament. Every seat in the cabin was adorned with safety restraints more overzealous than the most extreme roller coaster. Designed to give her pilot complete stability in relentless seas, the captain’s chair was afloat on a heavy piston that would mitigate backbreaking jolts common in high seas and foul weather. Every steerage the pilot needed was attached to this shock-absorbing seat, even the singular do-everything joystick control. So stout and convincing was the Thor (and the ICG) that it gave me a dangerous confidence at sea … as if my only interest in plus-twenty-foot seas was a morbid curiosity of how the Thor would power through or dance over the pounding waves.

  Icelandic people are among the most proud people I had ever met then or since. But in relation to the Thor, pride was an understatement. The ICG’s slogan is “Always Prepared,” and they are. Few vestiges of island civilization know the challenges of extreme oceanic emergency and rescue as well as the Icelandic Coast Guard. Though I had no naturalized right to be, I was extremely proud of the ICG and its most impressive Thor.

  Our chief of Marine Operations, and Smari were equally inspiring of confidence. Michael Parks was licensed to pilot 300-ton ships and he possessed a natural aptitude for anything waterborne. Smari, a commercial diver and member of special recovery/salvage teams, had participated in deep-water dives around Iceland that raised the hair on the back of my neck whenever he talked about them. On one occasion during my time in Iceland, Smari had to recover bodies from a shipwreck off the mainland shore at more than eighty meters deep. I could scarcely imagine diving at that depth, in the complete dark, and along with the psychological burden of recovering bodies no less. In the event that we needed rescue from a collapsing bay pen, we were blessed with many reliable resources that could come to our aid.

  September 9, 1999, I was at home in Orlando, one of my brief off-site rotations. As usual I received daily e-mails and the occasional phone call from Robin. We routinely dissected everything from Keiko to the barrier net and beyond. On this particular day and in Robin’s classic way of downplaying just about everything, he ended an e-mail with, “It’
s going to be a bad one here, my friend!” I had known about the storm because Klettsvik was always last in line to receive every storm cell that traveled the eastern seaboard, even those that originated as far south as Florida. This was due to the “Gulf Stream Express.” The Gulf Stream, one of the most well-known currents in the Atlantic, carries most storm systems straight up the east coast of the Americas bouncing off Newfoundland and smack into Iceland. Vestmannaeyjar is like the keeper in a soccer (or football) game. The small island chain takes the brunt of every Gulf Stream kick aimed at the goal.

  There were two distinct weapons of each significant storm cell that reached Vestmannaeyjar: wind and current. Almost always, the wind came first, the surge current arriving shortly after. In some cases the wind stayed long enough to join forces with the surge current, and both wreaked havoc on the bay pen and our nerves. This particular storm was the offspring of at least two hurricanes, Floyd and Gert, which were lurking throughout the lower reaches of the Gulf Stream vacillating between tropical depression and hurricane status. I don’t know that either of these two systems ever actually reached Iceland intact, but there was no doubt that they had fueled activity that reached as far north as Klettsvik Bay on September 10, 1999.

  On that day, the resulting surge currents levied a heavy toll on the bay pen, breaking the superstructure in two places on the east side of the southernmost pool. So strong were the currents tearing at the bay pen that the enormous concrete rings that weighted the north and south pools were lifted to the surface throughout the night like giant lids hinged on the sea floor—a sight that was wholly unsettling.

  Keiko himself seemed the least affected in such conditions. Often, he would merely float as best he could in the calmest corner of the pen, on the leeward side of the wind or current. In the worst of conditions, he was forced to swim continuously, the only means by which he could avoid being tossed into the moving parts of the pen’s structure.