JOIE CHEN, CNN ANCHOR: What's going on with Keiko? Latest reports from Iceland say the star of the movie "Free Willy" doesn't like roughing it in the wild. You'll recall, three years ago the killer whale was moved from his home in the Oregon Coast Aquarium to a large pen off Iceland. One report quotes officials saying they've all but given up hope on getting Keiko to live with other killer whales in open waters. The executive vice president of Ocean Futures Society, the group behind this, says that's not the case. Charles Vinick is back on the phone with us. Mr. Vinick, we have talked to you before about Keiko's situation. The last time we talked you said this is going to take a while. Now we are getting this report saying you guys have given up. What is going on?</s>CHARLES VINICK, OCEAN FUTURES SOCIETY: Well, I think the report you saw and you quoted is simply inaccurate. It is just taken out of context, perhaps. It was an Icelandic newspaper report that then got quoted from there on. The actual situation is that this summer's reintroduction program has ended because the wild whales left the area of the</s>CHEN: Let them join in any reindeer games, as it were. I just have one other quick for you and I do need a quick answer on this -- is there some reason beyond the symbolic, why Keiko ought to be returned? Would it shorten his lifespan to remain in captivity?</s>VINICK: Certainly wild whales have a much longer life span than do captive whales. In Keiko's case it is not clear because he has been partially captive, partially wild. But this is really a story about the research with the wild whales and through Keiko he's an ambassador of ours to the wild whales. And we learned learn about them through him.</s>CHEN: All right, we get the accurate information on Keiko's current situation from Charles Vinick, of Ocean Futures, to if you see other reports in the newspaper, ignore them, because Charles Vinick tells you they are still working on bringing Keiko back to the wild.
Killer Keiko Conforms Keenly to Kind