Diane Hammond
speaker
13 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Diane Hammond’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So that day was typical of the Oregon Coast. It was raining, it was windy, it was cold.
I don't know what my title was, but I was pretty much press secretary to the killer whale.
I was there long before Keiko arrived. I was there before there was an aquarium, in fact.
Everybody else had said no by then. We were definitely not the first approached. There was the sense of, if you guys don't help us, we don't know what we're going to do with him. And there may be nothing we can do for him, but let him die.
People were cheering. People had signs, welcome Keiko. And little kids were along the highway waving. And then the truck arrived and the box was on the flatbed, pulled up to the facility. And Keiko was lifted by crane out of the box in a sling, a big canvas sling. It was the first time I had seen him. He hung in the air for what seemed like forever.
It was probably only 20 seconds, but he let out a piercing call. People were crying. The media was crying. I don't think I was crying. I think I was too tired.
Well, it sounds so stupid, but he's really big. He's really big. And even underweight and sick, he was huge. And something about that cry in the dark and the rain and the wind was very overwhelming. It was so moving and disturbing at the same time.
We played God at that point, and I felt committed to the project and absolutely certain that we would make his life better, no matter what the outcome, just by getting him there. The story we were telling was a beautiful story of things going right, a simple story about illness and suffering and rehabilitation. But he was so other. He's so not human.
And it, for me anyway, gave me an overwhelming sense of responsibility to do the right thing for this animal.
When people were there, he didn't just kind of swim by the window casually and go off and do something else. He was unusually present. We used to say, when Keiko looked at you, you were seen. And I think, by and large, people who were in his presence believed that to be true.
He had moments of aggression. He beat the hell out of some of his toys, for instance. He was bored. You know, bored animals get into trouble. I felt I could see that some of his needs weren't being adequately met in that pool. And he was no longer a golden retriever.
Oh, we never even really spoke to each other after a while.
The water quality went to hell. And it went to hell in a pretty simple way. It would have been very easy to fix. I believe it was deliberate. I can't give you a date and a how. But the Oregon Coast Aquarium always had control of the water quality and the filtration of the pool.
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