Keiko's Legacy: Episode 3 - Icelandic Bay Pen

After a 17-hour flight from Oregon, Keiko returns to his native Icelandic waters from where he was captured at the age of two. Jeff Foster shares footage from 1998 and talks about the construction of the bay pen that would be Keiko's staging ground as he prepared for complete freedom. Jeff recalls Keiko's reaction to being in ocean waters after decades of captivity in marine entertainment parks. Keiko's journey to freedom had begun five years earlier, at the Reino Aventura amusement park in Mexico City, when had starred in the movie "Free Willy" about a whale who escapes to freedom. The movie led thousands of people, many of them children, to press for Keiko himself to be set free. Today, Jeff serves as Animal Transport and Rehab Coordinator of the Whale Sanctuary Project, helping to construct the seaside sanctuary in Nova Scotia so that whales can be retired from entertainment parks. He says that working with Keiko was an extraordinary experience, and it informs much of the work of the Whale Sanctuary Project today. In honor of Keiko – and the tens of thousands of “Free Willy” children who pressed for his freedom – we have established the KEIKO LEGACY FUND to help raise the funds to create and maintain a gold-standard sanctuary for captive orcas and belugas. Your donation, large or small, will help create the sanctuary and provide the highest caliber of care for the whales who will become its lifelong residents. https://whalesanctuary.org/donate-klf/