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GotSteel -> RE: American Talibangelicals, Ctd. (3/7/2010 6:54:04 PM)
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Keiko certainly had a better quality of life in the fjord hanging out with people and following fishing boats around than he had in captivity, so I'm sure the people who cared for him considered it a success. But not in the sense of his really being able to return to the wild and I suspect that a big part of his situation working out was his not occasionally killing people.
"Malene Simon’s studies very clearly show that, even though we humans feel fascinated by the thought of releasing wild animals that have been in captivity for many years, this does not necessarily lead to a happy ending for the animal. “We feel that the best situation for Keiko was the open enclosure in Norway, where he had plenty of room and was fed and trained by the people he was attached to,” says Malene Simon."
"In 2002, while Malene Simon was working on her dissertation on wild killer whales, she helped to fit radio transmitters and measuring equipment on Keiko and to process the data collected. Keiko spent almost a month among wild killer whales in Iceland. It turned out that, even though Keiko came close to the pod of wild killer whales, he lacked the social behaviour necessary to become part of the pod, and he stayed in the background. In august 2002, Keiko swam from Iceland to Norway, and scientists tracked him via satellite. When he got to the Norwegian coast, he once more turned to human company and the attempts to release him were finally abandoned. He spent the rest of his life in a Norwegian fjord, where he was fed and looked after."
http://science.au.dk/en/news-and-events/news-article/article/dansk-forsker-spaekhuggeren-keiko-blev-aldrig-rigtig-fri-1/
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