Keiko Part 3 with Brianna Bowman

Welcome to your on-about!

“This is the Grand Finale of Arcaco trilogy with Brianna Bowman,”

and we cannot wait to share it with you. We have a bonus episode out now about Ishtar, the worst movie I've ever made, or is it, with Paul Sheer, and Amy Nicholson of the Unspooled Podcast. And, that's about it. Let's go hang out with that whale.

So, Kate goes to Dancing Queen. Yep, here really is. They were working on his physical health on, you know, improving his stamina, because, as I've mentioned, a few times, wild whales swim, tens if not hundreds of miles a day.

So, they need, he needed to welcome him. And he doesn't know how to do that.

Yeah, he's never done that.

Oh, and he was like, too, but yeah, he hasn't done that. So, he's got a, yeah, he's got a work on his health. I mean, it's like, you're taking me who, like, is, you know, within like a 12 foot radius of my couch, most days.

“And be like Sarah, you're going to walk the Pacific Crest Trail,”

and then you're just going to keep doing it for the rest of your life, because that's what you do. Yep, yeah, that's a very good analogy. Yeah, he's been in a tank since he was two years old. He hasn't gone further than really a few feet for his whole life.

And so, this is, it is quite a big undertaking to improve his physical stamina at this point. So, they were working on that. And again, apparently, basically unprecedented, you know, because you've been researching this for years.

If there was some, like, major obvious precedent, you would know about it.

And I really think. Yeah, I would, I would think I would know. I'm sure there's things that, like, kind of apply, but like, right, this thing of, like, it feels like, can it be done the way we're envisioning it.

It's like, a very major question this whole time. Yes, absolutely. And then the other big thing, and this started in Oregon, was training Keko to eat live fish. Both, well, Kenneth Broward, you know, he's an author.

He wasn't directly involved with a project, but he would dip in and out, and that Keko in person a few times, and saw how the project was going. And even he said, I'm so crazy, it's just so great. It's like, I don't know.

It makes me think about their celebrity memoirs. And it's like, yes, they had three meetings. At the Beverly Hills Hotel. Like, it's like Nancy Rate Gunner, something like that. Yeah, yeah, I, I like the idea of Kenneth Broward sitting

by the side of Keko's take and, like, holding up a microphone. Yes, exactly. So, but, uh, he, even he said, like, when he went to Oregon, he goes to Aquarium, and supposedly Keko was kind of eating live fish, then Broward said he wasn't too impressed with what he saw.

And it was mostly that Keko wouldn't eat a really vibrant, alive fish.

They would usually have to stun it first.

And so he would eat a fish that had been really depressed for a long time. Yeah, you know, that was like moving a lot slower. And yeah, had been like kind of smacked on the head or something.

“And so, yeah, I think he would kind of like mouse them.”

Like he wouldn't really eat them, but then sometimes he would. And people would be like, oh my gosh, he's eating life fish. But it wasn't very convincing to a few people. Or just like maybe not super consistent behavior. Like he could.

It's like I could eat a bell pepper. Maybe on a win one day, but like I hate them. I'm not going to start eating them all the time. Yeah, and if something was like dependent on you eating a bell pepper. Right. If everyone was staring at me and they were clearly going to be really happy

if I ate that bell pepper. Like I do it, but I be like, all right, you enjoy that. I'm not doing that tomorrow. That was weird. Yeah, yeah, it would take time.

I mean, I got not that we know what he was thinking, but the consistency of him like seeming to not pick up that behavior is interesting. Right. Yeah, you know, and they worked on this at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. And then they worked on it more in Iceland. But there seemed to be some people that were really excited by Kiko demonstrating.

Yes, he's eating life fish. But then there were other people and notably Mark Simmons. He writes a few times in his book that he wasn't very convinced by Kiko's enthusiasm for eating life fish and being able to feed himself. Because I was such a big, that was like one of the main questions that

persisted throughout the project was whether Kiko was eating life fish and whether he was hunting or showing, you know, the capability of being able to hunt and feed himself.

He felt that it was actually less important to emphasize whether or not he was able to feed himself because he felt that what was more important for Kiko's survival was his ability to integrate with other whales. And if he was able to integrate with other whales, then he would be able to learn from them how to hunt or, you know, at the very least, they could help

feed him somehow, you know, in when wild whales like it whales in Iceland if they

“go after a school of haring a lot of the time there, I believe Icelandic whales”

kind of use this tactic of smacking their tail through a haring school. So they just stunned a bunch of fish at once and then they went back and able to just eat the stunned fish, which is kind of funny when you think about it. Because that's actually what Kiko wants to eat is stunned fish.

So I never really thought about that.

He's got there at a different way. He's like, he's just a goal, I already have it. Yeah, so even if he didn't know how to do that, he would maybe be able to like pick up little scraps here and there or something like that. But yeah, so Mark Simmons and I believe Robin Friday as well, they felt that it was

much more important for a Kiko to integrate with wild whales. Other people didn't seem to think that was like as important or just didn't prioritize it, because I would say, again, knowing nothing, I would say that learning how to integrate with other whales does seem like the most important to me because as a social animal, it's like as a species who kind of doesn't have a choice but to be social generally.

It sounds like, you know, with like some rare exceptions, that if he can't integrate with other whales,

then that would be really bad.

Right, it's not that other people thought that he didn't need to integrate with wild whales.

“I think it was more that they felt that that wasn't something that would need to be taught”

or need to be okay. That's interesting. Guided by people that it would be something that Kiko would figure out. I mean, I guess it would be convenient to come to that conclusion because how would they teach it if they decided to do that?

Well, exactly. But I would not necessarily have confidence that he could figure it out. Yeah, because it's not like we've seen a whale do that before. Right, yeah, there's a lot of like these really unknown paths of how on earth are we going to get to this goal.

Right, because also how often do pods of whales like adopt solo whales is a relevant question.

Is that a behavior that they have or would they be like who the fuck are you? I'm not aware of a pod adopting another whale. There are instances of like killer whales coming together as large groups. I'm thinking of Southern Reson killer whales. There's JKNL pod and they for the most part, you know, don't interact with each other.

But then you'll have these super pod events. They have canberies. And they come together and they hunt and socialize.

“There's actually a super pod event back in like November, I believe.”

Super pod. So in that environment, you could possibly have individuals that like don't know each other that well interacting with each other. But I'm talking about these super pod specifically because that was seen as a possible route of like how to introduce Kiko.

And I'm kind of like imagining a situation where he's like a wedding crasher. It's just like everybody assumes like he's a part of somebody else's family. And they're like, oh, he's cool, whatever. I guess anyway, so like there's these different attitudes. And then I'll say to a person that I've mentioned a few times is Dr. Lanny Cornell.

He was a veterinarian. He was specifically a killer whale veterinarian at sea world. I believe he was currently at the time of the story. Still working at sea world as a veterinarian. He's often described as a kind of challenging personality to work with.

And Mark Simmons definitely had his own opinions that he is very explicit about in his book about Dr. Lanny Cornell. Obviously he had an extensive experience working in this field. Very few people, again, going back to like how many people have direct experience with killer whales.

And then how many veterinarians have direct experience with killer whales? Like not very many. So he was the right person to be involved with this. But he from when I can tell has a very strong personality. And he had a tendency to rub people the wrong way.

And he was a very strong voice in what he thought were the correct ways to go about with the release side of the project, which if you think about it, he's a veterinarian.

But he has it in a very particular setting and with very particular goals and outcomes in mind,

that are really different than the question of how do you release a wild whale. But he had his own opinions and his approach from what I can gather.

“He strikes me as a guy that would think like the best way to teach a dog to swim is just”

to just throw them in a pool is like, they'll just figure it out. Like you just throw them in and I've met and I have met people like this. Like, oh yeah, you just got it. I thought you were exaggerating for comic effects.

Yeah. No, I have, yeah, I don't interact with these people anymore.

But they just think like, yeah, if you want to teach a dog to swim, just like throw them in and they'll figure it out. And it's like, yeah, or else, or you might actually just severely traumatize an animal. Right, thinking yes, but yeah, they could be scared of water for the rest of their lives. That could be good, yeah, because like, gonna get a kitty pool and chill out in there. Yeah, right. So anyway, Lanny Cornell, I believe from a few different sources I've read,

his attitude about releasing cakeo was to just cut the net open and let him go and just

“see what happens. No handouts. When I was a young whale, that's what I did and I liked it.”

Yeah, I think that that was his attitude. I find it funny, because I, in reading about cakeo and how things went, I think if they had immediately put him in a bay, I think he would have just hung out in the bay. Like, I don't think he would have gone anywhere. Yeah, I was wondering that earlier. I feel yeah, I probably would have just like hung out where the people in the food was. Yeah, maybe he, you know, he would have wandered off, but I do think, well, we'll see that like

cakeo does tend to gravitate towards people. So that approach just seemed a little bit not realistic or really what was appropriate for cakeo. And so anyway, Lanny Cornell had this attitude Mark Simmons and Robin Friday had a much different attitude. And then there were people that were kind of somewhere in between. And so there was a lot of people with really strong feelings

“about what was best for cakeo. And they were kind of at odds with each other. And I believe this”

kind of contributes to the kind of frame of the narrative thread at the end of the cakeo story. Okay. And when is that? What's what? Where in time are we at this point? So he went to Iceland in 1998 and September 1998. The arrival in Iceland, it's immediately winter. It takes a while for them to kind of get their bearings with this new stage of the project and everything. cakeos in his CPN, they're doing some training with him. All this like interpersonal nonsense is happening above

the water. Cakeos just chilling out below the water. But they're making forward steps in the project. It's just a matter of like, with every step forward, there's just this sense of for some people. And when I say step forward, I mean like going like cakeo going from being in the CPN to then being in the larger, cleatsfic Bay. So they actually were able to wall off part of the bay with a net. So he went from a little CPN about like, I don't want to say, he was like half a football field or

something like that. So it's a little contained area to having this wide open bay that was still closed off. But certainly the largest area cakeos been able to swim in since he was little. And there's a lot of attention with each step of like, oh my gosh, he's getting this much closer to being out in the wild. And we got to have a lot of media involved and a lot of people documented it. And the big next step that took place was going out of Clezfig Bay and into the open

ocean for the first time. Oh boy. And the main reason that that happened when it did, which I want to say that was in like spring of 2000, I believe, that step of the story happened when cakeo finally went out into the open ocean. Mostly because there was construction happening in the harbor. And there was going to be explosives going off. There was going to be pile driving. So they were

worried about cakeos hearing, hearing is really essential for whales. This is a conservation issue

around the world with marine noise and traffic and all that interfering with their ability to hear which for an animal that uses sound to get around. It's pretty devastating to not be able to hear anymore. So they wanted to protect cakeos hearing. They're like, oh crap. Okay. Well, I guess we got to

up was they hadn't gotten the permits to actually release cakeo, but they reached a compromise with

fisheries people. And they were able to take cakeo out into the open ocean. They took them around the corner, which would kind of protect him from some of the sound. And that was successful as well. But there is even at that stage where cakeo has had been trained at that point to follow another boat. They called it a walkboat. And they called him taking him out to the ocean. His ocean walks. So he was trying to follow this boat, the drop near. And even with that, there were a few

“people that were not just hoping, I think, but expecting cakeo to just take off. Which I don't know.”

I guess, yeah, that was possible. But also just seemed kind of improbable just knowing

cakeo as an individual. Right. And it feels like there's a sort of like this wishful thinking at play that humans have the ability to completely undo what humans have done to an animal. Yeah, yep. You know, that we made him captive and now we can make him uncaptive and it feels like you know, yeah, that like there's there needs to be room at the table for the question of if we can't undo what we've done, what what else can we do? I actually like thinking about

Murphy earlier. I was like maybe actually Murphy and cakeo's personalities were really similar. Cause I think so. Murphy's a sensitive soul and very sweet and loves people and anyone want to

“have Murphy trying to go live in the forest. No, like actually this is specifically the the”

thing I thought of was one time the gate to the backyard got left open and, you know, some dogs, again, like speaking about individuals. Some dogs will just to end up in another town if you do that. Right. Yeah. But Murphy Murphy just went and sat by the front door. Like she went out and was like, she was like, I did all my homework already. Yeah. And she just sat by the front door. She was like, mother, you left the gate open. So I feel like a cakeo's actually very similar.

There's stories about how even in the bay, you can imagine there. It's like concentric circles. So there's the C pen, the small place he started at, then there's the big bay that he had access to after a certain amount of time. And then he would go out of the bay with his people on ocean walks. And even when he was like in the bay and he had access to the whole bay, sometimes he would go back to his C pen and just like hang out there. It was like his

I don't know like a like the equivalent of a kennel. But yeah. So he's he's going out on these walks and part of the permitting process too. He had to have two tags attached to him. So you mentioned that earlier that like part of being able to determine whether he's successfully released or not, we would need to be able to track him and make sure he's okay afterwards. So he had a right of the HF tag and a satellite tag. So satellite tag would give his position from anywhere. But

this being you know in the late 90s or actually 2000, the satellite tag would only give a position once a day. And I think he would have to be at the surface. I believe to be able to like transmit to a satellite. So they would only be able to get a position once a day. So if you're trying to really hone in on where Caco is specifically the satellite tag would give you the general area. But then to get him more dialed in on where he is, you'd use the VHF tag. So the VHF tag

that would transmit a signal over a radio wave essentially that was a line of sight. So you might not be able to physically see Caco he might be pretty far off and like you know behind a wave or something like that. But the person holding a piece of equipment that would receive the signal from his VHF tag, they would like scan their horizon with it. And if it was lined up with Caco's tag,

“it would beep. So they could be like, oh, he's in that direction. And that's how they could like”

hone in on where he was if he wanted off. So these tags were a condition of his release as well. But they got that all figured out for that first time out when he was when they were trying to avoid construction. And then shortly after that they got the full permits to actually take Caco out and start introducing him to wild whales. And I have to say like even this step of him going

out into the wild ocean is really incredible like, I mean every step of this story is amazing

whale to this point. Yeah, and I don't want to come across as too critical about it for my

“heart because I really don't know anything and it is amazing. And especially the degree of dedication”

happening here. It is. And to think like Caco was now swimming in an environment without walls and without borders and in water that you know he hadn't been in since he was little like since he was two years old and hearing things that he hadn't heard in 20 years and you know the I guess even like even being in the bay like he the first day he was there there was like a harbor purpose that swam by and apparently they were vocalizing at each other

like that's really incredible. And the fact that he got to swim for you know miles and miles instead

of just in a circle in a tank like it's really all really wonderful and it makes me a little emotional thinking about it. How dare you? I know. I just think it's such a beautiful thing that we

“do for one creature. And it goes to show how much we can do for creatures sometimes.”

Right, how much we can do for the the natural world for. What's we are apart? Yeah, exactly. We have the potential to address these issues. It's just it's a matter of money a lot of the time but it's also just it is a matter of will like really getting people behind a singular goal and message. And the beautiful thing about the cakeo project, like there is a lot of criticism throughout the project of like just how much money

was being spent and resources being used on one whale when it could have been used on that money could have maybe been many smaller fish. Yeah or even just whales as a whole across the world. You know, is that issue that David Phillips brought up? I've like he wanted to help the larger population of whales but people love what they know and they felt like they knew cakeo and they wanted to to help him. Yeah, we love what we know and we love what we love to quote

the last unicorn. Oh yeah, but yeah, it's just it is incredible what we can

what we can accomplish. And cakeo, I mean he was just one really, he was just a very lucky whale that he got to even to this point of just being able to swim in the open ocean that where he was born is really pretty spectacular. Yeah, but so he had his first encounter with wild whales in June 2000 and like I explained before Mark Simmons in Robert Friday, they wanted this to be a low-key event which makes sense to me like you're just being real chill about taking your

end or a kid to the mall, you know. Yeah, like cakeo is not encountered another orcas since you know since he was in Canada all those years ago and also something I thought about that I didn't see pointed out was that the last time he was around orcas he was bullied. So you know this introduction was going to have to happen pretty carefully. The other people involved the leadership and the donors and the media all saw this as cakeo is going to find his family and

he's going to swim off into the sunset and we just need to let him do that. And because it was seen as like oh my gosh this could be it, this could be the moment that he leaves. There was like

“a bunch of people that were on it to document the whole thing. There was I think two boats that were”

just full of VIPs and like you know mostly like donors for the project and then there were two additional boats one with Mark Simmons and Robin Friday and a few a couple others like on the training side of things and then another one with Dr. Lady Cornell and then a researcher whale researcher and another couple of staff and Mark Simmons says what happened was oh in addition to these four boats there's also a helicopter so it's already like not low key. It's a hell of a

day and see it's like quote the movie overboard. Yeah there's there's just a lot going on. Mark Simmons describes that they wanted to do this in a very specific way where they would stop cakeo kind of mirror the whales and kind of let the wild whales pass by and if they interacted great if they didn't whatever you know the goal was just to have a positive interaction like he's a

which I agree with for most things in life. Yeah I think it made sense especially for the initial

interaction. So what it sounded like was that Laney Cornell and the other people on one boat they spotted wild whales and we're essentially guiding them. I guess towards cakeo and the researcher on that boat was also trying to collect genetic samples from the whales which involves a tool that is used by many whale researchers. It's a a crossbow essentially and you're

“to get a little intense but that's how you get a genetic sample from a whale. So do you like”

crossbow in a big syringe and then you like yank it out and you're like thank you. A kind of not a syringe it gets like a little just like tissue sample from the whale. Okay and it is what

whale researchers used to get this kind of information and I can see where the researcher was like

yeah if we have this information then we can like figure out if these whales are related to cakeo and that would help us. You know like I get it but also I totally understand Mark Simmons frustration in that you are I don't want to say harassing the whales but you're not exactly like creating a calm environment. Yeah exactly and it's like a couple of mothers and calves in a bowl whale I think and and like that wasn't ideal either because like mothers and calves don't really

love having a stranger around. Yeah and again like I don't ever want to question the dedication of this but like yeah nobody knows how to do any of this. Right yeah everyone's you know everyone's figuring it out and that's fair of the mothers and calves yeah. Yeah so they kind of guide these whales towards cakeo in a manner that was not really what had been planned in advance and from what it sounded like from Simmons account. Cakeo had no idea that these whales were coming and the

whales had no idea that cakeo was there because what were they going to do to take it aside be like cakeo. Right tastes going to be kind of a big day because we're going to try oh you don't know what I'm saying.

“I know if only if only we could have explained it to him but you know I think I mean the idea was just”

to have him in the vicinity and then he would like hear their vocal them vocalizing and just like from a distance be like oh what's that and then like in the movie he would just kind of run right on over there. Yeah because yeah that would be nice. But apparently what happened was cakeo and the wild whales surprised each other and how Simmons describes it as he was right there he was like with cakeo he was like staring at him like cakeo was waiting for instruction from from Mark Simmons

and he said that cakeo plunged explosively into the depths and this other whale did too and they don't know what happened under the water but for a few minutes there was nothing and then this group of whales they spotted few under feet away they were taking off in a different direction but they couldn't find cakeo for a little bit eventually they did find them but he was taking off in a different direction and some people interpreted this as oh cakeos going free he's

going he wants he wants to go and be free he's leaving we should just leave him and let him do his thing Mark and Robin they did not see it that way they saw it as like a scared animal so he was like booking it by his standards yeah I think he was booking it and then the helicopter spotted him and apparently he would like swim a little bit and then he would like swim in a circle and then he would swim a little more and then he'd swim in a circle and it kind of reminds me of like

dory in finding emo and she's like oh oh and like I get I don't know like cakeo is thinking but

“that's what it made me think no we don't know but it does feel a bit overly optimistic maybe to be like”

wow cakeo had one interaction with a whale briefly for the first time in 20 years of the

knee thought to himself chief fuck all these people I'm leaving I'm gonna go and in the opposite direction of everyone and and be free on my own right yeah and so Robin and Mark and then a couple of the other people involved they actually went to find cakeo and a few people on the other side of the projects we're saying like don't go after him you're supposed to leave him be and they're like no he's he's not doing well he's still in our care like we still need to take care of him

I mean it makes sense no I'm kind of agree on what human children need and when we raise billions of them oh absolutely actually even Kenneth Brower in his book you know he insert his own opinion

with the project were kind of like a overly doting mother that can't let go of their child's hand

“or you know I think he described it as like a mom showing up at their sons college dorm room”

ready to clean their room for them like he just he thought the trainers were just a little too attached to cakeo and were reticent to let him go yeah but arguably by the same token I that does feel like a kind of attachment to sort of be maybe not attachment exactly but to be invested in a certain outcome and in the idea that that is definitely what the animal because there's like intent implied by the idea of like oh he's swimming away he's being free it's like where there's

some kind of a belief that you're interpreting in animals emotional state in a way where it

doesn't seem like you have enough data to say that right certainly I mean that's very true and I agree with that and but I guess you can make the argument that that's exactly what the trainers

“were doing too they were like like I guess really it's that everyone including me right now is doing”

yeah yeah it's just it's a it's a hard situation that's the beauty of the beast yeah so anyway they go and retrieve cakeo and you know he seems to them really distressed and the other part of the team they're ready to like bring them back out with more whales and Robin and Marker like no like cakeo he's like tired he can't he can't keep up with us he's exhausted he seems totally wicked out and stressed he he just needs to you know recuperate a little bit so when Robin and

Mark get back to the headquarters back in the in the bay they have a conversation with the project

manager a man named Charles Vinick and Robin and Mark are basically like look this was not how we

wanted it to go this is not how we believe as experts in our field that we should be introducing cakeo this needs to be a calm iterative process it's gonna take months if not years to accomplish this is not a one and done thing and we have like these demands one of them being that the next time we do this only like maximum of two boats can come out we can't take out everybody who has enough money to pay for it like we just this has to be just about cakeo and the whales and they're new

hits single cakeo in the whales but and Charles would kind of relay this to the board and apparently it was like going back and forth between like hotel rooms like being the messenger and there's a couple other people that were on Robin and Mark's side of it but then to this discussion the board did not want to concede to what Robin and Mark wanted to do and so they ended up resigning from the project right then in there oh yeah that's interesting I didn't expect that yeah they were really

really unhappy and I guess I can't I don't have enough time today to go into the like the level of of just but perhaps on another perhaps on another type multi part progress you will yeah and another another project in my rewilding podcast I'll give more of the details but yeah it was quite dramatic from Mark Simmons point of view of how this went yeah boy feelings but yeah so yeah

“they decided to not be a part of project any and honestly they were kind of using that as the”

the resignation they were kind of using as a bargaining chip of like okay well we'll tell them this is what we want and if they don't you know give us what we want then we'll resign and they thought that that would convince the board but apparently you didn't so the board felt they didn't need them anymore and well he just describes and a lot of his book how he just felt like the conflicting motivations and agendas of people involved were really frustrating to him and he felt like

led to this kind of like I said like this kind of narrative thread sort of starting to fray a little bit like it's just not as clean it's not as satisfying like people have differing kind of versions of what they say happened maybe yeah yes exactly yeah it also and not to say like not to say this cuts across the board at all but it does seem like you know with Mark Simmons and Robin Friday that you do have two people who are like pretty well qualified to know what they're talking about

but who because of that are not even pessimistic but maybe like less convinced that the specific goal that was stated from the outcome like is achievable than people who know less and maybe there's

the more you know generally in any project I mean this is like I'm not to compare this to fire

fast because again it's you know people were dedicated they knew what they were doing to the greatest extent possible in many ways and like the amount of love and care that went into this is really clear but like there are projects that people can take on with great confidence because they don't understand how hard the different elements of it are going to be individually or to bring together and like that's not the kind of confidence you want usually like sometimes it works out but like

that's just maybe the same thing is like when that happens yeah or it gets that beginning is like if not psyching yourself out too much but like that's actually a big part of the American character

that like you can come in as an office fake your way through and be amazing at it and it's like yeah

I mean kind of like for some things like there's definitely sort of workplace cultures that like require fresh eyes kind of continually and that's you know there's there's a certain logic to that but also that can also just be ego talking right that can just as easily be someone who's like on a kind of a power trip and chooses to believe that about themselves I think it really it goes in both directions right and I think it's especially true for a project like this where there's

like sex specific science background that you need yeah a specific science background but then like the project as a whole has this almost like fairy tale quality to it and so being able to pull it off like the appeal of that I totally understand like I I would love to be involved in a project like that now like I'm not saying like it's not worth pursuing but yeah it's just like

“it's very worth doing things imperfectly that's the only way to do it yes exactly yeah and it's”

just a matter of maybe being a little bit more observant of like how things are actually happening in front of you rather than right how you think they should or you want them to play out in your

head because reality is always messier and this is maybe I mean okay not take out into like what is

science but just to sec yeah if we may just for a quick sec because I feel like this is actually you know kind of a running joke at this point and I love the sincerity of this you know when people have a time it's like in this house we believe science right etc etc you know science is real yeah and it's like great but also like the point of science is not to be believed on equivocally like that's what's great about it like the point of science is that it's not a practice of faith or a belief

but of constant like iterating and experimenting and that doesn't mean that evolution is a theory like it is a proven theory to the extent that we can ever know anything as human beings but it

“feels like that is part of why science I think is like I don't know that we have this fallacy”

that like kids can only learn something if they're gonna do it for their whole lives and be really good at it and it's like no there's like aspects of the things that we do that just help us to be happier and better people and to I would say actually adapt better speaking of what we've been talking about to our situation as humans and one of them is this thing of like teaching people the kind of I don't know like mental and intellectual resilience to be able to like have

theories and ideas and then use those ideas and those passions to gather information to have experiences to collect data and then to analyze that and revise their viewpoints based on what they learn and see which is a wonderful thing to do and not as many people seem to think a shattering blow to your ego that you could literally die because of you know like it's a delight to be proven wrong yeah it's definitely hard at times and it's definitely like a major active bravery

especially if you're talking about a belief system that you've been raised within or something on that scale but just in terms of like day to day life just like realizing how little you know about something and getting to learn something like it's a delight yeah it is and what you're saying

“too kind of reminds me of this thing that I think of often when people say I love science or you”

know science is real or kind of leaning into that oh science is a representation of unequivocal facts or something like that right it's that the word science defines a process right it's not like a set of beliefs yeah it's like a wave interacting with the world maybe more accurately right it's almost like I feel like science instead of it being a noun I feel like we need a verb because I think science is an action oh you're scienceing pretty hard you're scienceing right you're scienceing

so sure it should be a verb right it's an active thing that you do it's it's not I think when

really interesting facts about the world but I think we need to kind of distinguish between

facts and the process at which you like if you love science then like you're loving science in the way that I loved science when I was on a really long road trip and I drove away from a

“gas station and then I think there was like I like a bandana or something that I wasn't sure what”

it had happened to it so I wondered if I'd left it on top of the car and so to test my theory I found like a microfiber cloth and put that on top of the car and then drove around to see if it would fall off like that to me is science yeah it's not even useful or productive or relevant science but to do perhaps science yeah I had a theory and I test it and then I was like well I don't know which honestly is most of science is testing something you'd be like huh well hard to say

that didn't work yeah it comes up a little of the soul of that yeah just and the hard to say is are kind of the best because the pressure to produce results I mean it's like the process of

questioning and learning is a joy unto itself I really think I mean not always and especially you

know if it's your work then like work isn't always fun if you're an academia if you're chasing grant funding like a lot of stuff and any profession is drug jury but like that that act of trying to learn and that spark that you feel like that's the point yeah and that process of learning that was integral to this cakeo project that this really was a process of trying something new and doing something that hadn't been done before and getting the best people on it that you can find with

“the best expertise but still kind of stepping into the unknown and I think there were a lot of people”

involved that were very grounded and understood like okay like this could go in a lot of different directions and then there were some people that were really hopeful and aspirational and perhaps clung onto the idea that cakeo would swim off into the sunset with his family maybe a little too you know they clung on a little too hard so where we are at right now in the story is that after this negative interaction it seems as though cakeo had a few more interactions with wild whales

that year and the following year as well and for the most part from what I can tell wild whales would kind of swim by cakeo and he would kind of look at them and watch them and maybe follow a little

bit but he was he was never you know really going off to swim with them I mean that was about as

much as I knew about socializing and middle school it yeah time for me personally yeah he was probably like okay this is interesting but I can imagine I don't know maybe it was scary like for a social animal the social anxiety exists I mean you sure can't introduce adult cats to each other that's neither here nor there but it's very true yeah I mean you can but as anyone who's done it knows that it takes sometimes forever yeah and so they're they're doing this over the year but

“I think over this time period well I think the morale of the project started to lessen a bit like”

people were a bit like okay maybe cakeo won't make it and then this starts to translate into well notably Craig McCaw sort of being like alright well we got to wrap this up like uh it do you why do you let's check it out right what else are you gonna spend that money on you're gonna buy yourself some more wine well apparently he was going through some of his own financial troubles at the time he had to sell his yacht got it together Craig and his island in Vancouver

be see oh oh my god I know I think he's doing okay now but you know it was hard hard times on the farm then yeah he was he was weeping and it his bleak moonlit pillow and uh anyway he was he was looking for his way out of the project and he asked Phillips like hey do you do you want your whale back and Phillips was like sure whatever and also part of this was um sure you left this whale at my house yeah I'm sure he was more enthusiastic than that but they had this benefactor and now he was

walking away yeah and part of that was Craig McCaw and his wife at that time had recently gone through a divorce and it was rumored that yeah Wendy McCaw was the one more invested in the project so as soon as I got divorce Craig McCaw was like okay I'm doing other things now I mean like it would not be the most shocking thing that I had heard today yeah yeah anyway so that was kind of the atmosphere

yet but like this like winding down so there was a big changes in staff because there were huge

“budget cuts and it was funny because they I don't think they wanted to actually lay anyone off so they”

made very significant cuts and other departments and it just put a lot of stressors on the project and then the people that were most qualified to be involved with the project stepped away because they were like well I can't do my best work with not enough resources like you guys need to figure this out so that was kind of the attitude or the atmosphere of project and this was around in a 2001 and then into July 2002 and they're continuing to bring cake go out to interact with wild

whales they have a new setup where they actually have a large boat that they can stay on for like I guess weeks at a time it's like an old fishing boat and so then they can actually stay out at sea for long periods if there's whales around and not have to return back to the bay all the time so then they had their smaller vessels that would kind of go out with cake go and are they still feeding him while they're on these excursions I believe so but they're like also really reducing the amount

of food that they're giving cake go to yeah they're like weaning him kind of yeah and they also had to attitude there's attitude like well we can't keep feeding him because then he'll keep relying on us for food like if he gets hungry enough he'll go and get his own food but sometimes that kind of backfired and that kind of just made him hang out around people more there is again

“just this apparent misunderstanding of just animal psychology and like what the best way forward”

was to actually train cake go to do what they wanted him to do yeah I guess like a lack of consensus yeah yeah yeah but somewhere around this time and about like July 2002 he has been kind of on the outskirts of a pod of wild whales and has been kind of you know doing his thing where he's kind of watching them from a distance and kind of wandering off but then eventually wandering back and then at one of these points where he wanders off and he would wander like you know a few miles away

and they would just kind of let him wander but he would always eventually wander back a storm comes in

and is coming in really fast and the crew is like oh my gosh we have to get back to shore like now and they all go back to the bay and they try to signal cake go to come back to the boat they had this little the thing that makes a tone underwater that calls cake go back kind of like a whistle for a sheep dog or something but he doesn't come back so they go back and then they start tracking him with his satellite tag and they see that he's moving east so from Iceland like moving

out east he goes towards the ferro islands and then he he wanted to get a sweater and then he eventually makes his way to Norway and they're kind of like keeping an eye out like seeing if they hear any the people are seeing if they hear anything then I go okay I don't know maybe he's with whales maybe he's swimming with whales but they're like separated from him kind of unintentionally basically like they weren't planning for that to be it no I don't I didn't get the impression that that was

“intentional I think they were like hopeful and very you know they were like this it could be it but”

it wasn't they'd had so many instances of this happening of like chaos kind of wandering off

but always wondering back that I think it was hard to you know believe that this could be the time

that they don't see him again yeah but anyway he wanders off to Norway and Kaco and this is like three weeks later so there's three weeks where Kaco is maybe with other whales maybe not but he's out in the open ocean which I don't know that is also just an incredible thing for me to think about yeah for this whale that was in a tank and now he's literally traveling across the ocean to I believe that part of the ocean's called it the Norwegian sea and he's making his way to Norway

whether he knew it or not and he gets there and he immediately finds a boat with a family that's out for a day of fishing well what do you know and the and the and the family apparently was like really freaked out they're like what the hell was this whale doing you know killer whales have a reputation if they're Americans they want to call the cops oh no don't call the cops and Kaco that that really happened what's there is like this viral video like 10 years ago of a

couple calling the cops on a whale really know that they want one of the whale to be arrested

love my dad but he did um I mean actually actually don't think this is totally misguided but

“my family has about and they're around the Willam River in Portland and the engine cut out they”

lost power and my dad called the Coast Guard and that does same haystack and the Coast Guard was like no you got to try a few other things first before you call us also like are you in a immediate danger it's like no we're just kind of like floating here and we can't get to sure okay do you want to hear about the whale video from time magazine or scuba diving magazine oh scuba diving magazine I figured yeah okay let me read this to you I feel like you like this okay a beautiful

humpback whale encounter turned into fodder for a viral video after a woman called the cops on the citation a group enjoying the day on Washington's Puget Sound got spooked when a whale came close for a visit the video which is drawing laughs and some criticism after it's going viral online ends with one woman calling the police I'm out in Puget Sound and there's three huge great whales underneath our boat and I'm afraid that we might get flipped over the woman says on the

phone I don't want to die right now says another passenger in the background oh my gosh so if you're kayaking around and you see humpback whales and if you feel scared about that um is what what should you do Brianna oh my gosh just watch them and enjoy them they're not going to do anything I mean there is a very small risk that a humpback whale could jump out of the water and hit your boat that has happened there is like instances of that that is so incredibly rare

just enjoy being in the presence of like an amazing animal who's also probably looking at you like oh

you're pretty interesting and acting really strange and and it's probably just curious about you too I would just I would love to be there and see these humpback whales I would too yeah yeah so they're so kko finds a family in Norway they find a family and they basically it basically follows them back to their village and like their little fishing village and he just like hangs out in this bay or in this fury and immediately the whole town is like oh my gosh there's a whale here

and there is incredible footage and pictures of kids like you know nine ten year olds writing on kko's back what wait could we watch that yes I've got it it's a Norwegian documentary that was made uh called "Compon Om Kko" I'm so excited oh my god oh my god oh my god look at him go

“okay he's so big I know it's got three little spots on his chin so this was all I think this”

is all footage in Norway of him swimming so he's like jumping out of the water and now he's like near a pasture with cows is like a pasture next to a bay if you don't really think of yeah and there's a person on a boat and can you see his tank because yeah and kko's like swimming alongside the boat and it's like the person like reaches out to touch him when he like comes up for a breath so it's beautiful footage and now we'll put a we'll put a link to this in our description

okay here's the kids playing oh my god oh my god I know it isn't this incredible it is just a

a bobby hill looking child just literally in the water on kko's back yeah and the others like kids in a boat they're gonna like row out to him or something and the kids are like kind of partially submerged too so they're not like standing around on him or something which feels different but he's just kind of hanging out near their little robot yeah and we have like two kids in the water kind of treating him as like a like a floating dock a little bit yeah this is kind of like

lying on his back and their bathing suits yeah yeah my god and he's just sitting there like he could

he is a large powerful animal he could easily yeah just toss them off this is an amazing

like this is a 12 year old girl in a bathing suit just like lying across kko's back all he's just and I have no you know but yeah like not that I know what he's feeling but he sure is lying

“very still allowing this to happen I know he's yeah I think I don't know I think it's safe to say”

he's really enjoying it and he like you know he's been through all these he just swam you know maybe

know there was all these protocols about not interacting with kko very much like trying to detach

“from him and then he arrives in this town and immediately is all these people are just like giving”

him all of this attention and love and affection and to the end of you have every Oregonian child I know seriously I know yeah this whole video is worth a watch it's like 45 minutes long yeah and again like in a case here where like he's giant compared to these children you know like it's because it feels I don't know it's actually very much like Sam Niel in the triceratops yeah yes it is yeah yeah he could he could easily swim away like I mean if anything then kids may want to be a little

concert that they might get hurt and again like and it gets us in trouble that we see in Orca

and we're like I want to lie on top of that guy you know I know I know we we definitely shouldn't

because it's like we want these things we don't want to want them and maybe we don't want to want them so much that we project that sometimes and like I mean in your opinion did kko get separated from his people during the storm and just like keep on swimming until he found some

“kids to play with honestly that is what I think happened I I don't know that's my opinion”

yeah my opinion is that maybe he followed some whales for a while but I think he ended up on his own I mean when he was found in Norway he was by himself and I think he saw a boat and was like oh that boat probably has people on it and he just he's just conditioned to want to socialize with people right I'm not sure at this point in his life that that could have successfully been deep programs from him right you know and this was something that we learned in this project

I I think that was a big learning step like people were hesitant from the beginning they're like wow he's been in captivity a long time I don't know I mean it's kind of like the genie experiment linguistics where you have this child who's been a victim of terrible abuse where she's been isolated and not taught how to speak literally and then the question is can you teach someone how to

speak after this kind of theorized critical period of language learning has ended like kind of mid and post

puberty and it's this weird thing where you don't really have it's just this one isolated study but it does still there's like the thing of being able to test a question and then the phenomenon of people kind of moving on when the answer it turns out to be no and then the question of what happens to this test subject to is stuck the way they are for better or worse and can they be protected for being exactly that thing and and whatever those needs that they have now are you know

“right yeah I think that was you know at the end of the cakeo project that was the question”

that kind of needed to be answered and it was written into some of their protocols it was like okay well if he shows that he can't successfully integrate with wild whales then he's going to need care like he we're going to need to take care of him we can't ethically release him and also it's just for his safety because obviously he's going to seek out people and the thing is is like I think some people are like well what's the big deal if you like wants to seek out people like

isn't that okay and the issue with that is that it can be a safety hazard for cakeo it could be a safety hazard for people too depending but I mean cakeo was such a friendly whale I don't think he was well I don't know he wasn't at risk of like being aggressive I think but this issue was you know people are weird in like if there's this whale hanging out who knows someone could try to hurt him or someone could hurt him unintentionally that unfortunately happened

with the whale Luna who was a little killer whale off of British Columbia that it was a wild whale that became very friendly and was kind of similar to cakeo wasn't letting people right on him and wasn't allowed but he was interacting with people like this like coming up to boats and everything and there was a lot of debate on what to do with him because he was a wild whale but he was interacting with people and then in the end he got hit by a boat in the harbor and it wasn't

intentional it was just that he was hanging out right near a boat and the guy didn't see him and the guy who did it felt terrible yeah but our environment is very I mean humans have a very hard time surviving the environment that we built for ourselves so I'm actually great how much harder it is if you don't you know yeah if you don't even have that going for you yeah how do we strike that balance of wanting to give this animal as much as their own autonomy as we can

of themselves right and I don't know I don't know that anyone could ever have like a really

“clear articulate answer to that you know it's it's just something you have to”

feel out and do by trial and error and I think actually you know I'm saying that the end of the cakeo story is like a little sad the project continued and people stayed involved and continued to care for him it was just that the level of resources that were there previously weren't there anymore so like the amount of staff involved was really reduced and and that kind of translated into okay well was he getting sufficient veterinary care in the end and like what would be sufficient

veterinary care you know if you're like trying to kind of have this half wild whale like what does

that look like so when Kiko showed up in this town as some new staff and trainers a couple of

people showed up and found Kiko and they were like oh Kiko why did you do this but you know they were like okay well we got to find like a plan B obviously he's gonna try to seek people out we'll try to set up a station here in Norway somewhere so they brought him around to a different bay nearby that was more isolated and that sort of became the base of the Kiko project for the remainder of Kiko's days which wasn't really much longer it was like so he arrived in

Norway in August September 2002 and he was there for about a year and a half and you know they continued with his ocean walks they'd take him out he would interact with some of the whales coming

by but again in that kind of distant kind of way he would wander off occasionally and they would

just follow him just to make sure he was okay um he had an incident where he got trapped under some ice in the winter and he okay Kiko I know and he it's really sad because he like he got trapped under the ice and yeah he couldn't figure out like where to go to breathe and apparently he was like punching holes through the ice and he ended up just mashing up his head like it became really

“bloody and scarred uh I believe yeah like he was in a really he was in a very desperate situation in”

that moment but um they're doing his thing there uh there's a couple of people in a slandic woman named Toba and a man named Frank and another guy named Dana believe and Colin, Colin Beard they were all the kind of remaining staff during that last year with Kiko and they really loved him everyone who worked with Kiko loved Kiko they just like yeah he was a creature that they had a personal connection with and they would really do anything for him and I really mean like they would do anything

and so they're doing the best they can taking care of him and the leaders of the project are trying to figure out you know what they're going to do next trying to keep funding going but you know the the motivation and the enthusiasm for the project has kind of waned at this point because it's just kind of clear that it's a misgending it's not the clear ending that everyone wanted and it's easy to fundraise to make a great leap or do something heroic and it's harder to fundraise for

we just kind of need to take care of this whale for the rest of his life because it's our responsibility yeah and people get less excited about that but they should get excited about it because it's

“very exciting to keep taking care of creatures and places in an ongoing way yeah like I believe”

it was in Mark Simmons book he made the point that not to be too cynical but there was a financial incentive to have Kiko go free you know say more about that what is the incentive for people that if Kiko goes free then we don't have to pay for his care anymore you know yeah and also everybody gets to pat each other on the back right feel really accomplished as opposed to feeling immersed in the complexity of like inner species relationships which is where we got stuck here

right it seems like I want to say that when it was brought up like well there's a possibility that he won't go free and that will be having to take care of him for you know potentially the rest of his life I feel like the attitude about it was sort of like yeah yeah that's a possibility but he's going to go free like it's going to happen but it's like when you're signing a pre-nap when you're marrying that billionaire he's family seems so nice right yes exactly yeah you just you

don't want to think about the kind of negative outcome I guess even though it wasn't necessarily it's not a negative outcome is just yeah it's not what we wanted necessarily but

my ears would always perk up if I heard anything about Kiko and I remember feeling as a kid that

there was kind of like radio silence for a little while no sort of like okay I don't know maybe he's maybe he's fine I don't know and then later in 2003 Kiko throughout his adult life had been kind of plagued with a recurring respiratory illness I want to say they saw symptoms of it as far back as in the Oregon Coast Aquarium but definitely in Iceland they would see this kind of flare-up of a respiratory illness and when he would get sick he would get antibiotics they'd be taking

blood samples to monitor his white blood cell count and making sure that he got the care that

“he needed and the thing with animals and I think especially with a not domesticated animal because”

even though Kiko was captive I wouldn't I don't know if I'd say he's necessarily right domesticated he's not born of thousands of generations of creatures that are still living with people yeah yeah animals are really good at hiding symptoms because they don't

make chickens yeah it's just it's amazing how far along an animal is in an illness before you

really start to notice that they're they're not doing so well and especially with a whale because even though as you and I have talked about a few times like we feel like we can sense their feelings and maybe for check their own feelings on to them it would be hard to look at a whale and be like hey buddy are you feeling okay like how would you you know like the demeanor of a whale I'm sure people that spend time around whales would be able to tell but yeah but even so yeah but even so

and that's the thing too that the people that were involved that were taking care of Kiko at the end like Tobus this was her first time working with a killer whale she had worked at an aquarium in

Iceland but she had never worked with killer whales before so I mean they're doing their absolute

best but they just don't have the experience and they just have limited resources at this point so after a year of being in Norway in this in this bay they noticed one day that Kiko just seems to be pretty lethargic you know they take him out for an ocean walk and he's lagging behind and they bring him back and they're like oh man he doesn't seem to be feeling very well they do what they can with you know getting whatever test they can run in antibiotics but it was sort of at the point where

the infection had kind of reached a point of potentially no return in December he's getting worse and he's just kind of doing what they say is what they call logging so like a whale just kind of hangs out at the surface and isn't swimming they're just floating there and he was doing a lot of that conserving energy and he eventually just passed away from this respiratory illness and beat himself on the on the shore there like it were was like trying to like make his way

onto the shore but I feel like there's a net in the way I'm a little unclear of what happened but yeah it was a pneumonia or some other virus that got him when he was about 27 years old

“I'm not even gonna make a Janice job on her friends that's how sad this is yeah I know I”

thought about that too put Kiko on the poster with all the other yeah 27 club people but yeah it's uh it it feels like a really I don't know I guess sometimes it just feels like a like an underwhelming ending to this incredible story yeah but that's in reality what happened and he had some people with him that that really loved him and really cared about him and I remember seeing the newspaper article in the paper and I remember crying when I was a little kid

it just you know this this beautiful animal that we put so much of our heart and love and attention into and had so many aspirations and had so many dreams for him and again like we actually

“did achieve a lot of that that's the thing like I think in the process of researching this story”

I think in the beginning I was quick to call the Kiko project a failure because he didn't swim

understanding all the different complexities of it and all the different motivations and

what people were trying to achieve like I really do believe that there were huge successes in the Kiko story like we really did put a whale back in the ocean and back in his home and I can't I can't understate how important that is in terms of understanding how we can how we can I don't know try to put the world back the way we found it and maybe we learned that we can't totally do that but we can get really close and we can you know well and also we don't

have to to give up because we don't get to have yes that result that we imagined you know

“right exactly and so one of the main things actually I think one of the really important”

legacies that Kiko left was all of the stuff that people learned throughout this whole project

one of the things that we learned was like okay we really really tried to put a captive whale back in the wild and captivity just it's almost impossible to reverse that and their dependence on people and so there is a happy medium that people are trying to strike with current captive orcas in this project called the whale sanctuary project and it actually involves quite a few people that were involved with the Kiko project so the whale sanctuary project is going to be

a large sanctuary in port hillford bay in Nova Scotia where whales and dolphins can

live in an environment that really maximizes their whale being and is in their natural habitat and

so we can take animals these really intelligent socially complex animals and have them live out a retirement in this whale sanctuary project so they won't be having to perform in order to be fed what is what we all want really right and we're you know they're going to be in the ocean again and we can just try to write a wrong as best as we can in using what we learned and part of what we learned is that well okay full reintroduction into the wild may not be realistic but we can

still provide a good life for these animals yeah when we've taken away so much from them so I'm really happy to see that that project is underway and of course they're they're looking for

“funding and I think projects like that always as we've learned always requires a lot of money”

and they don't have a movie to put a number at the end of so it's gonna be a little trick here yeah oh and actually also there's another kind of retirement quote unquote facility for whales and that's in kko's old seapen in Iceland so there's a few um there's some belugas that live there now and they're just you know living out their days would you say that they're swimming so wild and swimming so free yes they are

have an above and see below yeah yeah there you know I think it's just it's the best we can we can offer and I think it's actually pretty it's a it's a pretty generous thing for us to do and after the harm that we've exerted on on these animals with the captivity industry so but they have everything yeah yeah so that's the story of kko and I love him I love him too and I know there's more to it and you're working on a podcast series about it

and we're gonna have you come back on here and tell us when it's out so nobody misses it yeah that would be great yeah I am currently working on it if you would like to support my work on this project you can go to the patreon it's called the rewilding kko podcast and also another place I would love to get people's memories of kko if you know

“if you were a kid in Oregon and you remember visiting kko or Norway or Norway if you were one of”

those kids riding on kko's back I want to hear from you and you can email me or submit a voice memo to [email protected] that's my spiel thank you and that's your whale that's my whale that's

you

“and that's concludes our three part journey with kko you're listening right now to a”

cover of will you be there performed by magpie cinema club magpie cinema club is a band

featuring Miranda Zickler who is also the editor and producer of your song about and musician

“AJ McKinley thank you to Brianna Bowman for being our dolphin girl and orko woman thank you”

to Nicole Ortiz our administrative assistant and thank you for listening we'll see you next time

you