Reykjavik - Keiko, the killer whale star of the Free Willy movie, swam out of his pen into the enclosed waters of a remote Icelandic bay yesterday to the delight of a nature group preparing him for a return to the wild. The five-tonne whale poked his nose through an underwater cage at 9 a.m. and moved into another pool where he will undergo medical tests.
But the netting closing off the pool has been removed, allowing the black and white Orca to roam around an enclosed area of Klettsvik Bay in the Westman Islands off Iceland's south coast about 22 times bigger than his current home.
The bay enclosure will be a halfway house for Keiko before he is released into the sea, possibly later this year, and will allow him to experience an ocean environment for the first time since his capture more than 20 years ago.