美國英語聽力80篇2 Lesson32
32) Whale Keiko (A)
On March Third, Keiko the whale pushed open a door and swam out of his floating cage.
In doing so, he gained the most freedom he has known since he was a baby.
He can now move around in all of Klettsvik Bay, in the Westman Islands off Iceland.
The Atlantic Ocean bay is the size of about twenty-two soccer,football fields.
It has land on three sides and the open ocean on the fourth.
Barriers keep Keiko from going into the ocean.
But the bay gives him far more space than his last home, which was a floating holding pen.
Keiko's new world has a natural shoreline and natural bottom with rocks.
Other sea creatures live in the bay.
The release of Keiko into Klettsvik Bay is part of the first attempt ever
to return a killer whale to the wild after years in captivity.
His owner, the Ocean Futures Society,wants to increase scientific knowledge of the social activities of Orc whales.
Orcs are the black and white mammals sometimes called killer whales.
But there is no evidence that they have attacked humans.
They probably got their name because they are among the best hunters in the oceans.
Keiko brought pleasure to many people when he played Willy the whale in the 1993 movie, "Free Willy. "
He also appeared in a second movie about Willy.
Keiko became famous.
But he was living in bad conditions in an amusement park in Mexico.
His health was poor.
Some experts said he would never recover enough to live in the cold ocean waters where Orcs normally swim.
It took years, but Keiko has proved those experts wrong.
Keiko had human help in returning to his home waters.
People from all over the world made it possible for Keiko to be released into the Atlantic Ocean bay.
The organization, Ocean Futures Society, is training him to survive total freedom in the ocean.
The society was formed last year.
It joined a Keiko support group, the Free Willy Foundation, with the Jean-Michel Costeau Institute.
Jean-Michel Costeau is a leading environmentalist and ocean expert.
The new organization was established to protect the oceans and the creatures who live there.
Keiko the Orc probably started life very near the place where he is today.
He was born in about 1978 in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland.
While still a baby he was captured in fishermen's equipment.
He was taken to an aquarium in Iceland so people could see him.
At age four or five he began training as a performing whale.
He did tricks for the public at a park in Ontario, Canada.
There he developed skin problems caused by a virus. The sores on his skin remained for years.
The Canadian park sold Keiko to an amusement park in Mexico City in 1985.
There his keepers would throw playthings at the whale which he would return to them.
He ate dead fish provided by his keepers.
Representatives of Warner Brothers film studios saw Keiko perform.
They chose him to appear as Willy in "Free Willy."
The story is about a young boy who saves an Orca whale from a sad life in an amusement park.
The public loved the movie.
Keiko became well known.
Yet the actor whale was not living a good life.
He was extremely thin.
The water in his container pool in Mexico was not seawater.
It was too warm for an Orc, and it did not cover his skin. His sores were getting worse.
His teeth were broken from biting the edges of his pool.
He acted sad.
Luckily, a story in a magazine told the public about Keiko's living conditions.
Warner .Brothers and an American businessman gave 4,000,000 dollars to establish the Free Willy Foundation.
Its goal was to return Keiko to the sea.
An animal protection group, the Humane Society of the United States, also gave a million dollars.
A second film about Willy was produced as a video.
Each video contained a request to send money to move Keiko to a better home.
Children and adults from all over the world answered the appeals.
The Mexican amusement park said it would give Keiko to the people wanting to help him.
By 1996, there was enough money to move the whale to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.
The special zoo for creatures that live in the water is on the Pacific Ocean in the northwest United States.
Keiko now lived in a pool of ocean water.
It was built especially for him. Many animal doctors worked to improve his health.
Keiko gained more than one-half a ton during his first year in Oregon. "
By the next year live fish were placed in his pool.
The goal was to help Keiko learn to catch and eat live fish, like a normal Orc.
His skin sores improved.
Finally, they disappeared.
After eighteen months in Oregon, Keiko had gained more than a ton.
He had learned to eat live fish.
The Free Willy Foundation decided he was ready for a return to the icy ocean where he was born.
The next step for Keiko was the move to Iceland.
