Killing Keiko (7 page)

I don’t know what I expected, but this was not it. In the small world of fieldwork,
one does not naturally assume that a project is well funded or that everything needed
to do the job is actually provided. On the contrary, minimum creature comforts, the
sharing of gear and a constancy of fighting for equipment and funding are the norm.
Here, this was not the case. I had never been involved in animal-related fieldwork
as well-equipped as the Keiko Release Project.

Congregating in the front foyer, Robin introduced me to the first handful of rotational
staff at the time. Jeff, in his mid-forties, was laid-back and right away disarming.
In fact, he was
similar to Robin in that capacity. Hair boyishly long enough to cover his ears, Jeff
had a ruddy face that spent most of its time smiling, a smile that could easily turn
into a shit-eating grin. He reminded me of that kid on the block that always finds
trouble, the same one I couldn’t resist hanging out with.

After getting to know Jeff over the course of the project, I would refer to him as
a “whaleboy,” the marine version of a Wild West cowboy. While effective in a multitude
of ways, Jeff was a wrangler, the kind of person that shoots from the hip, nontechnical
and nonanalytical but extremely competent just the same. He was gifted with an uncommon
sense that allowed him to advance in his profession; yet, if asked to explain how
he accomplished things he was often at a loss to adequately describe his actions or
teach his skill to an heir apparent. In my experience, this was a common trait among
those that do versus those that talk. Yep, “whaleboy” fit Jeff nicely.

Jen and her younger brother Greg were equally as disarming. Greg, the outdoor type,
seemed adequately competent. His posture and enthusiasm revealed an eager-to-please
youthfulness. He was young enough (early twenties) to be taken at face value with
no ulterior motives or hidden agendas. A good-looking sort, Greg seemed to model the
same boyish style as Jeff, sandy-brown hair over the ears but not quite below the
neck. Greg’s role in the project focused primarily on marine operations, making sure
the bay pen was stable, piloting various watercraft and maintaining support equipment.
I liked him right away. Jen and Greg were so well established in working together,
it was almost impossible to tell they were brother and sister had it not been for
the nights of heavier wine drinking when the childhood name-calling came out along
with other gregarious banter.

Jen and I would eventually, simultaneously, become both adversaries and advocates.
In as much as she was Jeff’s right hand, I was Robin’s, and we would soon be conspiring
to keep operations between the two smooth. Jen looked to be about late twenties or
thirty-two at most. Attractive and with shoulder-length light hair,
she was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve turtleneck that complimented her figure.
Suitably thin, it always surprised me that Jen was not “granola” and did not allocate
any of her time to working out. She was naturally fit, while her overall studious
demeanor was juxtaposed by the occasional cigarette she would partake of while sipping
coffee or wine, but never in front of Greg. Throughout my experience working with
Jen, she was singularly focused on promoting and protecting the collection of data
for any and all types of research that could be extracted from the project. I also
found Jen to be genuinely concerned for Keiko’s well-being.

There were others, but they had not yet returned from their duties on the bay pen.
To my surprise and with no effort, I immediately felt comfortable with everyone I
had met thus far. In retrospect, I suppose my expectation was to find something akin
to the Berkeley radicals of the era. I had no reason to think this way; I had not
heard anything negative about the staff on-site. In fact, I really hadn’t heard much
at all about them (certainly not from Robin, who didn’t invest much time in character
descriptions). My perception of the organizations leading the project had colored
my expectations of those in the field. Once realizing that the people actually tending
to Keiko were “animal-oriented people” I was able to let my guard down and felt more
at home among professional peers.

The first night in the hostel, we all exchanged the usual small-talk introductions,
drank red wine (a nightly practice on the project) and finally, turned in for the
evening. The majority of our exchange had been fueled by my curiosity about the project
and the people. For that night and many weeks yet to come I was in information gathering
mode. But after a full day of travel and stimulation overload, sleep was a welcome
reprieve. I had been on my feet for more than nineteen hours.

By five a.m. we were ready to go, clad in long johns, fleece outerwear and bright
orange Mustang survival suits. The first stop after
leaving the hostel would be the fish house, located in an old warehouse adjacent to
the harbor. This is where Keiko’s food was stored and prepared each day. In contrast
to the enormous freezer warehouse in which it was located, the actual fish preparation
room was not much larger than a walk-in closet. Every morning, the opening crew (typically
two people) would bucket the fish that had been put in cool water the night before
to thaw, weigh out Keiko’s base (his total food allotment for the day), place it in
steel buckets and cover it in ice for the trip out to the bay pen.

I was no stranger to “food prep” and immediately pitched in helping to scrub down
the fish room and carry the four approximately thirty-five-pound fish buckets out
to the truck. The two-story warehouse was a catacomb of freezers and was almost always
deserted with little indication of human activity from one week to the next, although
there was ample evidence of seemingly ghostly activity nonetheless. During daily ventures
into the freezer building, we were often welcomed by creepy sheep heads, the decapitated
remains of a healthy appetite for lamb in Iceland. Not far behind in ranking was puffin
meat. Mounds of frozen and yet to be processed puffins would often greet us within
the subzero structure. At night, when we would reverse the process of breaking out
Keiko’s food to thaw, the darkened warehouse full with carcasses proved to be the
ideal setting for pranks.

Keiko’s diet was identical to the whales’ diet at SeaWorld. He was provided high-quality
herring and capelin: 30 percent of the former and 70 percent of the latter, totaling
approximately 120 pounds of fish per day. The only contrasting difference being that
male killer whales I knew would typically eat between 200 and 280 pounds of fish per
day. Killer whales require fewer calories in colder waters. Klettsvik Bay temperatures
hovered around thirty-six degree Fahrenheit during winter months. Frigid water and
Keiko’s reduced activity level meant he didn’t require near the bulk of food I was
accustomed to feeding a whale of his size. Even so, we always took a little more than
Keiko’s set base amount out to the bay pen, in
the event some of the food was dropped or lost in the wind, or if Keiko showed an
unusually strong hunger drive.

With our survival suits pulled down to our waists and the arms tied-off behind our
backs, we crammed into the back of the truck along with the fish buckets and a random
collection of greasy marine gear and engine parts. Our next stop: the staff transport
boat,
Sili
(sea-lee). It was a two-minute ride from the fish house, literally just a few hundred
feet around the other side of the workingman’s harbor.

The
Sili
was small, something you would expect to see on a calm lake in Florida, not the vessel
of choice in transporting equipment and crew in the North Atlantic. She had an aluminum
hull, about twelve to fourteen feet in length with a single outboard motor. Not much
to write home about and overly crowded with even three occupants, but the
Sili
got the job done. On harsh weather days, the
Heppin
would take its place, a much stouter all-weather rescue boat designed expressly to
thrive in Icelandic waters. On this particular morning, my first, all was calm and
welcoming, and the
Sili
fulfilled her role without incident.

Rounding out of the harbor and into the channel, we were greeted by an ever-changing
and inspiring scene. Jagged rock islands, just outside the mouth of the harbor, frame
a distant glacier on the mainland. Defiantly emerging from the ocean’s surface, the
islands look tough, as if they are the last soldiers standing after a centuries-old
battle with the elements. Like the bay, their walls are straight sheer cliffs that
rise up well over 200 feet on all sides, making the island appear as an impenetrable
fortress. Each one is topped with the characteristic Icelandic grass, tall enough
to fall over in mounds, which from the distance appear more like an irregularly shaped
surface covered in a thickening wet moss.

On the milder days, birds dominate the sky above Klettsvik and speckle the mossy grass,
like salt sprinkled on green parchment. The sky was filled with birds of all types,
sizes and shapes, and thousands of them, from the largest gulls I’d ever seen to the
distinctive puffin and impressively large (albeit dull-looking) skua, a predatory
seabird that commands its own air space wherever it patrols. All of this airborne
activity gives Klettsvik Bay its own distinctive sound that, often paired with milder
weather, quickly became a welcoming background ensemble.

The glacier, Eyjafjallajökull (don’t even try to pronounce, unless able to vocalize
on an inhale, this name like so many others in the Icelandic language is not within
English vocal means), perched on the mainland over thirty miles in the distance, provided
the backdrop and completed the most amazing commute to work I would ever enjoy. Every
day the same islands framed the glacier, but somehow in the various lighting schemes
experienced that far north, it always looked different. We never failed to be in awe
of the glacier’s beauty.

On my inaugural trip out to the bay pen, we approached the facility from the east.
The norm was to approach from the west. In either case, it depended entirely on the
wind. We always approached the leeward side of the pen whether that was east, west
or north.

The wind owned Klettsvik Bay. Framed by sheer cliffs on three sides and so near the
mouth of the channel, the bay acted as if a giant turbo scoop on the hood of a late
model muscle car. If it was blowing at eighty knots offshore, Klettsvik Bay funneled
the wind and amped that up to 120 knots sustained with gusts even higher. Not this
day though. This day, my introduction to Klettsvik, it was deceivingly calm.

As we tied off to the bay pen, I could tell it was roughly the size of Shamu Stadium’s
main pool (a pool at SeaWorld Orlando of which I was vastly familiar, nearly 200 feet
long and well over 100 feet wide), different shape, but about the same surface area
for Keiko. My interest in the pen was short-lived. I would get plenty of time to analyze
the structure later. Right then I was singularly focused on seeing Keiko. On the entire
approach to the pen I had been scanning the surface for the familiar round black melon
(or forehead) of a killer whale. The way the bay pen was constructed, much
of the work area was two or more feet above the surface of the water and blocked the
view. We reached the pen, tied up the boat and disembarked. At once I began walking
across the middle bridge when finally I saw him.

The last two years of my life had been school and work. Purposefully intertwined,
the two undertakings had parlayed into the start of a new business. Of great purpose
and without pause, I had buried myself in the pursuit of altruistic possibility, tempered
by equal amounts uncertainty. In this no-man’s land, a by-product of the entrepreneurial
endeavor, I had long felt a certain lack of security, as if my feet were not fully
touching the ground. It was as if at times I couldn’t get the right balance or traction.
Amidst this feeling, enter Iceland and the Keiko Release Project: yet more uncertainty
and now the supplement of vastly foreign surroundings. In the earliest hours of the
morning the feeling is altogether reminiscent of childhood, when perhaps one stays
too long following a sleepover at a friend’s house. All is well, but in idle moments
there is a longing for the security of familiar things.

This is where I was when I first met him. This was the feeling and state of my being
that was so thoroughly vanquished at my first sight of Keiko. The all familiar black
sheen; his movement so efficient and so smooth that barely a ripple escaped on the
surface as he ascended; a recognizable breath that played like music to my ears; and
then his gradual descent again leaving only the serpentine flow of his muscled back
to follow. All this I knew. This I knew well. I immediately felt at home again.

I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to get my hands on him, see what he was made of … get
a feel for his particular brand of bull killer whale character … look at his eyes.
What did we have to work with here?
I considered the variety of killer whales in my recent past.
Was he most like Kanduke, Kotar or Tilikum? Maybe Taku? Was he mischievous like Taima
or a scary-smart Gudrun? Hopefully he wasn’t a Winnie—that would never fly for a release
.

I had heard so much about Keiko’s history, and studied every available morsel of information.
But what cannot be read in a profile, history book or scientific paper is the kind
of drive an animal has … whether or not the “lights are on.” To be overly anthropomorphic,
was he an extrovert or introvert? Outgoing or antisocial? Inquisitive or indifferent?
All of this and so much more had a critical influence on a project of this nature,
and I wanted to know all of it in one divine moment of enlightenment. Of course this
wasn’t possible, and my impatience would just have to be suffered. It would take time.
Robin and the staff started me off with a tour of the bay pen.
Damn, can’t you just leave me alone? I’m on the brink of a human to whale mind meld
here!