KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: When the time comes to free Willy, will he be ready? CNN's Jerrold Kessel takes a look at Keiko's trainers' plans for teaching him to survive on his own.</s>JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Shaping up but not yet shipping out, the world's most famous whale, Willy Keiko, edging his way along a complex passage to freedom. But will his reconditioning, still within a special ocean bay pen, make him ready to cope with that passage to freedom?</s>ROBIN FRIDAY, KEIKO'S TRAINER: The main issues are physical stamina. I mean, he has to be able to endure. He's preparing for a marathon, if you will.</s>KESSEL: The killer whale's trainers plan soon to allow him to expand his horizons beyond the bay pen, but still within nets strung across the bay mouth, a halfway house to freedom. To break that craving for human attention that held him in thrall to his 20 years in captivity, his trainers gradually instituted a policy of tough love -- fewer body massages, less eye contact -- to make him understand being lovable no longer pays. He now spends more than half his time under water rather than nearly all above it where he used constantly to look for that human contact. Keiko hasn't yet graduated to eating live fish or shown interest in catching them. Experts, however, are confident that once given the chance, he will hunt himself for the 140 pounds of food he needs daily, to accept the fact that no longer will his food come to him. Keiko is now better equipped to face the challenges of returning to the Icelandic oceans from where he was plucked at the age of 2. He's a healthier, heavier, much fitter creature than when he languished in concrete pools in captivity, likely heading towards a premature death. Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Westmann Islands, Iceland.
Trainers Teach Killer Whale Willy How to Live Free