Keiko finally arrives in Iceland, where years of preparation will be put to the test when Keiko gets his first chance to interact with orcas in the wild — something he hasn’t done since he was a calf. It does not go according to plan.
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In the beginning, we thought of them as monsters.
Sea monsters out of some saltwater nightmare.
We called them orcas, or killer whales, emissaries from the kingdom of the dead.
The first live orca ever captured and shown to the public was actually caught by accident.
This was 1964, and an expedition left Vancouver with a simple, sadistic kill an orca and bring back its carcass so an artist might sculpt a life size replica for the local aquarium.
The media were captivated by the story of these brave hunters who left town and were expected to return within a week.
But that's not how it happened.
In fact, nearly two months passed before they finally managed to harpoon a killer whale who inconvenienced them all by failing to die.
So they dragged it, wounded but still Alive, for about 20 hours, back to Vancouver.
The animal was put on display in a shipyard where it received thousands of visitors.
So many, the aquarium curator began to suspect it might be worth more alive than dead.
An aquarium in California offered $20,000 for the animal, but they refused to sell.
55 days after its capture, the orca ate for the first time in captivity.
This was a big enough deal that it made it into the local paper.
And then a month later, after nearly 90 days in captivity, it was dead.