美国英语听力80篇2 Lesson33
33) Whale Keiko (B)
Nylon material was placed under the Orc's body for the trip.
Holes had been cut for his nose, tail and fins.
A big mechanical arm lifted him into a special container filled with cold seawater.
This travel box measured eight-and.one-half-meters.
A truck carried Keiko and his box to a nearby airport.
From there, an American Air Force plane flew him to Iceland.
Until earlier this month, Keiko lived in the floating cage in Klettsvik Bay.
Animal experts watched him closely as he learned skills he would need to live free in the ocean.
Keiko still needs to develop more Orc skills.
For example, the bay is full of fish.
Keiko hunts and kills fish, as he should.
But he still is providing himself with only about half the food he needs to support his five-ton body.
Humans give him the rest of his food.
And sometimes he acts as though he were still performing tricks for the public in an amusement park:
He brings fish that he has killed to his human keepers.
Some experts say Keiko never can live complete free in the ocean.
They say he is too old to learn all he needs to know.
One official of a sea-park organization says that putting Keiko in the open ocean would be "a death sentence."
But the president of the Ocean Futures Society says
the whale has been able to learn and do everything his keepers have asked.
Jean-Michel Cousteau says Keiko could be released into the open ocean later this year.
Mister Cousteau also says this will happen only if Keiko continues to improve his skills
and other conditions seem right.
Ocean Futures will continue to watch over Keiko--- even if he is never able to leave the bay.
He is living in Ocean water with other ocean creatures.
So even if the barriers remain around the bay,
Keiko is experiencing the most normal Orc life he has known in twenty years.
Activists in several parts of the United States are working to free other Orcs.
For example, some activists demonstrated about ten months ago at a sea park in the southern city of Miami, Florida.
They were demanding that an Orc named Lolita stop performing in the park.
They urged that she be returned to life in the sea, just, as Keiko has been.
The Sea Park has refused to let Lolita return to the ocean.
Some animal experts support the presence of Orcs in parks, if they are well treated.
They say the animals' needs are provided for and their health guarded.
They say the whales do not suffer the dangers of living in the ocean.
And the Orcs are happy in their relations with human beings.
But animal rights activists point to the fact that Orcs can swim as many as one hundred kilometers a day.
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