Press Articles about Keiko's Dream Tour

So much has been written about and dedicated to Keiko, Free Willy, and captive Orca Whale education. Here are the primary articles that tell the story about Keiko's journey, and Theresa's involvement. Please take time to sit back and read these articles, as they provide an excellent insight into the history of Keiko's Dream to date.... Enjoy.

We are honored to be a part of this journey as it continues with the Keiko's Dream Tour and the creation of the Educational Movie about Keiko's Life. Please check back often for udates on this important project.

After reading this page, please go to our press releases about the Keiko's Dream Tour, plus press articles and releases about Theresa's Keiko's Dream Music CD.

...It all started when Theresa and Keiko Met

KEIKO'S DREAM: An Orca's Tribute

By Katy Muldoon - The Oregonian

Theresa Demarest came eye-to-eye with the famed whale and came away with a mission

Jefferson High School's auditorium shivers like a little slice of Iceland.

But here comes the heat.

Teen-age boys and girls wrapped in sweat shirts and parkas yank open the heavy doors, shimmy into the stiff wooden theater seats and start chair dancing. Swaying. Clapping. Shouting "Sing it, girl!" and "Oh, yeah!" and "Free Willy!"

Free Willy?

Yes, that Willy -- star of surf and screen who, even two years gone from Oregon, can draw a crowd.

Keiko, the orca formerly known as Willy in the 1993 Warner Bros. Film "Free Willy", is not, of course, on stage at Jefferson High School this frigid February day. It just sounds as if he is when electric guitar riffs squeal in a remarkably realistic rendition of whale vocalizations. When the drums tap-tap-tap the clicks of an orca call. When piano notes whisper, crest and crash, like a killer whale breaching at sea.

Together, they form an instrumental jazz tune called 'Keiko's Dream." Together, they illustrate Theresa Demarest's awakening as a musician with a message -- a singer-songwriter who yearns to be a voice for the oceans and, especially, a voice for Keiko.

Long after most Northwesterners have filed the famous whale's story away in their memory banks, Demarest and her band, Good Company, continue to push the save-the-whale agenda in a series of concerts and environmental education presentations in Portland-area schools and performance halls.

At 7 p.m. Friday, they will perform a free concert for students and the public at Brooklyn/Winterhaven Elementary School in Southeast Portland. Mark Berman of San Francisco's Earth Island Institute, which was instrumental in rescuing the once-ailing killer whale from a Mexico City amusement park, will be guest speaker.

"Our intention is to move people", Demarest says. "Their hearts. Their minds. Their feet."

Keiko had that effect on Demarest, swimming into her consciousness in 1996, the year the orca film star moved to the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport. There, he was tended to by eager animal lovers intent on restoring his health and returning him to the sea in Iceland, where he was captured more than two decades ago.

Demarest watched the whale story unfold from her own sickbed. As she coped with a grim prognosis and breast cancer treatments that left her wretchedly ill, there on television was a story of healing and hope -- ideas she ached to embrace.

When she was strong enough, she drove to the aquarium to see for herself through the underwater windows separating the public from the beast. There, she had one of those experiences not uncommon during Oregon's Keiko days: "he came right up to me," she recalls. "He seemed to make eye contact."

Demarest nodded her head. Keiko nodded his. Demarest turned her head to one side. Keiko turned his. The whale raced across his pool, then returned to face her. She stared. He nodded.

She returned home that day and began writing "Keiko's Dream," which "evokes the whale's cry for freedom," she says.

In 1999, it became the title song for a compact disc she recorded live during a concert at the Portland Center for the Performing Arts and produced on her own small label, Joshua Records. Her band includes such longtime Portland musicians as Tim Ellis, Janice Scroggins, Patrick Lamb, Byron Mercurius and Joe Conrad.

Since then, Demarest's Keiko gig has blossomed into the sponsor- and grant-funded educational concert tour that took her to Jefferson High earlier this month and that will continue this week. The tour is supported by the Regional Arts & Culture Council, among other organizations.

Demarest -- a former nun, retired critical-care nurse and mother of a grown son --has regained her health and refocused her life so that music hums at its core.

Jazz. Blues. Neo-folk. Fusion.

And orca. Especially orca.

Keiko Update

Keiko's keepers sound as optimistic as NBA coaches with their sights on the playoffs: "He's healthy, eating well, active and responsive. We've noticed some aggressive behavior...,"Charles Vinick says. "We hope to be out by May."

Vinick, of Ocean Futures, the organization that cares for the star of the 1993 Warner Bros. Movie "Free Willy", is optimistic that the whale might swim to freedom by summer. By 'out", he means out of the enclosed bay where the whale lives in Iceland's Westmann Islands.

Last summer, keepers reintroduced Keiko, who is about 24, to the open ocean for the first time since he was captured off Iceland in 1979. The whale, who lived at the Oregon Coast Aquarium from 1996 to 1998, is trained to follow a boat.

In 2000, he swam 500 miles, ventured near wild whales 19 times and appeared to come into contact with five times.

Keepers hope to acquire a bigger boat that will allow them to stay offshore with him for weeks at a time, so that this summer they can follow pods of wild whales that migrate through the area.

They're working to refine the satellite transmitter the whale will wear at sea, so they can track him for as long as possible, should he decide to swim free.

Meanwhile, Vinick says, "We see him acting like a wild whale, and that's what we're looking for."

A Rock'n'Roll Orca-stra

Earth Island Journal, Summer 2001

In February, Mark Berman flew to Oregon for a rock'n'roll show that shook the walls of two concert halls in Portland. Mark wasn't playing the drums or electric guitars, however. He was the featured speaker on Keiko's Dream Tour -- a unique eco-rock road show developed by Joshua Records and its award-winning band, Theresa Demarest & Good Company.

It all began several years ago, when singer/songwriter/producer Theresa Demarest was recovering from breast cancer. During her painful recovery, Demarest (a former nun and retired critical-care nurse) changed to see a TV documentary on Keiko's remarkable journey from captivity in a Mexican theme park to a custom-built recovery tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Demarest credits this story of healing and hope with helping her survive cancer. The experience left her committed "to participate in the world in a renewed and more committed way."

During her illness, Demarest had written an instrumental piece, but it lacked a voice. With her cancer in remission, Demarest realized that her composition not only had a voice, it had a title --"Keiko's Dream."

Drawing on the squealing guitar riffs of band member Tim Ellis, Demarest produced a remarkably realistic rendition of whale vocalizations. With Good Company's drums tapping out the clicks of an orca call and Demarest's piano keys creating and crashing, it sounds as if Keiko were right on stage.

"Our intention is to move people -- their hearts, their minds and their feet." Demarest says. The music is intended to make listeners ask 'how you fit into the scheme of life on this planet."

Demarest and Joshua Records agreed to release Good Company's live concert CD, Keiko's Dream, with proceeds from sales benefiting the Ocean Futures Society (formed from a merger between the Free Willy Keiko Foundation and The Jean-Michel Cousteau Institute). Joshua Records also launched the Keiko's Dream Tour concerts.

Good Company's program of jazz/blues/folk/fusion culminates with a performance of "Keiko's Dream." After a speaker from Joshua Records calls on the audience to become a "voice for the ocean," Mark Berman offers a slide-lecture recounting Keiko's escape from captivity (a task in which Earth Island Institute was instrumental) and brings folks up-to-date with recent slides of Keiko swimming free in his home waters off Iceland.

DECISION TIME FOR KEIKO'S KEEPERS

By Katy Muldoon - The Sunday Oregonian, September 2, 2001

After spending millions to help the famed whale, his benefactors must make plans for what to do if he never returns to life at sea.

About one year ago, Michael Hutchins advised Keiko's keepers that they would be wise to begin preparing the public for a hard message: failure.

Hutchins, director of conservation and science for the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, wasn't certain that the effort to set the famous whales free would flop. But he thought that so many people around the world had invested their money and emotions in the whale's tale that keepers owed it to them to lay Keiko's chances on the table.

Problem was, Ocean Futures Society, the nonprofit environmental organization that cares for Keiko, had no idea whether the whale that had been hand fed for two decades would ever join a pod of wild orcas, swim off into the sunset and survive.

They still don't.

But because the "Free Willy" star failed to make the break for freedom this summer, Oceans futures may have to concede that Keiko's future will be a captive or semicaptive one.

"This is not a Hollywood movie," Hutchins said last week. "This is a real animal in a real situation. It's real people trying to deal with the ethical questions...

"The solutions are going to have to be based on what's best for Keiko under the resource limitations that the organization has."

It's possible that the eight-year, multi-million dollar effort to return the movie-star whale to life at sea with his own species is over.

The killer whale's keepers announced last week that Keiko is back in a netted pen in Iceland for the winter. Trained to follow his crew's boat to sea, he spent much of the summer swimming in the North Atlantic Ocean near wild whales.

"It's premature to say what we'll decide," said Charles Vinick, executive vice president of Ocean Futures.

In the months ahead, keepers and benefactors must determine:

- If, to the best of their knowledge, Keiko ever will be capable of surviving at sea without human help. He has not yet shown that he can feed himself.
- If wild whales ever would accept him into their close-knit society, about which little is known. Although he often swam near orcas this summer and last, keepers have seen no evidence of bonding. Neither have they seen aggressive behavior toward Keiko.
- If it makes sense to continue to pay for the project that, to date, has cost an estimated 23 million. In the past two years, with summers spent at sea, the cost has run about 3 million annually.
- If continuing the reintroduction effort is in the whale's best interest. And if it's not, they'll have to decide not only how Keiko should live out his days, but also where.

Keepers expect that a salmon-farming operation will be built near Klettsvik, the picturesque bay where the whale's floating pen is anchored. The fisheries industry makes Iceland's economy tick, and the farm would take precedence over the resident whale. Whale keepers worry that the operation could compromise water quality in the bay and make it an unhealthy place for Keiko.

Construction of the farm has been delayed at least until next spring so Ocean Futures has the winter to consider whether it will keep Keiko there of move him.

One Big Experiment

In 2000, he swam 500 miles, ventured near wild whales 19 times and appeared to come into contact with five times.

Keepers hope to acquire a bigger boat that will allow them to stay offshore with him for weeks at a time, so that this summer they can follow pods of wild whales that migrate through the area.

They're working to refine the satellite transmitter the whale will wear at sea, so they can track him for as long as possible, should he decide to swim free.

Meanwhile, Vinick says, "We see him acting like a wild whale, and that's what we're looking for."

A Picture of Health

Even objective observers agree that the once sickly, underweight whale, who for years swam in a Mexico City amusement park pool too small and warm for an animal his size, appears better off today.

Hutchins, of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, remembers flying in a helicopter last September above the Atlantic. Below was Keiko, swimming swiftly and powerfully behind his crew's boat in the open ocean.

"It was spectacular," Hutchins said. "It was remarkable the degree to which Keiko's physical condition had improved. I was totally blown away by that."

Hutchins was equally surprised that Ocean Futures had invited him to Iceland to assess everything from the reintroduction protocol, to research connected to the project, staffing, hands-on work with Keiko, public relations and fundraising.

- He had, after all, been publicly critical of the effort since its inception for two reasons shared by many:

- He thought that the enormous amount of money was ill spent on one animal, particularly one whose species is not endangered. Hutchins says that the estimated $20 million spent on Keiko during the project's first seven years exceeded what the Wildlife Conservation Society, for instance, spends on 300 projects in 60 countries during two years.

- And he thought that even among captive killer whales, Keiko was a poor choice for reintroduction to the wild because he had spent so many years in close contact with humans.

Keiko is the first long-captive killer whale ever reintroduced to the wild. Keiko breaching in sunshine

Zoos and aquariums across breed many endangered orthreatened species specifically so they can release themin nature. Keys to success, Hutchins said, involve training animals from birth for introduction to life in he wild, raising them in naturalistic environments and restricting interaction with people.

California condor chicks, for instance, are raised with hand puppets that look like condors, so the chicks will not bond with human caretakers.

Keiko, whose age is estimated at 24 or 25, was captured near Iceland about age 2. He spent most of his life performing for fans in marine parks and communing with keepers, who would swim with him, rub his tuxedolike belly and even ride the beast as if he were a surfboard.

Then, Keiko struck gold. He landed the title role in Warner Bros.' Popular 1993 movie, "Free Willy." In the film, do-gooders help an affable, ailing whale escape unscrupulous marine park owners.

After it hit theaters, the effort to return the real-life "Willy" to the sea ignited. The story got oceans of international publicity. Adults and schoolchildren near and far donated money. And life began to imitate art.

The Keiko Effect

The story is familiar to Oregonians, of course, because Keiko spent 32 months here in a fancy halfway house: a $7.3 million, 2-million-gallon tank custom-built for him at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport.

From January 1996 to September 1998, more than 2.5 million visitors paid up to $8.75 a pop to gaze at him through underwater windows in his tank. Often, he would hang in the water, just inches away from the glass, and gaze back.

Aquarium visitors weren't the only ones to relish Keiko's charm. Animal-rights groups, particularly those who don't find value keeping animals in zoos and aquariums, rode the wave of interest in the whale to champion their causes.

Howard Garrett, for example, stills holds up Keiko's experience in Iceland as a shining example of his pet project: to persuade Maimi Seaquarium in Florida to return its captive killer whale, Lolita, to her home waters in Puget Sound.

Garrett is president of a Greenbank, Wash., environmental education organization called Orca Conservancy. Since 1995, he has worked to free Lolita, who is 35 or 36 years old.

"I really feel like she can get the spinoff effect from Keiko," Garrett said, "...that she can grab the imagination and attention...

"It shows so much about animals in the natural world. It just revives faith."

Faith - and some science.

Early in the project, Keiko's keepers forged alliances with marine mammal researchers, some at such prestigious institutions as the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. Over the years and as recently as this summer, scientists have used the project to collect data not only on Keiko, but also on the little-studied Atlantic killer whale population that migrates each spring and summer through Iceland's Westmann Islands, where Keiko lives.

They have surveyed where the whales swim and feed, creating aerial maps of those locations. Shooting pictures galore, they have begun a photo-identification catalog of the population. They have collected blubber samples from nearly two dozen whales and will subject the samples to genetic testing.

Using underwater recording devices called hydrophones, researchers have collected acoustic data on the migrating pods; one thing they've learned is that Keiko's vocalizations sound different from those of the wild whales.

Keepers, too, have collected behavioral data on Keiko since he moved to Oregon in 1996. And they continue to do so.

Some of that data include his inclination to follow boats. During his open-ocean forays this summer, Keiko was spotted following a fishing boat and a cruise ship that was dumping garbage.

On another occasion last month, he approached a small boat in which a bird hunter was cleaning his catch. The hunter claimed in Icelandic news accounts that Keiko swam up to his vessel and startled him. But when he saw the tracking device attached to the whale, the hunter realized it was Keiko, reached out and stroked his shiny black skin.

True or not, such accounts are likely to be part of the discussions around the Ocean Futures boardroom table this fall and winter, when keepers and the whale's moneyed benefactors determine whether the experiment has reached the limits of science, finances and good sense.

Ocean Futures has promised to care for Keiko as long as he is in captivity.

"At some point," said Bob Ratliffe, a spokesman for Craig McCaw, "you've got to say we've given him...an unbelievably life-enriching experience."

Ratliffe and McCaw and others on the Ocean Futures board know one thing about Keiko's future: They don't want to return him to a concrete enclosure.

But other alternatives, including one in which Keiko would again be on public display, perhaps in a sea pen, are possible and would require much study in the year to come.

"I think," said Hutchins, of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, "that Ocean Futures has some heart-wrenching decisions to make."

Keiko's Incredible Journey Ends

OrcaLab - December 15, 2003

We have very sad news.

Keiko being lifted from pen Keiko, the orca star of the film Free Willy and the first ever captive orca to be returned to life in the ocean, died yesterday in Norway. His end was sudden and unexpected. Just a week earlier, blood tests had shown Keiko to be in normal good health. However, during the day before his death Keiko appeared lethargic. He did not eat on his last day and his breathing became erratic. In the early evening of December 12th Keiko swam to the shore of Taknes Bay and died. The immediate cause of his death was probably pneumonia.

Keiko lived for 27 years, a normal life span for male orcas whose average longevity is about 29 years. His life, however, was by no means normal. Captured in Icelandic waters in 1979 when he was not even two years old, Keiko was initially shipped to a captive facility in Canada and then sold to another in Mexico City where he performed for crowds at an amusement park. After being "discovered" by Hollywood and becoming a movie star, Keiko attained celebrity status as the most famous whale in the world. Once it was realised that reality did not match the successful Free Willy happy ending and that the ìstarî had been left to languish once more in an unhealthy, small pool, children around the world insisted that Keiko be given a chance to regain his freedom.

After much negotiation on his behalf, he was finally shipped in 1996 to a cold sea water tank in Oregon. It was the first time in 17 years that Keiko had felt the soothing effects of natural ocean water. Terribly underweight when he arrived, Keiko slowly regained his health and vigor and by 1998 it was felt he was ready for the next stage on his road to freedom. He was flown to Iceland by the US Air Force and placed in a sea pen. Now he was truly back in his home waters.

In the following several summers Keiko made tentative and eventually extensive contacts with wild orcas, but he probably never encountered his immediate family and did not remain with the wild orcas he met. We will never know why but it is possible that his family had been decimated by the extensive captures of the 1970s and '80s. In the summer of 2002 Keiko left Icelandic waters and swam by himself nearly 1200 kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean to Norway.

Despite having been reliant on humans for food and comfort almost his entire life he somehow survived for over 50 days, feeding himself along the way. When he was discovered off the coast of Norway he was in wonderful shape and warmly welcomed, especially by children. But the over-attention of people created problems for Keiko's rehabilitation. A local government offered Keiko a secluded bay in a sheltered fjord as a home base from which he was free to roam. Keiko has remained in the vicinity of Taknes Bay for the past year. He has been cared for by a small dedicated staff and taken on "walks" pending the arrival of wild orcas which would give him renewed opportunities to socialise with his own kind. Sadly, Keikoís death came too soon for this to happen.

Keiko will be missed by millions of people around the world, especially children, and his remarkable story will be told and retold. Unfortunately, it is already being distorted and misrepresented in many media reports. Some of the errors are relatively trivial (e.g. incorrectly stating that Keiko died 10 years earlier than is normal) but others are serious and need correction. The most serious error is the claim by the captive industry that the entire project was a "failure". It was not. Rather, it was a resounding success in almost every conceivable way. Keiko died a free orca, in the ocean on his own terms.

Had he remained in Mexico City Keiko would have died long ago. Instead, just look where he took us. In our opinion, even a taste of freedom is worth a long journey for captives that are utterly deprived of choices. Keiko raised the profile of orcas and other whales to hitherto unknown heights, and along the way did an amazing job of raising human consciousness to a point where it is now widely agreed that whales and dolphins should not be caged or otherwise abused. That job remains to be completed and in Keiko's memory we will carry on.

Keiko Up Close

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