Killing Keiko

by Mark A. Simmons

  Where Away?

  Our second journey to sea led us in other directions, with more playful undertones and experiments too enticing not to attempt. Within just one or two nautical miles due east out of Klettsvik, we decided it was time to see how fast Keiko could swim. We had practiced and tested him in short bursts within the bay before, but even the bay wasn’t big enough to allow the Draupnir to get up on a plane. Here, we had nothing but the beckoning call of the horizon off our bow and thus an unlimited runway. At her best in calm, conducive waters she could muster up about twenty-eight knots with a full crew compliment onboard.

  Here we were at sea in the North Atlantic, a killer whale as our playmate. Even the relentlessly safety-conscious Michael was brimming with anticipation. Jen perched in her usual spot above the pilothouse, Robin behind the cabin on the aft deck and Tracy behind my perpetual bouncy ride on the platform, each found something solid and grabbed hold. Keiko, ever dependable, coasted along our starboard side, barely out of my reach.

  Steadying myself and wearing the grin of thieves, I nodded at Michael, then quickly turned to give Keiko a prompt with the target pole. Michael punched up the throttle just as I dropped the target back to Tracy and latched myself onto the line holding the platform. Keiko disappeared from sight almost immediately. In seconds, we were on a plane and clocking twenty-six knots, nearly full steam ahead. Having lost visual contact with Keiko, we realized he could not keep up. Yet there was no sign of him in our wake. At best we held our speed for no more than a quarter of a mile, finally giving in that we would have to wait for Keiko to rejoin his escort.

  Michael smoothly dropped back on the throttle. The Draupnir gracefully slowed and nestled herself down snugly to the water-line. As we came to a stop our moderate wake caught up with us and lifted the stern of the boat in the process. At that same moment, Keiko surfaced alongside the platform announcing his presence with a stiff whale-sized breath.

  “Holy crap! He stayed with us!” I exclaimed.

  “Whoa …” Michael’s expression was drawn out with disbelief.

  “Did anyone see where he was?” Tracy asked.

  Jen answered first, “Nothing from up here. As soon as we picked up I lost him.”

  “Nobody saw him come up for a breath? That was a pretty decent distance!” I couldn’t imagine that he could make that sprint on a single breath.

  “He was right there,” Tracy said, adding, “It’s like he stayed right with us. No way he could catch up that fast.”

  Finally Robin chimed in on the parade of reactions; he was ready to solve the mystery. “Let’s go again, this time a little longer.”

  So we did.

  Again Keiko popped up alongside the starboard platform the instant Draupnir slowed. We were stunned. Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine that this whale … this whale … could emerge from twenty years in the care of man and magically exalt to the physical prowess of an Olympic athlete. No matter the preparation and exercise of our past many months, a sprint at this pace and distance was impressive by any measure.

  Still mystified, we tried again. This time we wanted evidence. In both of the first two dashes, not one of us had seen Keiko. We imagined he must be running deep to a more hydrodynamic position, his body compressed at depth and rifling through the water. At least that much would explain the energetic overcompensation when he surfaced bigger than life at each of the two finish lines.

  Eyes wide, alert and fixated on the boundaries of the walk-boat, we were hell-bent on being witness to the feat. After all, seeing Keiko move that fast would be a trophy for the ages. This time, I quickly moved from the platform and stood atop the sponson, grasping the top rail of the pilothouse. From here, I had a much better view of Keiko. I expected to track his first movements for some indication of where he made his escape.

  Again the Draupnir’s twin engines pitched up to their drumming howl. Again Keiko immediately vanished amidst the white wash pushed off the side of Draupnir’s bow.

  “Damn it! Where the hell is he going?” I questioned as I kept my eyes glued on our wake.

  “I don’t see anything,” Jen confirmed the same.

  But this time we held the pace longer, not by much, but enough. The long shallow swells that day allowed Robin, who often took such chances, to stand on top of the aft engine cowling, nothing to hold or steady himself. From here, he had the perfect view of the Draupnir’s stern.

  Moments later, he exclaimed, “Got him—he’s drafting the boat.”

  “What?” Disbelieving, I scurried back to the stern, crowding the small space with Tracy and Robin, who had now climbed down from his giant surfboard. We all three leaned over the back of the boat and looked straight down. There, only two, maybe three feet below, were Keiko’s flukes, or rather, the trailing edges of his flukes, the bright white of each fluke outlined by the black edges. He was upside down, practically plastered to the boat’s hull, taking advantage of the liquid vortex beneath the boat that had pulled him along.

  “Oh my, God! That’s hilarious!” Tracy blurted. “How the hell?”

  “Look at that! I can’t believe that he can do that!” I was still in disbelief. “Robin he’s not even moving his flukes!”

  “He’s either got a bear hug on the hull, or he’s riding her slip-stream,” he theorized, not knowing which was more likely, perhaps a little of both.

  Robin turned and dragging the edge of his flattened palm against his neck, gestured to Michael to cut the engines. Poor Michael, figuratively chained to the wheel, was standing as far outside the cabin door as he dared, longingly stretching to get a glimpse. By the time Michael dropped back to a leisurely trot and finally brought us to a stop, the entire investigation had lasted less than two minutes.

  In a repeat performance, Keiko popped up at our side the instant we dropped off plane. Gazing at him now alongside my usual position, he looked almost triumphant. I didn’t know how, but he appeared to gloat. His posture? Eyes? The way he tilted his head ever-so-slightly, casting a glance in our direction at each breath? A little of each and more I suppose. But this is exactly how it felt as I stared at Keiko. If I could have placed a caption over his head it would read: “What else you got?”

  “You sneaky sucker,” I said.

  “And here we thought he was faster than the Draupnir.” Michael had left the helm and was rolling a cigarette, the trademark “knowing” smile pasted on his face.

  We drifted for a few minutes, gathering ourselves as the excitement dissipated. We reveled at the ingenuity of the whale. Where had he learned such a thing? The closest resemblance of this behavior had been on the first walk out of Klettsvik when Keiko repeatedly attempted to draft beneath Draupnir. Back then we traveled at no more than four to five knots. More to the point, we had never lost sight of him in those instances. He never got close enough to the hull to plaster his belly into her slipstream. Following some debate, theories, and simple amazed observations, we finally turned to task. We had left the platform in its down position. The entire time Keiko sat patiently at the surface awaiting our next volley.

  “Fine, Keiko three: Draupnir zero. But he’s going to get a workout either way.”

  Robin answered my challenge. “Position him out with the target?” The question was rhetorical.

  “That’s what I’m thinking. Keep it short and a little slower until we’re sure he’s staying out,” I said.

  “Agreed. Michael, we’re going to do a few short approximations, probably only a couple hundred meters and a little slower at first.”

  “Okee-dokie,” Michael acknowledged.

  The walk team stayed at sea with Keiko for a while longer, practicing a series of short sprints. Each time we guided Keiko with the target pole ensuring that he would remain to starboard, actually having to do the work on his own. Although these unassisted sprints never matched the previous trials in which we were fooled, Keiko nonetheless impressed us with his swift movement. I believed he could very well have matched the Draupnir if h
e had wanted; however, he could not hold the fast swim for long. At best, his speed came in short bursts.

  The Explorer

  Our third walk found us eleven nautical miles from shore. We had stumbled onto a nice “flat,” a calm convergence of currents that quieted the surface into that of a warm summer lake hundreds of meters in every direction. Similar in ways to Klettsvik Bay on her more forgiving days, birds kept us company both aloft and meandering on the surface. We had started our walk that morning with little direction in mind, our only mandate: the avoidance of other killer whales. In the distance, Heppin circled slowly, holding guardianship position over the nucleus of the Draupnir and Keiko. Onboard the walk-boat, we waited and watched. Following our run out to sea, and finding an expanse of vacant water (vacant of whales), we intended to rehearse the neutral disposition, affording Keiko his opportunity to explore apart from the dictates of the Draupnir.

  Stephen Claussen had returned from a short stint at home in the states. Claiming his favorite toy and pastime, he stood at-the-ready by the HDS funnel cannon mounted on the bowsprit of the walk-boat. Stephen was preparing to acknowledge Keiko’s first exploits moving away from the Draupnir with the now-familiar herring from heaven. Limited by the distance of the HDS, we only wanted one, maybe two opportunities to catch Keiko in the act of moving away. Anything more and we would only teach him to stay within the HDS’s range. For what seemed the longest while, Keiko just loitered around the vicinity of the boat. At last, either bored with our quiet boat or distracted in other ways, he slowly moved off our stern. His departure from the Draupnir was not decisive; rather, he merely meandered away in a westerly direction, mostly drifting at the surface.

  It’s hard to say how long it had been. We had no way to influence Keiko’s willingness to explore on his own. The best we could offer was the careful directive not to interfere. In each case, the initial effort was to simply become invisible offering no attention, nothing to impede his interests elsewhere, not even the purr of the Draupnir’s engines. In practicing our ghostly posture, we became somewhat adept at passing the time during these blackouts of competing stimuli. Some of us conversed on a variety of topics, from personal adventures home to how planes could fly. Others occupied themselves with lunch or dinner or whatever excuse could be made to snack. At least one of us would find the most comfortable spot on the pontoon-like sponson and pretend to nap. Although a comfortable place to stretch out, the foam-filled sponson was a precarious perch. One could easily end up jolted awake by tumbling to the wrong side and into the frigid water.

  Whatever it was that each of us found to pass the time, we all kept an ear or watchful eye toward Keiko’s activity. Jen seldom engaged in the extracurricular activities onboard. She was stubbornly addicted or committed to the gathering of research data. Remaining at her post on the top of the cabin, we often listened to her voice as she recorded the occasional notes into the ethogram microphone. This afforded us the luxury of eating, napping or otherwise goofing off. In this way, some part of our attention was always aware of where Keiko was and what he was doing. It was deep into a cloud of drowsy waiting when finally the monotony was shattered.

  “I’ve lost him,” Jen said to everyone and no one in particular.

  No one replied, but each dropped what he was doing and started scanning the surface around us.

  “Draupnir—Heppin,” Michael called casually over the radio, “You guys see Keiko?” Michael always said “Keiko” with his own brand of pronunciation. Keiko sounding more like “Kee-ko,” the second consonant as hard as the first.

  “Heppin—Draupnir. The last we saw he was off your six o’clock about 300 meters.”

  “Copy that, Heppin.”

  “Anything on the hydrophone?” Robin asked.

  Before Michael could relay the question, Steve Sinelli’s voice crackled over the radio. Those of us on deck heard the report from the handheld marine radio placed on the engine cowling. “Sili—Draupnir. I heard some vocals a little bit ago … not whales I don’t think but something else maybe, like a pod of harbor porpoises. Not hearing anything now.”

  “Would’ve been nice to know,” Jeff said quietly. Only Robin and I were within earshot of the comment. He was wearing his usual comfortable smile, hands jammed in the pockets of his Mustang survival suit.

  “I think he’s off our nine,” Jen offered. By now she had set aside the ethogram equipment and had the VHF tracking antenna out. The antenna was exactly the same as those found on houses back when TV signals were predominantly analog. She held the receiver out in front of her in a horizontal position, slowly sweeping it right to left and back again as she scanned the quadrant from seven to eleven o’clock. The device was very light, made of a larger aluminum post with smaller antennae crossing in a perpendicular fashion. If Keiko surfaced, and if the tag’s transmitting antenna was free from the water’s surface, and if Jen had the receiver aimed in the same direction at the same moment, she would hear a faint beep through the large padded headphones she now wore.

  “Yep, got a signal right off our nine once but seems to be moving east. Second signal was closer to ten o’clock.”

  “Anything?” I asked Jeff. He stood with both feet on the sponson pressing his back into the pilothouse to steady himself while peering in the advised direction with binoculars.

  “No—nothing yet,” he drew out the “no” with a questioning tone.

  “Sili—Draupnir,” came the call over the radio. “We’ve got a small pod of harbor porpoises moving pretty quick to the north—looks like they came from your area.”

  “Copy that Sili. Any sign of Keiko?”

  “Negative, Draupnir, not from here. Do you want us to move off and follow the pod?”

  “No, tell them to stay put for now.” Robin responded without waiting for Michael to relay the question. But Michael didn’t have to.

  “Sili—Draupnir. We’ve sighted Keiko. He’s about a thousand meters behind the pod of porpoises moving in the same direction—seems like he’s following the pod.”

  “Copy that Sili. Stand by.”

  “That’s probably why Sili isn’t hearing the vocals. Betcha they saw Keiko or heard him and went silent trying to sneak around,” Jeff suggested.

  “Do you think we should call him back?” Stephen asked Robin.

  “No, let’s see what he does. This is great. This is exactly what we’ve wanted to see.” Thus far, Robin was the only one that didn’t show concern at losing visual contact with Keiko.

  “First time we’ve seen him show interest in anything. Pretty encouraging that he’s curious enough to check them out.” I wanted in on the optimism, although admittedly it was a little odd to let him off the proverbial leash without knowing how far he’d go or if he’d return. This was a rehearsal, not an introduction, and those were not killer whales that he was following.

  “But what if he just keeps going?” Stephen continued, as if he had read my mind. “How far do we let him go?”

  “We should be careful not to call him back while he’s actively showing interest,” I offered, mainly to Robin. His confidence became my own.

  “Jeff, I think we should wait until Sili can confirm that the harbor porpoises have moved away before we try calling him back?” Robin was looking for consensus.

  “I agree. I don’t want to let him get too far, though. It’ll get dicey trying to track him down with only the radio tag.”

  We couldn’t gather satellite data but once every twenty-four hours, even then only by downloading the data on a laptop back at base. At present, the only way to track Keiko was via the intermittent signal of the VHF radio built into the tracking device on Keiko’s dorsal.

  “I can move us slowly in that direction?” Michael said.

  “I don’t think we should even start the engines at this point,” I interjected, not wanting to break the prime directive. Even though the prospect of Keiko following a pod of harbor porpoise was a far cry from a sustainable release, we couldn’t dare ris
k interfering with the very point of exploration and his display of interest in something apart from us. After all, this was what it was all about. Keiko had found something more appealing than the Draupnir in this infinitely foreign environment. We needed the confidence to let it play out. “Freaking out” would be too strong a description of the atmosphere onboard the Draupnir, though trepidations abounded in that direction.

  Moments turned to minutes, which clicked over into a quarter of an hour.

  Robin picked up the handheld. “Draupnir—Sili.”

  “Go ahead, Draupnir.”

  “Can you still see the pod of dolphins?”

  “Negative. They’ve moved out of our sight. We had them two minutes ago moving in the same direction, but they’re too far now.”

  “What about Keiko?”

  “He’s south of us about a thousand meters. They were moving too fast for him. He’s just kinda hanging in the same area.”

  “Copy. Thanks.”

  “We can either recall him or see if he returns on his own,” Robin said to the crew.

  Always a ready opinion to share, I was the first to offer my views, “I think I’d rather recall him than wait for him to return voluntarily, that is, if we’re sure he’s not on the porpoises.”

  No explanation was needed. Robin understood the fine line that lay before us. If we waited for his voluntary return, acknowledged him and continued on, we would encourage future returns to the walk-boat versus that of interest in the new world. Although recalling him now also interrupted in the delicate process, it was the lesser of two evils. Jeff nodded and shrugged agreement. No one else seemed to have an opinion.

  “Okay, let’s recall.”

  “Draupnir—Sili/Heppin,” Michael advised, “Going to recall Keiko.”