THE THREE GRAY WHALES

Persevering Captives of the Ice

For twenty‑one days three gray whales fought for life and breath in the frozen Beaufort Sea, while television viewers around the world watched them in pain and hope.

Bone, Bonnet and Crossbeak, three endangered California gray whales, had left the Arctic Ocean at the end of summer and were on their way to Baja California, Mexico, to breed and winter. Feeding close to shore at Point Barrow, Alaska, they lingered too long and were surrounded by ice on October 7, 1988. That evening an Eskimo hunter found the air‑breathing sea mammals about two hundred yards from shore, struggling for breath in an opening in the ice.

He reported the plight of the whales to the biologists at the North Slope Borough Wildlife Management Department in Barrow. Both Eskimo and white scientists thought perhaps the whales should be put out of their misery. Then television got hold of the story and they wondered no more. Letters and phone calls poured in. The world wanted the three gray whales rescued.

Eskimo hunters together with the scientists set out to do so. Using chain saws, they cut a series of breathing holes leading toward open water three miles away. When this effort was shown on television, six‑foot chain saws were sent to the rescuers by concerned business people. A National Guard helicopter arrived with a five‑ton chunk of concrete to drop on the ice to make more holes with less human effort.

It didn't work. The rescuers went on sawing. As the days grew colder, the holes refroze. At their own expense, several people hopped a plane and arrived in Barrow with costly deicing equipment.

The de‑icers kept the water open for the whales, and the rescuers sawed on. Then something went wrong. The whales stopped using the holes.

The Eskimos got down on their bellies and talked to the whales as their ancestors had done for centuries. They urged them to use the holes. The whales seemed to understand that the men were helping them and swam to a hole, only to turn around and go back.

Then Malek, an elderly Eskimo hunter, spoke to the whales. After a while he reported to the rescuers: "The water is too shallow, the whales are saying." The scientists took a sounding of the lagoon bottom and found that the whales were right. A shoal was blocking the escape route. The water was too shallow under the breathing holes.

Urgently the men cut holes leading around the shoal, and urgently the whales responded. They swam from one hole to the next in great excitement as they moved toward the open sea.

On the eighteenth day of the rescue attempt, the holes stretched one and a half miles toward freedom, but the whales were growing weary. Bone, the smallest, disappeared and was never seen again.

That night a wind moved great floes of ice toward Point Barrow and piled them in a ridge twenty feet high. It grounded the ridge on the bottom of the lagoon and cut off all escape. The next morning, when Bonnet and Crossbeak were surfacing to breathe, Malek again went to the whales. He knew they did not need to eat, for they had been feeding in the Beaufort Sea all summer, storing fat for their long migration. But they were under stress and losing weight. They needed a friend. Day and night he remained with the gray whales, soothing them with his voice and stroking their icetorn noses with his hands.

The rescuers sawed on toward the ridge while National Guard helicopters brought supplies and camera operators. Meanwhile around the world, television watchers turned on their sets each morning to see if the whales were still alive. At the White House's direction, the Air Force assigned a C‑5A Galaxy to ferry more equipment to Barrow. The President of the United States wished the whales well.

Then the Soviet Union responded. The cold‑war enemy of the United States announced that two Soviet icebreakers three hundred miles from Barrow were on their way to help the whales.

Encouraged, the American rescuers sawed furiously forward, trying to reach the ridge in time to meet the Soviet icebreakers. Again the whales stopped swimming. This time the men knew why‑shallow water. Since they were about five hundred feet from the ridge, they cut a big pool for the whales and went back to town to sleep and to wait for the Soviets‑all but Malek. He stayed with the whales all night, stroking and calming them.

In the darkness of the morning of October 26, the rescue crew returned to watch the Soviet icebreakers cut a path through the ridge as if it were butter. The whales bolted for open water. Cheers went up, and it was reported that the whales were free.

They were not. They could not surface to breathe in the ice‑jammed track. They came back to the last hole. Once more the Soviets cut through the ice. The whales moved but went the wrong way. They returned to the hole and thrust their heads above water. Malek talked to them, pointed them in the right direction and gave them a shove. With that, Bonnet and Crossbeak rose halfway out of the water in ‑a breach, dove and disappeared.

The Soviet captain saw one pass his ship. At last the whales were free.