- OSLO, Norway -- A Norwegian
whaling expert says the killer whale who became famous as the star of "Free
Willy" movies should be put to death.
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- Keiko has turned up in a Norwegian fjord, six weeks after
he was returned to the wild from his pen in Iceland.
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- He is arguably the world's best-known whale, given his
starring role in the three "Free Willy" films that were released
in the 1990s, as well as a brief animated series shown on television.
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- "This is all madness," whaling expert Nils
Øien, of the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, told
VG Nett, the online edition of Norway's largest newspaper.
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- "First they spend millions on taming him and turning
him into a movie star. Then they spend more millions on turning him back
into a wild animal.
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- "They should have let him live and die in captivity.
Now that they have decided not to keep him in captivity, they should put
him down. Those who believe that they are helping Keiko by setting him
free, are really doing the opposite."
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- Having spent most of his life in captivity, volunteers
spent years training Keiko for life in the wild. He was released from his
pen in Iceland in July and swam nearly 870 miles to a western Norway fjord.
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- The orca surprised and delighted Norwegians, who petted
and swam with him and climbed on his back as he splashed in the Skaalvik
Fjord, about 250 miles northwest of the capital, Oslo.
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- "He is completely tame, and he clearly wants company,"
said Arild Birger Neshaug, 35.
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- Neshaug said he was in a small rowboat with his 12-year-old
daughter, Hanne, and some friends when they spotted Keiko on Sunday.
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- "We were afraid," Neshaug said. "But then
he followed us to our cabin dock. At first we were skeptical, and then
we tried petting his back. Finally the children went swimming with him."
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- He said the orca stayed by their dock all night and into
the day on Monday, happily eating fish tossed to him by the families.
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- Newspapers had expressed tongue-in-cheek surprise over
the whale coming to Norway, since the oil-rich Scandinavian nation of 4.5
million people is the only country that commercially hunts whales despite
a global whaling ban.
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- However, Norway's whalers only hunt minke whales.
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- "It's definitely him. We have tracked him from Iceland,"
Fernando Ugarte, part of the team monitoring the orca's progress, said
by telephone Monday from a ship in the fjord.
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- Ugarte is monitoring the whale on behalf of the Ocean
Futures Society and the Humane Society of the United States. He said Keiko
was in excellent shape, but still seems to prefer humans to other whales.
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- Keiko, which means "Lucky One" in Japanese,
was captured near Iceland in 1979 when he was 2 and spent most of his life
in captivity in Canada and Mexico.
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- His appearance in the 1993 film "Free Willy"
and later sequels helped spark a campaign to free him. He was rescued from
a Mexico City amusement park in 1996 and rehabilitated at the Oregon Coast
Aquarium in Newport, Oregon, before he was airlifted back to Iceland in
1998 and taught to catch fish.
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- Keiko's rehabilitation cost $20 million. Ugarte said
his team will continue monitoring Keiko's progress and movements
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