Killing Keiko (35 page)

None of the proposed solutions accounted for the unknown quantity of aftershock reverberations,
and still others relied much too heavily on chance. To a person, not one of us supported
any of the office-based elucidations hurled in our direction. Though they were well-meaning
attempts at a solution, we knew without the need of forensic sound testing or scientific
analysis that the blasts would be devastating within the parabolic-shaped rock echo
chamber of Keiko’s bay enclosure. We knew any outcome that kept Keiko in close proximity
to the blast site was a nonstarter. The only alternative worthy of any discussion
was taking Keiko as far away as we could from the dynamite and that left only one
possibility, the open ocean of the North Atlantic.

As it goes with imposed threats and impending deadlines, the team pulled together
against a common foe. Specifically, the task placed Jen and me in ceaseless collaboration
to finalize the permit application. As luck would have it, I was on a preplanned yet
brief escape in Ireland with Alyssa. To her dismay, I spent a great deal of our travels
around the Emerald Isle on the computer reading daily iterations of the permit draft.
Jen owned the research objectives, I the behavioral rehabilitation plan and release
criteria. We conspired together on the historical aspects of the project spanning
Keiko’s time in Mexico to present. Robin and Jeff managed to piece together the medical
history and flushed out the finer points of the all-important intervention portion
of the permit, required by the authorities in the event that Keiko did not sustain
the criteria which defined his successful release.

Days and nights melted together, one unrecognizable from the next. Overlying the constancy
of permit drafts circulating this way and that, Charles worked with fevered urgency
alongside Gummi and Hallur seeking varied strategies between authorities in both the
United States and Iceland. In the eleventh hour, the OFS main office went so far as
to publish a Web-based campaign. Their intent: to spread public awareness and thus
gain government support in protecting Keiko. Here they posted near daily updates of
the drama unfolding in Iceland. All the while the harbormaster
continued to uphold his hardened assurance that the blast would go off on schedule,
with or without our readiness.

Returning to Iceland amidst the escalating doomsday scenario, I was accompanied on
the final stretch of my voyage by the notorious Dr. Lanny Cornell. Our paths converged
outside of Reykjavik at the ferry terminal, the only means by which to reach Heimaey
on that particularly foul day.

Throughout my entire career, which had begun on the heels of Lanny’s unceremonious
departure from SeaWorld, I had heard abundant stories about the infamous veterinarian.
During those sixteen years in and around the small marine mammal community, I had
yet to meet anyone who espoused a fondness for Dr. Cornell.

Though we had exchanged numerous e-mails throughout the course of the project (a healthy
number of them contentious in nature), I had not met Lanny face-to–face since joining
the release team. He rarely visited the project site, preferring to have clinical
samples carried to and fro by the staff rotating in and out of the states—a practice
that was not unlike smuggling contraband. More often than not we didn’t have the proper
documentation for biological materials transport. This was but one of many old-school
attributes that characterized Lanny’s detached husbandry leadership of the release
campaign. Regardless, I was not a person with ready interest in conflict. Our first
meeting in person was drawn out by the elongated wait typical of the ferry route.

He was sitting in one of the connected rows of seats inside the small terminal. I
recognized him immediately. He wouldn’t remember, but I had met him just weeks before
his forced resignation from SeaWorld almost fifteen years prior. Without a doubt he
had aged, though his square jaw and military-style short hair were unmistakable. That
he was adorned in very American attire among the mix of European foot-traffic about
the waiting area helped.

“Lanny?” I extended my hand. “Mark Simmons.”

“Lanny Cornell,” he replied, with little articulation, reminiscent of the stereotyped
drill sergeant.

“How was your trip?”

“Long, but smooth.”

He stood, folding the paper he had been reading. “Maybe we should get something to
eat. We’ve got a long wait,” he suggested.

Lanny was tall, at least matching my own height and maybe a fraction more. Despite
his advancing age, Lanny was still an imposing figure. In his thick green winter jacket,
his fully gray hair and robust frame added to a dominant posture.

In the terminal café, we each picked from the buffet-style assortment of unfamiliar
foods then sat opposite each other at a small circular table. The chairs were more
like comfortable reading chairs. Bound in imitation leather, they were low, making
me feel like a child at the dinner table. My height was all in my legs. I felt absurdly
small sitting in the rounded chair.

“So how’s Keiko?” Lanny started.

“Doing pretty well. Better than I expected, to be honest.” I didn’t want to go into
any detail knowing that I embodied the one aspect of animal sciences that Lanny could
scarcely tolerate—that of animal training. But what I had heard of Lanny from the
folklore within the marine mammal community was not yet evident. Although he maintained
a businesslike seriousness, no evidence of the disreputable character emerged. I made
every effort to avoid the disharmonious undercurrents that were most assuredly lurking
just beneath the civil exterior.

Dodgy small talk wore on for the better part of our wait.

“I can’t stand the ferry,” I said, avoiding fuller topics. “After the flight I just
wanna get to the island and be done with it. This waiting and the four-hour ferry
ride drive me nuts.”

Finally, as if he had been pining for the right moment, Lanny figuratively donned
his ill-gotten crown, with pride and jest.

“Well,” he said, sipping his coffee before continuing, “I decided to keep you company.
Normally when the planes’s not running I just walk to Heimaey.” It was a creative
way to align himself with
Christ, implying that he could walk on water. He left the comment lingering in the
air with a straight-lipped smile.

“Ha,” I croaked, looking at my shoes. “Well, I guess I appreciate the consideration.”
It was the least I could do. I had no witty comeback to offer.

By the time we boarded the ferry I had tired of the effort required in conversing
without really saying anything in the process. I excused myself feigning the fatigue
of travel and purchased a private cabin where I could sleep off the pitching four-hour
ride to the island. Lanny did the same, and we didn’t see each other again until dinner
that night at Lanterna where we were joined by Charles and Robin. We were to discuss
the project as a whole and the next steps required in getting Keiko safely away from
the impending harbor construction. Lanny’s presence was required to surgically attach
the tracking tag to Keiko’s dorsal fin.

Our evening discussion passed uneventfully. It didn’t hurt that we each tempered ourselves
with the customary red wine that accompanied a meal of lamb. Topics of weight had
already been discussed over e-mail exchanges with Charles the mediator and go-between.
The conversation over dinner was more a rehearsal of
tone
in the saying than any material change in content. Nonetheless Charles was noticeably
more guarded, a manner I was not accustomed to seeing from him. It was as if he expected
any moment there would be a clash across the dinner table, the instigator yet to be
revealed. However, the dinner concluded without incident and we retired early for
the night. Less a few minor jibes in small talk we were able to preserve the tenuous
peace.

The next morning a respectable entourage amassed on the bay pen. We were going to
attach the satellite tag, or at least a model of it. Brad Hanson had been in Heimaey
just weeks before. Brad was an agent of U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service and
had a lot of experience with tagging marine mammals. He was spear-heading the development
of a prototype tag for Keiko that we hoped would last much longer than the traditional
VHF radio tags. This one was a satellite tracking tag, able to upload data when the
long-arching antenna trailing behind broke the surface with Keiko’s every breath.
A VHF tag was a much simpler beast, but required a human to be in close proximity
with a direct line of sight in order to pick up the intermittent signal. This would
never do in the vast expanses of the islands and distances involved so far north.

Tinkering with the prototype, Brad and Jeff had produced several evolutions of the
sat-tag, constantly trying to improve the design to its most hydrodynamic state. This
wasn’t an easy prospect: The “guts” of the tag consisted of the core satellite tracking
technology, which was not small by any measure. The molded housing had to envelop
the sizable mass of electronics while at the same time reducing the tag’s drag. Jeff
and Brad worked well together in crafting a workable model.

The two could not have been less alike. Brad, smaller of stature and cerebral, had
a more academic poise compared to that of Jeff’s rugged spirit. A focused seriousness
permeated the immediate vicinity as he tinkered around Keiko or within the scattered
mess of the Bassar storage building, which served as a makeshift lab. In the few and
short interactions I shared with Brad, it seemed apparent that he did not take well
to my particular brand of humor. He was often unresponsive to my descriptions of the
tag as “the Volkswagen” or asking why we didn’t just put a bright orange flag on Keiko,
“Ya know, like the ones on a tricycle?” Lacking much in common, I often chided him
with a dry humor in place of intellectual exchange. Brad didn’t care much for the
affronts posed at the expense of his baby. I couldn’t blame him. At the end of it
all he had worked tirelessly, determined to perfect the sat-tag housing.

The concern was not about the device slowing Keiko; it was all about reducing the
migration of the tag. We knew it would eventually work its way off of Keiko no matter
how well-designed, but the shape and location of the tag on his dorsal fin had everything
to do with how long it would last. When swimming, water relentlessly pushing the tag
backward meant that over time and distances, the tag and the pins would ever so gradually
cut a path out
the backside of his dorsal fin, leaving a swath of tissue damage in their wake.

The tag itself would sandwich the lower backside of Keiko’s dorsal fin. The two sides
of the tag would be joined by surgical-grade titanium pins approximately a centimeter
in diameter. Given the size of the tracking device there would need to be three pins
and therefore three holes drilled through Keiko’s dorsal. Even at the trailing edge,
so massive in size was his fin that the more anterior holes would pass through almost
three inches of tissue. To start, we planned to remove the tag whenever Keiko was
inside the bay thus preserving the integrity of the tissue at the place of attachment.
In time, if Keiko stayed at sea, we hoped the design and stout connection would hold
in place for more than a year, far longer than other similar tags of the time had
achieved.

Tracking Keiko’s whereabouts after a potential release was of paramount importance
in evaluating whether he was thriving or not thriving. Emphasizing the importance,
the ability to adequately track Keiko was also a clear requirement of the release
permit. Without the tag in place, we would have no permit and no chance of getting
Keiko away from the blasting. Just the same, the prospect of drilling through his
massive dorsal fin with a handyman drill, and attaching a device the size of a small
laptop was a procedure ill-suited for the faint of heart.

Weeks prior, we worked to familiarize Keiko with the unusual sensations of a battery-powered
Dewalt drill, the very instrument that would be utilized to bore through the cartilage-like
tissue in his dorsal fin. In these approximations, we held the body of the drill against
his fin at the tag location allowing Keiko to experience the minute vibrations transmitted
by operating the drill. We steadily increased the amount of time he was exposed to
the odd sensation, reinforcing him for maintaining a calm disposition. As expected,
the rehearsals were nothing for Keiko. By this time he had become apathetic toward
the variety of strange contraptions his human counterparts often placed on his body.
However, his relaxed acceptance of the drill practice did nothing to bolster our
confidence. The actual drilling through his dorsal would be a far cry different than
any simulation we could invent. Knowing this, we expected a struggle. In preparation
for that struggle, we intended to forcibly restrain the 10,000-pound animal within
the confining space of the small medical pen.

How does one restrain a nearly five-ton killer whale? Truthfully, it cannot be done,
especially if the subject of the restraint is wholly unwilling. Rather, the idea is
to provide the illusion of restraint, the “feeling” of being so thoroughly ensnared
that escape is seemingly unattainable. Create helplessness. To do this, we would separate
Keiko to the medical pool, eliminating any outward path of escape. We would then slowly
position a killer whalesized net lining the medical pool by snaking the net down one
side along the bottom and up the other.

Advancing the plan, and while holding Keiko to one side of the medical pool, we would
carefully draw up the net until finally it cocooned his massive body, supporting him
from underneath and snugly wrapping his sides, as if a giant killer whale taco. The
sensation of the net around his body, namely his head, flukes and pectoral fins (his
steerage and drive shaft), should metamorphose the whale to a condition of apathy.
In this position, Keiko would relax, the precarious and involuntary restraint further
insured by the training staff taking every step available to encourage and prolong
a calm disposition. In order to carry out our plan, we had all the muscle we could
recruit present on the pen that morning, including the indefatigable Smari Harðarson.
Unaware and apart from human machinations, Keiko had other ideas.