Braden added: 'It's a really sad moment for us, but we do believe we gave him a chance to be in the wild.'Дavid Phillips, executive director of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, said Keiko's plight changed public perception of whether a whale could be returned to the wild. 'They really do die quickly and there was nothing we could do,' he said. Nick Braden, a spokesman of the Humane Society of the United States, said vets gave Keiko antibiotics after he showed signs of lethargy, but it wasn't apparent how sick he was. He allowed fans to pet and play with him, even crawl on his back, becoming such an attraction that animal protection authorities imposed a ban on approaching him. Keiko first turned up near the village of Halsa in August 2002. He swam straight for Norway, a 870-mile trek that seemed to be a search for human companionship.

Keiko was released from Iceland in July 2002. His handlers there prepared him for the wild, teaching him to catch live fish in an operation that cost about ВЈ300,000 a month. He was rehabilitated at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, then airlifted to Iceland in 1998. Keiko, which means Lucky One in Japanese, was originally found ailing in a Mexico City aquarium in 1993. In the wild, orcas can live an average of 35 years. The 35ft-long, six-ton whale, which was 27-years-old, died after the sudden onset of pneumonia in the Taknes fjord in Norway.

Was keiko in free willy 2