A fresh training team takes a hard-line approach and doubles down on breaking Keiko’s bond with humans. By summer it seems to be working, until one day Keiko swims away. This is the moment they’ve all been waiting for.
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I have this whole mini library of orca books now, so stuff I read for this story.
And in one of them, I came across a line from a field biologist named Alexandra Morton.
She's explaining why, as a shy and awkward teenager, she found wild animals so compelling.
She writes, animals always knew what to do and where they belonged.
When I read that line in Morton's book, it resonated because I felt like it explained something crucial about Keiko's story.
Maybe the key to solving this puzzle of what to do with Keiko is embedded inside that idea.
If you believe what Morton is saying, then the forward with Keiko is simple.
Just let him be.
If he's placed in the right environment and given enough time, he'll tap into that part of himself that knows what to do.
He'll figure out who he is.
Animals always do.
If you don't believe it, or if you believe by holding Keiko captive for two decades we'd transformed him into an exception to this rule, well, then the calculus changes dramatically.
The only conclusion you can come to is that Keiko needs us humans for a while, certainly, but maybe forever.
To watch over him, teach him.
We broke him, so we bought him.
And this care is what we owe him.