Keiko Part 2 with Brianna Bowman

Welcome to your on about the podcast where we tell you about your favorite Oregon celebrities and of course the best one of all is Kaco. And with me today to talk about Kaco is certified or a girl and also dolphin girl Brianna Bowman. Hi yes that is I really should put that

“at my business card I think certified dolphin girl. Did I ever tell you Sarah? Okay this is kind”

of a very same good great way to start. This is how much of a dolphin girl I am. Do you know what my

first email address was dolphin girl? No I was trying to be a little squeak squeak. I was trying to be a

little a little cooler than just dolphin girl it was dolphin underscore chica for at my home talk. That's so beautiful though. Okay do you know what my first AOL username was I bet I'm talking to this before. No I don't know. A Moray Dragon 88 are those two both so unbranding really we haven't changed at all yeah you're still a dolphin chica and I'm still in the Moray Dragon and AOL.com and then I ran in like you know 17 it was like

“you should never put your birth year in your email and I was like oh no what if I don't I have to say”

though I think I've I was definitely a dolphin girl as a kid and I think as a woman yeah

I am an orca woman that's interesting because we used to be really cute and you know people pleasing and you would jump through who said no you just want to attack billionaire as yachts. Yes actually that's that's a fair fair summary pretty accurate um I feel like we should do a bonus episode on my lingering question of like what what is the deal with the work is allegedly attacking billionaires yachts and do they hate capitalism specifically because that would be very exciting say that again

but in a Jerry Seinfeld voice what's the deal with these orcas why do they keep attacking billionaires

what is the deal with these orcas so okay so this is part two of the cakeo story if you don't

know who cakeo is we bring you out to speed in the last episode but if I may in classic you're wrong about fashion I'd like to attempt to summarize it and you can crack me as needed go for it okay so cakeo is a lovely little whale killer whale slash orca and he certainly is killer and he's a sweet little guy and he's very sweet yeah and he was born around Iceland obviously not in Iceland in the 70s and was captured in 1979 yeah oh yeah 78 or 79 good memory as usual Sarah thank you

at a time when random dick wheels were growing around capturing killer whales for fun and profit and to exhibit them and make uh ridiculous movies about them I realized after we recorded the other day that I actually have a poster for a different killer whale movie on my bathroom door yeah let me go open the door and then I can read it to us are killer whales an apex predator yes yeah there's not really anything that is a threat to a killer whale besides people in the ocean

“yeah I was gonna say killer whales are the cutest apex predator but actually I think it's got to”

be polar bears oh yeah polar bears are pretty stinking cute right because kids love polar bears during cocaids they're drinking coke they're looking at the sunset or the northern lights I guess yeah and yet according to to Blair Braverman who certainly would know in real life polar bears see us um much as I would see a delicious taco bell gourdita oh yeah yes no whole bears are I know like you know we're supposed to be wary of grizzly bears if we're out in the woods and yeah I

mean I certainly don't want to force them to be friends with me no and like it was a grizzly bear it's mostly like you just don't want to surprise them because they might hurt you that way a polar bear will as far as I know try to eat you they'd do see you as a tasty snack so not a good situation if you're you're near one so just say no okay so let me read you this namo poster so it's got a lovely painting of namo namo namo yeah namo I think the the killer whale

with some asshole holding on to his fin and and writing him while he leaves we love the idea of just

for us I think oh god yeah that's so depressing and it's like yeah I mean I guess if a horse could

hold it so in against a great white shark I might think a little bit more about that it's amazing

that we got our way with horses which you quit while we're not ahead exactly but you know yeah and the text says anybody want to make friends with a very big very wet very playful killer whale very question mark three exclamation points he's the biggest hero in the whole wide world of adventure and then it's got a little girl with pig tail saying don't let them hurt nabo mommy I love him so you can see that free willy is working on a precedent that maybe had not been perfected yet

yeah but sort of existed as you know because there's so many narratives in American culture and I'm sure pretty much any culture about kid and animal oh yeah who become friends and understand each

other yeah those are my they still are my favorite stories they were my favorite stories when I was a

kid I definitely gravitated to any story where a protagonist that's a young child is making their best friend is some sort of animal like what was it in my side of the mountain denny he had a

“a hawk dragon felca dragon felca yeah I think about frightful more often than actual people I”

have known in my life or like family members you know yeah I well I don't know I can't remember this plot of Julie of the wolves if she actually had a connection she's married off like as a 13 year old I think she's like married to a fellow kid yeah I think she's unlike barrow or something and she she runs away and like loses her bearing and then she's adopted by a family of wolves

and they they go hunting and then they it regurgitate meat for her which is so gross and so great yeah

gotta do what you gotta do yeah you know I'm sure there's an influencer today who's thinking you know what we should help the eating is regurgitated wolf meat oh god they're probably is honestly that's it's the next thing billionaires are gonna pull us for it a god oh probably while they listen to the eyes wide shut soundtrack we're predicting some really big trends here I think today we really are but I mean I also I'll say that like the success of this show which has been listened to by

more people than I would ever imagine possible yeah when we started out is to me like for the proof of my theory that like obviously people are different from each other to quote Eve Sagdwyck but that there are a lot of basic human tendencies and drives and one of them is that we're very curious and we love learning if we didn't love learning we wouldn't have landed on the moon right with like computers that had less memory than probably what it takes to power one of those

“games where you have to save a king by sorting jewels hmm yeah we wouldn't have landed on the moon”

and we wouldn't have to bring it back we wouldn't have tried to free kaco I think exactly and you wouldn't be listening to this wanting to know how this happened right this is also a way I think for you to tell us about kind of the some of the concepts and science that are behind everything that is happening and that we're going to learn today yeah yeah it was a it was an astronomical feet and we learned a lot and it also did not go perfectly and that is part of the process of

science and learning and trying new things so I just want to say like you know people tried to talk about the kaco story in terms of whether it was a success or was it a failure and I certainly used to think of it in those terms of like this very black and white did they achieve their goal

“or did they fail and I think like all stories and just real life in general the more interesting”

question is about what we did learn and the parts where we did failed to reach the goal and how we can do things differently next time and understanding the nuance involved in all the all the shades of gray and between and yeah that's where the real interesting part of the story lies it's it's not just you know a yes no binary of whether we did what we set out to do yeah I guess I can the newsboy strike yes exactly well and I feel like one of the things that we're going to get into

maybe is also when so many people are working on a project they're being conflicting ideas of what the goal is yes and so to yeah so to catch us up so he's he's a lovely little little color whale he's captured he ends up in a theme park that is now a six flags and Mexico City so he's a whale at altitude yes which is funny to think about but also worrying

our chapter last time ended with kkoa is way to the organ coast querion which I remember

and which was like everyone was excited about in my memory and it was huge basically

“certainly for children but I think kind of for everybody yeah and especially in Oregon”

and that became kind of part of our identity at certainly as millennials so he had like provided transitional housing for kko yes but so he was in a tank that I remember learning as a kid was like and that you reiterated in this episode was like consistently just like too small and too warm for his needs like based on his species and then when they were making free willy they were like we need a whale a whale that can act that works well with people and that isn't owned by sea

worlds who don't want us to work with their whales because for some reason they don't want to help with a movie that's about freeing whales and this theme park in Mexico is like yeah film with our whale and so of course then we have our like adolescent protagonist opening a door in a story of Oregon and then going through it and he's in a theme park in Mexico City with Lori Petty and kko and so it's like a lovely movie where they like free kko and he goes back to

his pod and they're together again and as we also talked about killer whales are very social yes very social and like would be fair to say like don't thrive as loaners which may be foreshadowing

“yes there are some examples of loner killer whales but I think it's sort of similar again”

to people in that it's not really the norm to have a completely isolated life frame so we're telling the story of like human beings coming together you know kind of inadvertently making kko assemble of what happens in the movie he's the star of which as he pointed out in the past I can't think of a single ex you can't think and I can't think of a single example of this happening in any other case where fact imitates fiction to the sixth and unless you count things like fantasia

from american idol playing herself in a movie which I've always found trippy oh yeah the only well

and the other example I can think of president Zelensky when he of Ukraine you know right wasn't he an actor in a show about becoming president something like that kko is really the the president Zelensky of the ocean so okay so i laughed and saw him and ended with kko merely on his way to new port organ yes and the plan at the time which I didn't realize is a little kid because i'm sure no one explained this to me with enough nuance or i guess ignored it

possibly was for him to be there for like a while but then ultimately to be brought back to the water is outside Iceland where he was was from right um and my first question based on that which I feel like we were about to to get into is how how do you transport a whale especially if you don't have the enterprise like in uh right the Star Trek movie I made you watch yeah it's uh it's it's not easy but you'd be surprised how much whale transport takes place I mean any

“okay same worry about that well they it primarily happens by air oh i believe that the plane”

that transported i want an action movie about this i know right the clock is ticking when you've got a whale on the cargo hold yes and speaking of a ticking clock i think where we ended last time

I was saying that there was a budget shortfall at this point in the dory so right first island institute

we had our protagonists David Phillips what does David Phillips look like does he where tv is it all so i i was thinking about this i was thinking about like who would i cast in my movie about kko mark reflow oh that's a good one actually okay i was thinking um Tom Hanks actually okay put Tom Hanks when um recently like okay and with uh with a beard like you know grizzled looking kind of fed up with everybody but still very nice in the end yeah like i've spoken with

David Phillips and he's yeah he's very pleasant guy in really passionate about the work that he did and he's very like strategic he he was involved in a lot of like media campaigns around save the dolphins in the 70s um when it came to like tuna fisheries and yeah i think he's very savvy and he understands how to make these big projects come together like he's a project manager essentially in this story which is real world talk for producer from what i understand yes oh yeah that's true

that is kind of is the same thing now that i'm like getting more into this space and like oh yeah that that is what a producer is there's an episode of the dick fan dyke show where they like take

dick fan dyke is a comedy writer and they try to introduce i think the kids to their producer who's

walking by saying don't talk to me i got a big problem and i was like that's a great depiction of producers um okay so we have we have David Phillips and he's like crap we need money like now and they had at this point secured that they're gonna take him to Oregon the facility in Oregon that was gonna house cake oh the the tank it wasn't already in existence they built that specifically for kiko just like making titanic they built a tank for that too oh really i didn't know that yeah

that's a little trivia so they they built this tank for kiko and it was gonna the deal was with Oregon kiko's aquarium that the three-wheeling kiko foundation was going to pay for it so Oregon kiko's aquarium just got this huge facility for free essentially oh great i'm sorry i thought you're gonna be like and then they refused to pay i become so jaded oh no but they were they were behind on how much it would cost Warner Brothers they chipped in some money well they're from Hollywood

they should have anticipated going over by shit but they never do yeah and earth island institute

they started fundraising quite a bit so this is when we started getting the there's these like kiko adoption kits that people and mostly kids i remember the so my god yeah wow holy shit dude like a few dollars you could you know get little updates about kiko in the mail and get a picture of him and you can get a little certificate saying like i'm helping free kiko or whatever it said so they started that kind of fundraising kiko certainly had a personality that people felt like they

knew and you know identified with yeah and it does feel like yeah we're really we're drawn to animals that possess what we see is kind of a humanoid intelligence but interestingly with that often means is that they're more likely to be dangerous to us you know and i'll also just say another story

“I heard recently there is this woman i think in the Netherlands at a zoo who kept visiting”

this gorilla maybe you've heard this story this girl in a bookido and was like we have a bond and part of that bond is sustained eye contact oh i vaguely remember this and i visit this gorilla all the time and i love this gorilla and then after this gorilla i had a particularly stressful day he somehow escaped his enclosure and attacked her and when i kind of a bit of a rampage and it all you know and it up okay but it turns out that that's like a sign of aggression for gorillas

but for a person sustained eye contact is like what they make you do in acting class to like open up your emotional pores you know so it's just like a complete difference and how we process something and like assuming that human body language is universal especially with primates you know they didn't have to like gun down boquito which is good yeah but also that this woman kept visiting and kept looking at him really yeah after she got attached oh wow she's just a girl who can't

say no she's still convinced of their bonds even after the disease so there's just this

“theme here i think in all of our interactions with animals that you and i've already been talking”

about and one question maybe that i want to bring to you that i think might be a thread here is like it feels like there were people throughout who were like well we must get caco back to the wild as he deserves and that is the only possible course of action it seems like maybe it would be fair to say yes and it's also interesting to ask the question i think of whether that might inevitably be influenced by the the very human perspective that values freedom as a value

the possibly is a value that orc has might not have yeah no i think you nailed it because yeah they're kind of throughout the course of the caco story and especially during what i consider

kind of the second half of the story there were these two main threads that persisted throughout

the caco story and one was that he's going to be released he's going to be free he's going to

“find his family we're going to help him do that that's what he wants he said it in therapy”

he said it himself because of course he wants it because every you know being deserves to be free and we screwed up by you know putting him in captivity in the first place and what's the situation socially here because was there a hope that they could like where they like we have to get him back with his family or was there the sense that there was like a fallback of like finding other workers to make him be friends with because i feel like this part because it's like hard

it's interesting talking to people that were involved with the project and i will talk more about

one person in particular who is pretty critical of how the end of the project went but there was

this sense that there would be this intuition or instinct from caco that he would just kind of find his family like i don't know how else to put it like he would just know which is always worrying yeah there were attempts and plans to get information on the whales around Iceland to try to narrow it down they were going to you know try to record vocalizations of Icelandic whales so they could maybe find his pod through identifying the dialects which we explained last time killer whales

have dialects amongst pods so all these whales sound like Bjork yeah so they could maybe i did find that way but then they were also going to look for genetic data and try to do that but

“it was like in hindsight i think that was one of the things that people learned in the project”

that that was a key piece of information that they did not have enough data on yeah because how are you supposed to find someone's whale family from like the 70s that's like having a kid get lost and fall and you're like well it was an Illinois i mean look i don't that may that might be really silly comparison no i've i've made this exact comparison okay listen i've no scientist free and above earth the ocean is pretty large it's it's a place it's not a pale green

dot it's a pale blue one yeah well and then on top of that there's not just like a handful of killer whales in the north Atlantic there's like thousands of them like they're doing pretty well population wise so narrowing it down to cacos specific family uh was going to be a bit of a

“needle in a haystack situation especially at the time i believe now there's a lot more data”

and there's a lot more researchers that are documenting the genetic lineage of killer whales in the north Atlantic and documenting their dialects and identifying them by individual and that's sort of thing but it's still like a much larger population it's harder to keep tabs on than say the pacific northwest southern resident killer whales which as i mentioned there's only currently

75 well 74 tentatively 75 but one key thing before we leave Mexico so they didn't have enough money

and another really important character in the care cacos story enters here his name is Craig McCaw Craig McCaw was a tech billionaire from the early 90s yes who would you cast to play him in our movie well i need some help with that one can you send me a picture of him yeah okay Craig McCaw he was like the one person i like couldn't figure out interesting yeah i got to say um billpaxton oh right with a sweater on yes well we'll we'll we'll go with billpaxton vertical

lemon ear a billpaxton yes a billpaxton with a comb over so we got billpaxton and Tom Hanks it's a star studded spectacular it is um in terms of a character and like what role he kind of serves in this story he's definitely our john Hammond from Jurassic Park he just has a lot of money and is a very enthusiastic about this project and may i could say if you have way too much money as so many people do these days why not free a whale for god's sake yeah having a big building

with your name on it won't help you teenagers will put gum on it yeah and so he got involved because literally he and his wife soft free willy and they're like oh yep they were moved by the story

they were happy to chip in some money at this early stage something in the order of like a million

dollars or two million dollars to help with the shortfall of specifically just this stage of getting kkoa to Mexico so one other like significant donation that happens at this point is David Phillips uh it was able to get ups to donate a plane to fly kkoa to new port because this is like a great PR thing to get in on right like if it's a stunt for some people it's like who cares

“if you want to like look good by charming the kids of america by being the kkoa male place”

then like it's a great idea like i absolutely all for corporate manipulation if it's basically harmless and just kind of annoying if you you know dry really hard to be cynical which i obviously sometimes do yeah and and many people will kind of use kkoa in this way so then we're leaving

of the morning of January 7th the 1996 and it was supposed to be a secret i don't know why they

“could keep a secret kkoa in princess diana are the two main characters of 1996 i realize now”

i know i thought about princess diana so many times during the story too yeah but of course people knew he was leaving it wasn't a secret that he was leaving i i don't know why they thought that people wouldn't show up but apparently the streets were just lined with people wishing you know kkoa that's so beautiful yeah a good farewell and it's like the ending of tempo it's the side yeah and it's so beautiful at the same time it's so funny to think of kkoa being like

i'm just a whale i don't really understand what i know this is about to be honest it didn't go as David Phillips had hoped it would go he thought he wanted it to go a lot more smoothly than it did but they make it to the plane which is like a c130 which is just a enormous plane obviously you

would need he makes it to new port finally they had to do a couple refuelings on the way there but

well this is where yeah we can introduce the town of new port yeah story which is where i currently live

“and honestly seeing kko here when i was a kid was probably what planted the seed in my brain of”

hey i really love to live here one day yeah i we would go there for like weekend trips when i was growing up and it's like i feel like for people in most states with a coastal part there's like a place where you eat taffy and new port is like the place where you eat taffy a story is also very pretty but it's on a river it's it's not right on the coast a story is also home to the fisher poets gathering which i think is my favorite festival i've ever been to yeah which i have to go with you too yeah

but yeah new ports wonderful i've like i said i wanted to live here since i was a kid and now i do and i made the best possible decision for my life moving here i just love it what's something that to you exemplifies what new port is like like what's a new port thing i think the thing that i love i walk i walk on the beach every day with my dogs and i live close to the bay entrance so the river bar is not too far from me and i love when i am walking on the beach near

sunset and i look down south towards the bar and i can see fishing boats coming in and i see like their big bright glowing sodium lights and can see them making their way back into the harbour and i don't know it's new port just encapsulates everything that really excites me like i love the ocean i love learning about the ocean i love marine science there's the haphield marine science center here so there's world class research happening in this tiny town yeah what is it like when kiko comes

to town well you know he had a huge procession that said for wealth to him from Mexico City and there was a sizable crowd here new port but it is a small town and there's uh so it wasn't as many people but i think that actually like for David Phillips i think he was a lot more comfortable with that he wanted to keep things a little more low key oh yeah and he and kiko arrives he goes from the the airport to the aquarium they put him in his brand new fancy tank but there's still non enough money

“that's very stressful i imagine to be running out of budget because you have a whale you have to”

keep feeding now yeah any by bad he's eating a lot yes specifically the budget for the tank itself that was gonna all be paid for by the free willy kiko foundation again they were short some money for that specifically i feel like if i'm like show Hollywood i would just go to like a dodger's game and just like ask the people in my row just like passed down and memo pad and be like will you pledge some money to the free willy thing right down how much and then like right

like a congregation and a church like passing down the offering plate yeah yeah i mean i think that's basically what David Phillips was doing it was just they it just didn't happen fast enough is my understanding and the thing is they were building it and they knew they were short of the money but there was so much pressure to finish it from the public and from kids that the contractor didn't want to be the bad guy in the situation so they were like okay we'll finish this project

even though you always like literally like a few million dollars like i can't imagine finishing

a project where i'm owed that much money like i almost actually pretty generous of them

the the whale situation i hope well and also if they didn't finish kako's tank kako's health was deteriorating in Mexico City and so they kept saying like he's not gonna last much longer

and what's the issue with his health because we haven't talked about that since the first episode

i don't think i mean overall he just wasn't thriving that's gonna have HPV or whale PV whale papillama virus he's got the papillama virus so it was a skin condition and it was really bad in Mexico City and in part of that was to do with the temperature of the water in his tank

“it just kind of allowed the virus to thrive and get out of control and i believe it was having”

a negative effect on his immune system so anyway they they finished the project but then David Phillips is like oh my god i have so much money that we owe these people and that's where

Philips approached Craig McCaw again and Craig McCaw is like all right i will give more money

to this project but this is the deal i want to make the Oregon coast aquarium will give a percentage of its sales to the free Willy kako foundation and he also pressured Warner Brothers to hold up an end of a of an agreement where brothers did say they were gonna contribute some money but at some point they kind of backed out of the deal and then so anyway McCaw made sure that they were going to honor their end of an oral agreement and then McCaw said if i'm gonna be like

“basically bankrolling this project from now on i'm gonna be the chair of the board of the free”

Willy kako foundation and so then therefore he would have a lot more say and control over how the project was going to be executed this was quite the big shift for the free Willy kako foundation so David Phillips was the executive director of the board before and so okay David Phillips was like okay i guess i'm going to hand over leadership of this conservation project to a billionaire so Craig McCaw is like it's my money it's my show yeah he he wanted to have a lot more control

which is like until one degree understandable and right to another degree stupid because he's not a scientist right there's a lot of people that start to get involved with the leadership of this project that are not they're not scientists and they're not animal behaviorists they're not trainers there's a lot of like documentary filmmakers and that sort of thing going into it and it's like that's that in itself isn't a bad thing but sometimes the goals are not aligned yeah

okay i mean not to like even accuse anyone of shaving us but if you're making a documentary if you're trying to create media you have some degree of interest in interesting things continuing to happen yes exactly that you might feel pressure to shape the story a certain way based on the needs of your industry right exactly you know has led to someone fortunate outcomes on the past yeah the documentary filmmakers or the people with that kind of leaning they wanted to

make sure they documented the Hollywood story of kako yes swimming off with his family and so their priorities were not aligned with the priorities of the people that kind of understood more of how a reintroduction process would take place and it's not a one-in-done kind of thing and with that shift of the leadership of the board of the foundation from an environmentalist leaning to a more kind of capitalist perspective other members of the board began to

become a little uneasy of whether the foundation was going to remain true to its goals of the rehabilitation and release some of the people on the board felt like maybe Craig McCott and his underlings were maybe secretly in kuits with sea world and they were just going to try to

“get to take a back-and-to-sea world somehow that's what would happen in the right”

and where fish show for sure yeah so people were like why why does this guy even want to help kako and it might have been mostly his wife meant Wendy McCott even later on in the story when Craig McCott kind of ducks out Wendy McCott stayed involved with a project so there's just some skepticism about what his motivations were yeah to speak about skepticism I guess it's just fair to say that like when someone has enough money to exert control over a project

that kind of always puts everyone in a precarious position even if they make great decisions the whole

a situation of this kind of especially coming in kind of later in the day is just like it creates

“the potential for someone not being able to be overridden basically and I think in a way that's”

always worry some regardless of who's playing that role yeah even though there's a board and it's

supposed to be this sort of democratic structure Kenneth Brower the author of free in kako his analogy was that it operated a bit like the Roman Senate under Julius Caesar so it was like yeah we're all making this decision together but everyone's kind of looking at Craig McCott every time like but what do you want to do like whale succession yeah exactly how well how is how's like for kako at the aquarium what's this chapter like from his perspective yeah this is I think something really

positive to focus on in this story is kako's health really improves during his day at the Oregon Kako's aquarium so he has this much much much larger tank where he can actually dive all the way down and is it completely submergence self do laps around the tank it just is really substantially larger than his tank in in Mexico it has actual sea water pumped in from equina bay and the temperature is a much more pleasant temperature for a killer whale the sea temperatures around here I think are like

in the like 40s in the winter and then maybe in the low 50s in the summer something like that

“that's why we don't swim in the ocean or you wear a wetsuit that too but yeah it's it's called”

it's roll called even with a wetsuit I imagine it's pretty freaking cold yes because you still get your your poor little face in your hands or in contact with the ocean yeah you'd be surprised I mean I go surfing here and I mean I do wear gloves and and booties too because my I mean my hands and feet are just cold all the time anyway but perfect for a killer whale yes perfect for a killer whale because this is like literally I mean are there ever killer whales off the actual Oregon

coast historically is this like where he would like to normally be there are the Southern resident killer whales occasionally make their way down here nice it's not super common but during the winter I think a little trip yeah they take a little trip there's also the big transit killer whales

“and then offshore whales hmm some other groups that live further offshore they're different like”

culturally then Southern resident killer whales is so good they are primarily marine mammal eaters like they hunt other marine mammals so they'll go after seals and sea lions and they can be spotted off of Oregon okay so this is like he's in something that like is at least much closer to his habitat yes still being captivity it's way better than being at 7200 feet elevation in the middle of the desert which is where it was in Mexico City and a small enclosure that gave him the

curly fin yeah yeah and so like that virus that he had on his fins that is starting to clear up like the cold water I guess alone just kind of helps keep the virus at bay and then of course he's gained like really good veterinary care at this point too so they're doing everything because part of his eventual conditions for release those involved with the project are going to have to convince the government agencies that they have to you know apply for a permit from that

kko is in good enough health to be released and they can't ethically release him if he's like really dependent on veterinary care on medicine or whatever it is so part of this middle stage between

Mexico and Iceland was bringing him back up to health right so he's gonna rehab basically essentially

yeah rehabilitation and release were to the main concepts of this project a rehabilitation was a big part of it and I would say that they really did that successfully at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and once his health started to return they started to introduce a program to get him trained up to exhibit wild behaviors again hmm so what tell me what tell me more about that because what what was he like that told them that he wasn't showing wild behaviors and what those look like that they

were trying to teach them well I I know one of them specifically was they were working on his

diving time like he just wasn't I mean it was basically impossible for him too yeah I know he's

couldn't really dive hardly at all in Mexico see and this is again we are doing the thing we're talking

about we're he's like an adult male predator and we're like he's our baby boy I know we just we want to

“see him do well and we're like oh I think I know what you need and yeah it's it's really hard to just”

not naturally do that even just talking about him in hindsight but yeah he couldn't hardly dive at all in Mexico so that was one thing they he needs to be able to dive and like he's all out of practice hold his breath for longer they wanted to uh sorry it's so cute I know he's on like a little training program he's a meta is working his way up to tadpole and then after a few more

levels he'll be at himself they wanted to improve his stamina because wild orcas swim a lot

he'll be surprised to know I guess they would have to do they do they swim well they're sleeping has that work yeah so for citations for dolphins and whales how they sleep in a nutshell is a sleep with half of their brain at a time so they will I don't think enough people talk about it because it is really cool so you're learning to be a science communicator and this is a great context because you like how to explain this to somebody whose kids are yelling right now

which is the condition under which perhaps you are listening to this right at this moment yeah if your kids are shouting at you because they want another waffle so yeah the whales and dolphins

“they sleep with half of their brain at a time because this is the important thing when a whale”

or dolphin needs to breathe they have to think about it right oh right I mean we can kind of switch between consciously controlling our breath you know like we do when we're meditating or whatever right or you can go the whole day without thinking about breathing yes you could go for some experience yeah but a whale as you can imagine cannot they have to think about every breath that they take so if they sleep they can't completely go unconscious because well the way that

their brains wired to their lungs they would actually just I guess stop breathing because they're being no part of the brain telling them to breathe so they have to keep one hand a half of their

brain alert so that they can continue swimming to the surface and I've never understood why people

think that like God and evolution are sexually counterintuitive ideas because if you believe in God surely you can believe in a God who invented whales and it was like and then half at a time I don't know I got I really painted myself into a corner with this one yeah you made the whale and it is like angel assistant is like oh wow beautiful beautiful work um just one thing

“and then he gets through as his world's best God mug but honestly what he came up with is pretty cool”

like you know how this very sleep being is a pretty pretty cool adaptation and then it's like is that semi-consciousness from when I understand the half of their brain that's a sleep is something called slow wave sleep I believe and the half of their brain that's awake I can't imagine that it's super alert and when pods of dolphins and whales or like killer whales are sleeping they'll like sleep together it'll be like nap time and they'll you know kind of swim

close to each other their petoral fins might be touching each other so they're like you know they're keeping an eye out but they're also collectively sleeping at the same time and the other thing that I think is interesting about uni hemispheric sleep which I think that's the term that I read in a paper is that dolphins and whales citations they don't go into REM sleep ever like the deep sleep they just don't do it which to sleep scientists is interesting because it was thought that

REM sleep is necessary for proper brain function like you need that deep sleep right but apparently whales and dolphins don't so I make sense don't think about it you know because humans also can't live in the ocean and eat fish the whole time yeah whales and dolphins are just multitasking all the time and they're doing a great job okay so so Kiko is it is at the aquarium the aquarium is Sandra Lee would say and I would I would love for us to talk about the the

and what that was like for you personally as a dolphin girl yeah so if you as a listener go to

“my patreon page for the podcast that I'm making about this story I have posted a couple pictures”

of me and my mom and my sister and we're standing in front of the take and Kiko is right there he looks like he's photo shopped in he's just posing perfectly for this photo he's like yeah that'll be five bucks and I remember this from visiting Kiko he was so engaged with people I will get my

story out of the way which is that I was on my class feels her to see Kiko and second grade it was a

huge deal we like got to school at like seven and we got back at like seven p.m or something like that because it's like you know two and a half hour drive from home and I would say or at least two hours and I remember buying a book in the gift shop about bats and I remember the gift shop having that very 90s thing where there was like a bunch of tiny TVs all arranged and like a grid on a wall in a store and they each had a part of the same picture so they all became like a giant screen

“but like one that was made out of little TVs. I think I do yeah yeah and I remember this is so silly”

but it's also so cute I was like everyone's got got for Kiko I'm gonna show I'm not like other girls

by Noryn Kiko and I think truly I felt that I was gonna be like Bella Swan for Kiko you know I was like I must distinguish myself to which Kiko because secretly I love Kiko so much I didn't know what to do yeah and now I realize that like whales and men are simple creatures and you really just have to you know just be direct as you were and so and so you don't know that he was interactive and that's I don't know that's so cool yeah no this is this is something that came up for many

people as well that I talked to just how much Kiko was engaged with people at the aquarium in this like underwater viewing area and how much he like preferentially liked to engage with the kids that visited him like how could you even imagine a better whale to cast in this role and what was that engagement like for him I mean from what I understand he he just he would hang out at the window where you could see him and he would just watch you so like kids would be like doing silly things

he's kissed an extrovert he was I mean he is funny he's an extrovert in that way in terms of like the skills he needed to be a wild whale and engage with other whales he was much more introverted it's that that classic thing where humans I think we feel deficient in how far we've got in away from animals in the way we live and we want animals to include us and then we make them worse at surviving among their own yeah and like kids loved him the public loved him I have a video

that I would love to share with you yeah please do let's do it it'll bring you back to this time

“oh my god visiting cakeo at the aquarium yeah yeah I remember that viewing area yeah and it's like you”

know where you would see seals I think normally where do you kind of go into this almost theater type environment yeah there he is he's hanging out by the glass and the kids attacking the glass I mean they're holding up little toys of him to the glass coming to cakeos get well party today we're having a cakeos go on party so there's this lady with a big check and I think it's a donation from metal so metal made a Barbie oh my god yeah metal knows what's good we really wanted to help

too so we created ocean fence Barbie and unfortunately the proceeds from ocean fence Barbie will go towards cakeos recovery so I'm very happy today to present you Beverly on the half of ocean fence Barbie and everyone at Matel this donation for $500,000 for the continuation of cakeos rehabilitation yeah but cakeos just hanging out yeah he's watching he's like what do you go to yeah I talked to someone here the Oregon coast aquarium is down by Yacuna Bay and you can see

cakeos tank was not in the ground it was all above ground so it was like you know like the biggest above ground pool you can imagine and if you walked along the bay you could like look towards the aquarium and you could possibly see him like jumping out of my tank and I'm like what that would be an

amazing yeah I mean I'm glad that we made the attempt to put him back in the wild but it would

it captures that moment in time of visiting him at the aquarium and another fun story that someone told

“me about why cakeos was so engaged with people in the underwater viewing area is that so in free”

Willie with movie magic they made it look like there is an underwater viewing area where they filmed it in Mexico City but that didn't exist in Mexico City they didn't have that actually so

when cakeo came to Oregon coast aquarium that was the first time that he had been in a place like

that where he could like look at people and I'm sure he was like whoa this is different oh you guys are underwater like you're not usually underwater well and yeah the person that mentioned that they think that that was part of his curiosity and where that interest came from was it was just new it was novel to him yeah he was gaining weight he was his health was improving and then like they mentioned he was eating fish and one of the biggest points of contention in the cakeo project

was whether cakeo was successfully eating live fish or not so they started this process at the

Oregon coast aquarium of teaching cakeo to eat live fish so this was something that they were

this is one of the criteria for release to the wild that he could they could demonstrate that he could hunt live fish and eat live fish and be able to sustain himself that way which makes a lot of

“sense like of course like you need to be if you're going to be wild again you're going to have to be”

able to feed yourself it is a little funny to think that we thought we had the capability of teaching in apex predator like a killer whale yeah how to hunt hubris and really yeah so you're family we put it at up so it's not only it's only a matter of time until they see it on the paper right and it's not to say that I think it was wrong to try I just know you know like I'm glad we did I'm glad we tried but yeah we might have been a little aspirational well it's

like people are going to stock shake about you know the kind of optimism of the 90s or the way we see that now and one of the counterpoints to that is that just because your optimistic doesn't mean you're right yeah and we need that optimism but you know it's complicated as we've mentioned many times yes and I we're going to keep getting into that so so how long is he at the Oregon coast of Kray I'm going to guess like is it like three years yeah about three years so he arrived in 1996 and then

Kgo's making improvements over the next few years and the next big step is like okay we got to figure out where he's going to go next right and you would think oh he's he went to Iceland they

always thought he was going to go to Iceland that's not true they actually had a couple of other

places in mind too which I won't go into two-minute detail on but they were looking at Ireland and they weren't looking at Scotland at one point Iceland was actually the last place they wanted to go for a few different just logistical reasons and also the fact that Iceland culturally especially at that time was a pro-wailing nation and so they just thought that Iceland was not going to be cool with the idea of this whole project in general Iceland also had some history

with environmental activists specifically Greenpeace activists there's this really wild story of some Greenpeace activists sinking a couple of boats in a harbor that were commercial wailing boats back in the 70s or 80s yeah Greenpeace will well fuck up your boat yeah from what I understand yeah and so David Phillips and a couple other people they went to Iceland to you know Shmoos the right people they talked about Prime Minister they talked to the minister fisheries and they got a

few different mixed messages you can imagine like the minister of fisheries which I believe that encapsulated the wailing industry at the time he was not a fan and made it very clear that if anything I people in his kind of world and personality he was inclined to say things like

“you should just butcher kko that's the kind of humor that sometimes doesn't translate very well”

no it doesn't I well and I don't even think he was making a joke I think he was actually fairly serious well come on yeah so there's yeah there was some conflicting sentiments about kko but then David Phillips spoke to the Prime Minister and Prime Minister was really on board there was this shift in Iceland as well at the time of people recognizing like hey we can still like make money on whales

American industry we're taking them in our ways yeah yeah that saga is I do find pretty

“interesting and Icelandic saga if you will some people in comments are like Sarah you missed”

this pun you could have made and I'm like I know I know I know I know and you're you're really good at it Sarah like I saw so many of these you know yeah yeah I know we can't get them all unfortunately my one of silence for the puns we didn't do you know poor one out for the puns the other thing about Iceland of course is that the narrative of this whole endeavor the most satisfying ending is for kko to go back to Iceland like it might have been a little weird to be like

and now he lives in Ireland right he's not from there but it's learning to love fishing ships yeah and Guinness he's uh yeah he's now now loves the Irish but even though there's all these things also Iceland was like the weather is just really difficult to deal with there's a language barrier so just logistically it was going to be challenging there's just like a lot of logistical things that where it was not appealing to people right and so Philips putting on his media campaign hat

from back in the day of like oh this could be an opportunity to shift hearts and minds in Iceland too nice of one of the few remaining whaling nations in the world this is our Tom Hanks character and he can't be stopped as we know he can't no he's he's very very persistent so David Philips and his colleague Katherine Hanley they were the pro Iceland team and then there was another team with Jeff Foster who was another trainer he was a former sea world trainer that got involved

with the project and he went and scouted out Scotland in Ireland and he was very pro uh

“Scotland in Ireland and what happened is that they presented their cases to the board and remember”

Craig McCaw is the uh executive director of the board so I built Paxton yeah and David Philips is making his case for Iceland. Jeff Foster is making his case for Scotland in Ireland and I'll just read this from Kenneth Broward's book David Philips had noticed that when McCaw came out in favor of something suddenly all his corporate people were enthusiastically for it too oh no as meeting progressed Philips glanced at McCaw occasionally trying to gauge the billionaires mood I don't understand

McCaw broken finally Kiko is from Iceland and we're thinking of bringing him somewhere else

when Jeff Foster started to explain the logistical difficulties McCaw broken again no no no we're bringing him to Iceland this is why I don't do group projects yeah right Philips Hanley a doctor Cornell who's a veterinarian tried to not look at one another and they fought to stifle grins they had expected to have to battle fiercely for Iceland but the fight was over before it began so it was just funny because there was so because some of which got out of it yeah

of locations yeah okay and then and then a guy is like hey what if we send him to Iceland I like the sound of that basically yeah and that's the world we we live in in a big way now right where it's like right kind of at the mercy of the whims of billionaires and even when they happen to be right maybe it's still like well it's just so uncomfortable how we got here yeah I've noticed that you know I've been working with a few non-profits and then you know I work for a public radio

station and it does feel like there's this shift of okay all the grants are kind of drying up so now we kind of figure out where all the rich people are and to be fair you had to know that before

“but now it's just like you have to rely on that even more you have to rely on the whims”

and interests of rich people and then let them transfuse the blood of our first born children

into their desiccating bodies or whatever yeah yeah it's a it's not a great system for getting things done unless you have really binding contracts I guess I mean when people call something medieval which of course is like a very oversimplified term and really we shouldn't do more episodes of the show about like what the Middle Ages were actually like yeah and what we're wrong about which I'm sure was the coolest of it but that like what we're really referring to is this I

think idea that we have of how the Middle Ages function which is of course true to an extent just not in every way and without nuance where I think one of the things we're describing is the concept of might making right right and this idea that I think the way that a lot of people have to distinguish today from what we feel to be kind of the darker intellectually ages of you know various periods of history is that you can no longer theoretically use the elected god given power of the

monarchy to try to stop science from proving what it absolutely does right like the enlightenment

has progressed and only happens if we continue to protect actual scientific findings from being changed

by people who have a master lot of power and don't like it yeah we live in very weird times but

“it's not actually something that we haven't seen before and I think that we've been unfortunately”

perhaps rolled into a false sense of security that those days were behind us and now we have like all these institutions and that's the thing about growing in the 90s people are moving whales around you're like well god I guess those are kind of figured out and then you grow up and you're like I have great no we we gotta we gotta keep an eye on everybody yeah we sure do we get to do together yeah okay so so we have I guess the random rich guy whim that happens to go with what the kind of

some of the experts on this team are wanting to do anyway which is always nice when that happens

yeah and it aligned well at the time so it was fine and they were like cool we're going to Iceland we're taking Kaka to Iceland and I just love this little story where two of the board members

“went to Iceland to scout out locations like of course I knew Iceland but like where in Iceland”

are they going to put it yeah they had a couple of different ideas David Phillips and Katherine Handley had a couple of different places they had in mind but a couple of board members went and they ended up in the Westman Islands which is a little island off the southern coast of Iceland or a few islands off the southern coast of Iceland famous for a volcanic eruption that happened in the early 80s I believe but they were like okay well this place has a harbor and you know they have an airport so we

can get Kaka here and they have facilities and all that so it seems like it'd be a good good location and they go out with a guide in the bay and what's called "Clet's Fick Bay" which is where Kaka will end up eventually and they go out on the boat and I'm just imagining them in their suits because even now I'm sure they didn't I just imagine board members and like the lawyer and Jurassic Park yeah yeah and the guide takes them out and so this bay has these I've seen pictures it's got this

amazing rock wall feature it from the you know many volcanic eruptions that have happened over the

millennia and it's just like this really high flat kind of enclosed space or concave space at the north end of this bay and so they're kind of scouting out the bay and the guide takes them over there and the guys like hey check this out and he opens up a case on the boat and the board members are like oh what's he gonna do it opens it up and there's a saxophone inside but and he proceeds to play amazing grace on his saxophone wow and it's like echoing off the rock

walls and that's when these two board members are look at each other and they're like yep this is the place this is a story from Kenneth Broward's bucket I don't know it's hard for me to confirm whether that actually happened but I just love it so much why would anyone make that up exactly why they anyway so we're about to bring Kiko to Iceland they sort of scouted it out and thought oh this looks like a nice this could suit our needs there's it's a big bay

it's pretty protected there's a small harbor but a really small town nearby so there's services and places for staff to stay and all that sort of thing hmm right and what are their needs and like how like what level of staff are we talking about here like maybe this is a good time to talk about what their goals are exactly so there's gonna be the large sea pin that where Kiko is gonna stay inside the bay in the Clezfick Bay you're gonna need food for Kiko so there's gonna need to be

a warehouse with like hundreds of pounds of frozen fish accessible daily for him staff were rotated in and out of Iceland they were staying within whatever the labor immigration laws were for Iceland at the time so staff were on a three-month rotation as you can imagine there's not many people in Iceland that know how to train a killer whale or have done any kind of killer whale husbandry there's probably been a handful but not many it's probably not that many

“in any country to be honest and that's the whole problem yes I think actually yeah the U.S. kind of”

had that market at the time because we were the ones who decided to abuse killer whales to begin with right and they were like well crap we got to learn how to keep these guys alive a little bit longer yeah yeah and you know I mean it was once killer whale started to be in

training that was appealing to people like well this is like this is like a question I was

“have about Jurassic Park right we're like how many times have you seen Jurassic Park a few okay”

I've probably seen it like between 30 and 50 times okay not that many times not to brag I'm not bragging or anything I'm not ashamed and I'm not proud to quote Arlo Guthrie but there's a part because you know the premise is that they're calling in Samuel and Lordearn it's like the preeminent paleontologist and paleo botanists in their fields or possibly Samuel is the preeminent paleontologist and Lordearn this is his girlfriend but she seems good at what she does and I mean not to

insult her abilities we just don't get any sense of her having a reputation it would have actually

been nice yeah but that there's that sick triceratops that they're treating like a you know dark

who got into the garbage right because she ate something she shouldn't have like the pupils who dilated and they have like a vet on staff at Jurassic Park which hasn't opened yet being like no the triceratops don't eat though African lilac berries eat their toxic but that's all right

“and you're like and my first question honestly is like where did they hire this guy like they”

didn't bring in the preeminent paleontologist like consultant dinosaur health but they did find someone else do you see what I'm saying where it's because if you're like going to start a dinosaur theme park like how do you find people to take care of the dinosaurs right exactly because people can't even find vets for their chameleons have the time like right now and that's a lot more modest of a need yeah so I feel like that has bearing with with the cake of a thing where it's like

yeah it's worth remembering as you're saying that like this is a field that didn't basically

exist maybe like 30 years before this was happening it seems like right and of course there's been large animal veterinarians for a long time but you know a whale is on a different scale and then

“every species has their own physiological needs yeah because horses aren't giant and aquatic and they”

couldn't eat a great white shark probably right okay so they so they decided on Iceland for good and random reasons right yeah how does this go for kko well okay so obviously the next step in this huge project is to now bring kko to Iceland which they did once again with a plane and once again kko had a farewell procession from new port and a welcoming procession in Iceland he's like the royal family he just does he there's special little guy yeah yes he has a

welcoming committee everywhere he goes as he can imagine when he gets to Iceland I mean there's a huge amount of media presence there the community is like in a lot of places kind of divided between the older generation and the younger generation so the kids are just stoked to have kko there yeah and of course the older generation is more like what are these Americans doing this is I think Kenneth Broward said that the Icelanders found the Americans enthusiasm off putting

you know which again Americans are the most enthusiastic people in the world we are now yes yeah well okay so two questions what is the goal here right because we're bringing him to Iceland yeah but what do people want to do and our is there kind of disagreement already about how how this is supposed to play out and is like one person in charge of this or is it like a group effort where people are you know it's where it's not necessarily clear if there's

a leader or something yeah so what I have gleaned from the reading and the research that I've done is that so far up until Iceland there's been this very clear almost like a narrative arc to this project of moving forward and yeah there's little challenges along the way but we still manage to make forward progress and then Iceland there's still forward progress but it's it gets a whole lot messier and that is because there's just differing opinions on the way to go

about this next stage of the project where the goal is to release Kiko back to the wild and in essence it seems like oh yeah we know what that means but when you start to really tease that apart of like okay well what does that look like for Kiko right and this idea of finding his family which is right clear or his pod I guess which it seems like it's no one can really say how they're going to do it exactly yeah so like actually I have a question for you Sarah if you were in charge

try to tell you ever like that it was kind of Spain for 15 minutes right well I guess yeah my question is if you were going to try to define what successful release for Kiko would look like what comes to mind for you well it's tricky you know because I do feel like I mean I don't know because I'm not in this field at all I've dealt mostly in in pop culture we're very much armchair quarterbacks for this yeah

but it feels like having an animal who has lived captive for perhaps basically his whole adult life

that maybe there is an open question still at this point of whether being in the wild is what's best for him because it does also seem like he's become extremely social with humans and acclimated extremely well with them and also it also seems like he hasn't had that many opportunities to socialize with other killer whales no and so I feel like if I were in charge of this I would leave I would maybe kind of like see the first perhaps like 12 months as like a research period where

we're going to attempt to gather whatever data we feel is potentially relevant to the question of whether his best quality of life is being released and living with our humans or whether

he knows how to live that way or would thrive that way anymore and I'll of course obviously I kind

“of I have a feeling based on what I think I remember that I wish Kiko had been around for a longer”

because he's not with us anymore not that he would be listening to a podcast if he was but um yeah and I guess we're going to get at the end to kind of maybe what you think about all this yeah that would be my concern because I do feel like perhaps we haven't really tried to do this before I mean have that have we released other killer whales to the wild in the past at this point in time I've come across some stories of releases but I think one of the main points and and whether

those were actually successful or are not is unclear to me because like they weren't tracking yeah after words right so yeah that's not really informative I don't thank really yeah and I could be wrong like if someone out is out there like well you didn't know about this um yeah there could be one that I'm not for where it's actually and she lived for 13 years and became a mother now be nice to hear I am aware of a release project that happened after Kiko

that actually involved some of the same people involved uh with this project and it was successful but there was a couple of really key differences one this young whale who was named springer

“she was uh or he I believe was a part of the southern resident killer whale population”

he was only in human care for like a couple of months I believe oh yeah that's like how my parents took care of a picture for a month one time yeah yeah yeah like I don't think that picture had time to forget how to be a pigeon right and I know anything about pigeons right if someone is an expert on pigeons like please let us know about pigeon memory I assume it's got to actually

be pretty good because if you think about homing pigeons like they never forgot how to get back to

where they're from so yeah I'm sure pigeons are like it's it's one of those species where we kind of dismiss their intelligence but I'm sure they do things all the time that would happen that that means they can do word or anything but you know right because I also speak in the anthropomorphizing I feel like we want animal intelligence to manifest the same way human intelligence does and it's like no they're intelligent and so many different and frankly

“better ways than us you know yeah I think it's hard for us to comprehend that something we're always”

thinking of intelligence as this hierarchical thing and we're at the top right because that's comforting for us because we're so crispy crunchy peanut butter you knew goodie delicious to all the other big animals yeah but it's probably just more of a difference in types of intelligence more than right or you know adaptation to your environment yeah you you as a species you adapt specifically to your environment and there's with things that we probably just can't even understand yeah and I

feel like it's probably like you know when you're like learning animal trivia as a kid or at least when you when I work kids not every kid does this but it's I think probably most it's just fun where you learn you just like the trivia about animals like who can leap the farthest proportional to their size and it's actually a flea and who has the biggest penis and it's a barnacle because he has to reach the other barnacles I'm sure you have you seen that video I saw that video

and so I feel like maybe you can also measure intelligence in terms of like who is best adapted to their circumstances and it would not be humans it would probably be like razor clams or something

“like that yeah I mean when I think of the notion of like different of animals with different”

types of intelligence I always think of are you familiar with mantis shrimp yes a little bit but

tell us about mantis shrimp like the the peacock I think it's peacock mantis shrimp is one of the species but they're this shrimp I mean they almost they're they're large I'd say they're like I don't know almost like the size of like a rodent like a rat or something and yeah you know well they're I think rats are cute so no I like rats too because the the idea of a shrimp the size of a rat is like troups that's gross oh that's fair that's fair but they're incredibly colorful

and they've done a few different experiments measuring their quantum quote intelligence and they are like very smart I just remember at my college where he did my undergrad there was actually

a mantis shrimp in the zoology lab and he just always got the eerie sense like you know there's animals

that'll kind of like look at you as you walk by but it really felt like the mantis shrimp was really looking at you and like really observing what you were doing it was kind of spooky but also very cool and also another thing with mantis shrimp is that the spectrum of colors that they can see

“is way beyond what we can see I think they can see in like infrared and ultraviolet and all these”

other spectrums of the light wavelength they're missing out on so much yeah and how would that affect how you move through the world and how you interact with the world and whether you stare at Brianna yeah like what if I'm giving off some crazy ultraviolet light and I'm just not even aware of it I don't know what if that mantis shrimp is like the little girl in the exercise and that's like you're gonna die up there that is kind of the vibe I got from it

honestly just kind of felt like that mantis shrimp knew things like I love thinking about you having this kind of like ongoing like nemesis really I'm with a shrimp I spent a lot of time in that zoology lab I had to I was the TA for for zoology and I would be grading like papers and and quizzes and

“that manuscript was just always watching me so it's just never you know just like what happened”

with that Dutch woman in boquito except with the mantis shrimp I felt like I was trying to avoid eye contact it's like someone staring at you really intensely right no look you're your boquito in this situation and the mantis shrimp is Dutch woman okay so anyway all right back to cake that's okay so we have kind of precedent for like or I guess after the fact we're like humans have released a couple of work as back to the wild but perhaps not one who's you know at this

point spent like close to 20 years in captivity it's just like right yeah yeah I mean he what year is it we're so when we go to Iceland it's 1998 and he was yeah he was born in 78 and then caught a couple years after that so yeah he's been in captivity for about 20 years that's a very very long time for an animal or a human to be institutionalized in some way and yeah and so there was amongst the people involved and the staff involved there were a lot of

different ideas and feelings about how to approach this next stage of the project and I will say that when they first got to Iceland it was acknowledged fairly quickly like hey we don't have we don't really have the expertise to do this we don't have a lot of people that have worked extensively with killer whales on our staff we have a couple of people but they wanted to have additional staff that had that specialized experience because some of the people that were

involved in training with Kaco at the Oregon Coast Aquarium they had never had any experience with

a citation whether it was a dolphin or a killer whale because contrary to a star trek for there are many captive citations bigger than dolphins yeah human history yeah no I'd say killer whales are the largest ones that we've been able to quote unquote successfully having captivity though you know they're survival rates or on average lower

is I don't know I wouldn't say it was I can hear you saying successful in quotes yeah okay

“so yeah so there's just kind of not really enough people with much experience it seems like”

right and you know this is a very unique project there wouldn't be a lot of people on the planet that could really pull this off that's like starting a space program it's like you don't start

the first space program and then try and hire people who work in previous space programs because

you there isn't yeah that so it seems like you kind of have to cobble something together based on existing fields partly yeah and that's a good point because there are people that have worked with killer whales at this point but they are a part of an industry that people involved with this project are very uncomfortable with people are really uncomfortable with sea world and their motivations right and so I totally I understand like I don't think it was

necessarily a bad gut feeling to have for people involved with the project but they did recognize

that they needed some people who really understood how to train killer whales because that's

essentially what they were going to have to do with kko which is kind of funny what were they training him to do and what was the kind of because it's like if you break it down into steps so he's in the sea pen which is like yeah does that have like netting underwater to keep him in or what's what does that look like yeah so on the island where there is cletsfic bay where they ended up setting up shop they installed a sea pen which you could I don't know if you're

“familiar with salmon farms but I believe the concept is not very much there are about”

there are people listening who even don't can't even visualize a salmon farm essentially you have a platformer a dock out on the water and then yeah basically a net hanging down and the net would hang down to the sea floor and it was a large area believe it was larger than his tank at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and there's the platforms where the trainers could interact with kko do any you know veterinary care that sort of thing so that was going to be where

he started and there is a key point of that too is that when kko arrived in an island there were

permits that the project had to apply for with the National Marine Fishery Service in the United States I guess because he was an American well yeah I guess maybe he became an actualized US citizen like Johnny five I guess yeah maybe kko had a few passports at this point I don't know but he there was a permit that had to be filed with the National Marine Fishery Service which is the service that manages marine mammals in the US and I believe because even though he was going

Icelandic waters he was leaving US jurisdiction and it was a US project and then part of that though was that kko had to meet some criteria before he was released so he couldn't just they couldn't just put him into the bay without any kind of barrier it wasn't it wasn't next step but there were some things with some of his training and showing that he was feeding himself and showing that he wasn't continuing to improve in health and not rely on veterinary care and that he was

demonstrating that he was not relying on people nearly as much and there's a few other criteria as well but all of these things needed to be met in order for kko to then actually be

“released to the wide open ocean so that's why they couldn't just plop them in the bay and see how he”

does oh and with the veterinary care an important point with that is you know let's say that three times fast what's importantly they had lines one cell papes newsy cell papes also go on I love you my oldest friends we too but they wanted to make sure he was healthy also not just to show that he wasn't relying on people for health care but that he wouldn't pass anything on to wild whales that was a concern and that was like a concern with that papaloma virus that he had according to

the veterinarian doctor Lanny Cornell he said that that virus has been shown in other populations of wild whales it's just kind of present kind of like HPV is in humans I guess and how extreme it got was mostly dependent on kko's living conditions in Mexico that's why got so bad

they wanted to make sure he was going to be healthy and not introduce some weird pathogen to the

wild population of whales yeah so that's a first stage of Iceland as he's in a sea pin they bring

in some new staff that have been evolved with killer whale training at sea world notably a pair named Robin Friday and Mark Simmons and there's two main books you can buy about kko one was called freeing kko by Kenneth Brower and I've been citing his beautiful book um a lot during these episodes and then the other book was written by Mark Simmons and it is called killing kko so you can imagine that Mark Simmons was not pleased with how the end of the project went and he decided

to write a whole book about it Mark Simmons is not going to make you wait until the epilogue to let

you know what he thinks yeah I appreciate that and author yeah and you know like Mark Simmons has his

very particular point of view and his role in the project and his book is is also really well written

“and he obviously has a lot of experience he started working with orcas at sea world I believe when”

he was 18 like he just went straight into it out of high school apparently and he really values the science of animal behavior and understanding animal training from that perspective and as like a particular skill set and field that has its own body of literature and you know best practices and that was the attitude that he and his colleague Robin Friday brought to the project they

actually had recently left sea world and they were starting a consulting business probably the most

niche consulting business you could think of where they're providing their services to other zoos and aquariums on animal training and I suspect also like specifically for killer whale training so they were brought on to the project and because they were former sea world traders there was some skepticism among some of the staff of like what their motivations were but from what I can gather from Mark Simmons book and also from interviewing him like they very much believed in this

endeavor of releasing cakeo to the wild they just had a very particular approach that they wanted to use and from what I understand they were very systematic it was like if Spark

“I think and I believe Mark Simmons used that comparison in this book if Spark were to”

run this project like what he and Robin Friday noticed when they arrived on the project was that they're the impression I get from what how he describes it is that they're just didn't seem to be many systems in place in terms of like how we're going to interact with cakeo what kind of reinforcement and animal training strategies are we going to use having it very clear like who's interacting with him and who's not he he wrote in the book that when they they arrived on the project that they

felt like anyone in the vicinity that was involved with the project could just walk out to the platform and interact with cakeo and that that was counterintuitive to what the goal of the project was if they're going to try to limit cakeo's dependency on humans and seek out human attention you're going to need to limit the amount of interaction that he has with people and I totally understand too that that would feel really hard like I would have a hard time with it I don't know

I ignored cakeo I would have been great at this trip they should have hired you Sarah what I don't know wait didn't they I can't believe I didn't like they should have been like

“you should have been like I had a lesson girls with no experience who have ignored cakeo previously”

I would have been off like a shot I right and I would have been the worst candidate because I I probably wouldn't leave cakeo alone to I mean I saw three coyotes on my neighborhood the other night while on a walk and it's very hard when you say a coyote to not go here kitty yeah I mean and especially if it's like an animal that you have a relationship with like in cakeo was a very friendly way like people so this is one of those things where it feels like logic and sentimentality are

a little bit at war where and is that what they're saying in terms of like dependent on humans

there's the issue of food too like cakeo right at this point has been relying on humans for food for his entire life and part of it was just the the relationship aspect of it they wanted him to learn how to seek out the attention of other wild whales and somehow essentially lose interest in people which I understand that that's like yeah that's exactly what needed to happen for this

“project to succeed I think you know hindsight is 2020 and it's easy to be critical from you know”

2026 looking back on this project but that does seem like it was always going to be nearly

impossible and also I'll say that it would have depended on the whale I think that's something that have come across like reading a little bit about animal training and animal and behavior and this is true for people too that you can say like okay this is how the project's going to go we're going to you know limit our interaction with cakeo and then he's just going to slowly lose interest in us and then he's going to move on or whatever and I'm grossly oversimplifying but

I would say that when you're asking an animal trainer like a dog trainer like hey does this approach with that work for training my dog how to you know but for better recall or something

“and I think the sign of a good animal trainer is they'll say well depends on the dog”

depends on the individual you know for some individuals positive reinforcement is all you need like my dog Murphy I barely have to raise my voice and she is cowering in corner and I have to be so careful because she's just such a sensitive little soul and you know and she just needs positive reinforcement because otherwise it just any kind of negative reinforcement I know there's really strong feelings on both sides like I know there's a whole camp of people that really believe

and only positive reinforcement and I'm not here to argue for against it but I'm saying that it just depends on the individual and so for Kaco I think like some of the attitudes about how the release side of things was was going to go could have worked for a different whale right for Kaco what everyone talked about from day one was just like he was just a very affable friendly you know golden retriever of a whale even to the point of being passive and not

showing a lot of motivation I guess and I don't I'm not saying that's like a flaw just if you're looking at Kaco as a whole and whether the approaches they were you know flinging at him or you know trying to see what would work it probably just I don't know I just think it was maybe not going

“to work for him could have worked for somebody else but maybe not for Kaco and I think like a lot”

of people involved with a project and certainly a few the trainers definitely mark Simmons they all expressed their doubts about whether Kaco was going to be able to be successfully introduced to

the wild and so when Simmons and Friday first arrive they kind of shake things up and say all right

we're going to you know what this team and the shape and we're going to there's a new sheriff and town yeah which kind of also according to Mark didn't make for the best camaraderie at times like some of the other people that were involved with the project didn't really love their new approach but part of it was having much stricter protocols about like who's interacting with Kaco and when and what kind of behaviors they're going to work on and reinforce one behavior that Mark said

he had a problem with if something that they started at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and I remember hearing about this as a kid and as a kid it was like oh yeah I guess that makes sense and now is an adult I'm like I kind of see Mark's point so they introduced this thing at the Oregon

Coast Aquarium which they called the innovative behavior and it was basically they just they made

him do Odyssey of the mind no no they wanted him to just do something new and he couldn't repeat it so he could go I don't know breach in the corner he could slap his tail he could do a barrel roll or something but he just like couldn't do the same thing twice in the and the idea like when I heard about it as a kid was well if he's going to be a wild whale he's going to have to be

Mark Simmons and reading his book he was like really all it really does is just confuse Kaco

because what yeah do you think about right because again dogs are very different I know but

“even a dog and I think of dogs as being kind of like the animal that understands humans the most”

really this has had the most time to like you know right I think dogs and humans very much kind of evolve together I can't think of of many dogs that I have known that wouldn't hate that yeah and I don't know if that's even a meaningful thing to bring up but that is what that makes me think of right and and so you bring up a good point that okay if if a reaction from a dog or

a whale is that like oh god I hate it when they tell me to do this or just like I don't know what's

happening I don't know because because again it's like training is about repetition right and if I don't know I feel like training was a concept that made me a little bit uncomfortable and that sort of like born free free is the wind blows kind of sentimental child brain kind of away and I was an adult woman I'm like everyone needs to be trained especially me you know and I like woke up this morning and immediately made my bed and I was like that was some good training I

did on myself like I didn't teach myself how to do that over a very long period yeah and it feels much better to wake up and have like automatic things that your brain does and to be like what do I do right in the morning yeah do I preach do I do I swim on a circle do I do I eat a salmon yeah I that's funny because I feel like that's my New Year's resolution this year is you know quote unquote developing you know healthy habits but it's really training myself yeah you're

just behaving your yourself you're your skinner and the picture all in one right but as you mentioned so like if a dog or whale hates it when they say hey go do something new and you're like I don't know what you want you can see how that would start to incite frustration yeah cakeo actually was starting to demonstrate according to Mark Simmons some behaviors that would say that he was

frustrated and he was developing this thing called a thrashing behavior we're basically he kind of

“tossed his head and I think he's actually started doing that maybe at the Oregon Coast Aquarium”

I'm sorry it's making me picture him with like emo bangs yeah so it should conforms I mean I think cakeo was a little emo he's just a sensitive sensitive little emo kids sensitive boy yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm so sorry right he's listening to his walkman and his pen oh a little emo cakeo and he's already got the right outfit for it too yeah but yeah he started doing this thrashing behavior which Mark said was a a sign of frustration and so Mark and Friday

sort of tried to get the team a little bit more in sync a little more cohesive about what their approach with cakeo was going to be and when one little moment that I loved in his book there's lots of little scenes and as I mentioned before if I was writing a movie about this this is a scene I would include but there's literally a training montage oh my god where Simmons is describing all this okay wait what are you setting okay what song is a set to in your movie and then yeah

tell me what he's doing okay Mark Simmons already told us what the song is what so okay what he got I didn't know you were being so literal you know okay just imagine you know people in like their wetsuits splashes suits out on the dock and they got their whistles you know to to do the bridge when cakeo does a correct behavior cakeos you know jumping out of the water swimming in circles whatever it is so the song that Mark Simmons mentioned in his book was dancing queen by

Abba no yes I mean dancing queen yeah and so he can dance he can jive he's having the time of this life see that whale dig that seed oh oh my god I know it's so perfect but yeah I guess they would actually play that song to like hype up people when they're about to go out on the

“on the water with cakeo because I mean I remember this from watching seaworld trainers like it's”

very you have to be very expressive and you have to be you're like running across you know platforms

you have to get the energy up get people excited and also on top of that Iceland this came up many times in both Browers book and in Mark Simmons books that Iceland is a difficult environment to work in outside as you might be able to imagine it is very very exposed to the harsh north Atlantic winds and storms and they had to be out there every day rain or shine or snow or sleet

got that would have been a good chapstick add oh my god that would have been amazing yes oh my gosh

“I can picture it we should go back and time and picture this idea I think we could make the”

said I I think we could have a butterfly effect yes this is such a side note and it probably makes me sound like Andy Rooney but like I really was annoyed by that TikTok trend that turned into like because everything evolves in meaning you know and gets squishier but where it was like the butterfly effect is crazy because if I hadn't gone to too late then I wouldn't have met my roommate and be in her wedding now and it's like the butterfly effect isn't what colleagues you choose it's like

a butterfly flapping its wings in Indonesia causes you know a hurricane in Houston it's like

well the butterfly effect is crazy because if I hadn't left my chapstick on the subway then I

“wouldn't have ended up playing me me and rent like that's the butterfly effect yeah there's guys”

that kind of split over from us now no I see what you mean though it's it's not yeah just listing a sequence of events it's it's not like back to the future I don't think was like a butterfly effects movie because like when you make a massive choice in your life it actually is kind of predictable that other large changes will happen because of it yeah are the thing if you know the

butterfly the or I guess this is like a separate butterfly metaphor but like the time traveler

butterfly we're like you step on a butterfly and you know the citatious period and it changes the entirety of the future which is a treehouse of horror premise which I know is a parody of something but I don't know what the original is I guess know it because of the treehouse of horror

“because that's how people got their culture like education in the 90s so if we had pitched this”

chapstick ad you might be living in a democracy right now it's hard to know we might yeah yeah but you know what we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna have one again yeah we are it's it's uh we're working on it everyone's you know doing their best right now and we're fighting for it I saw a high school production of newsies last night and the kids are okay the kids are gonna be all right they were singing and dancing about soaking scabs oh wait Sarah you did that which is quintessentially

you and then I went to a marine science film festival and I watched movies about whales yesterday so which is quintessentially woo so we all just we both just had a great Saturday night last night really good yeah do a Saturday night that you tell out your friend about it later they'll be like yeah of course you yeah yeah you'll have a great time and that is our episode thank you so much for listening and we're gonna have the thrilling

conclusion to our trilogy out in one week we can't wait to share it with you thank you for being here thank you for listening thank you to Brianna Bowman for being our guest and art delady thank you to the people who help make this show thank you the Miranda Zickler who is our producer and editor and the Cole Ortiz who is our administrative assistant please make sure to check out Brianna's website you can find it in the show notes and you can find our bonus episodes on Patreon and Apple

Plus and right now you can listen to our January bonus with Paul Shier and Amy Nicholson of the unspoken podcast who came on to tell me about Ishtar the worst movie ever made or is it we'll find out thank you again for joining us and continuing to share this experience of just carrying a whole lot about things keep on doing it we'll see you in one week [BLANK_AUDIO]