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Friday

Feb172012

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 9: the Archimedean Screw Tractor flies to Barrow inside the belly of one whale of a jet

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 10:44PM

By now it was official - the two Soviet Ice Breakers were busting their way toward Barrow, so that they could tear the pressure ridges apart and clear out a gap for the whales to pass through into open water. Even so, the whales still had a ways to go even to draw near to the pressure ridges. The water closer to shore was believed to be too shallow for the icebreakers. This meant the Iñupiat whalers and a few others who had joined them in the chainsaw crews had to keep coming, to keep cutting and lengthening their trail to the ridges.

Yet, if there was a way to cut that trail faster and more efficiently, people still wanted to do it. The faster the whales got to open water, the faster they would be out of danger and the sooner everybody who was not from Barrow could pack up and go home. And so it happened that the largest airplane in the world brought the Archimedean Screw Tractor to Barrow.

The airplane was the National Guard's Lockheed C-5A Galaxy, designed to carry "oversized and outsized" military hardware and weaponry, plus combat troops, anywhere in the world. The Japanese-built Archimedean Screw Tractor was a big, ice-breaking boat owned by VECO for that traveled on pontoons propelled by spiraling screw threads. It could travel atop the ice or break through and cut a path. Bill Allen, Chairman of the Board of Veco came with it to Barrow. Perhaps he was looking for good PR, but no PR he would ever get could get him through the future scandals he would become involved in. Google his name if you don't know but want to find out more.

The giant jet drew near as sundown approached. Fog began to settle down in patches near the airport. Visibility was poor, lighting terrible, and light levels low. The runway was clear and we could see its lights coming down maybe one mile before touchdown. Some were concerned that the runway would prove too short, but the C-5A was designed to accomplish what for such a huge aircraft are short take-offs and landings. The National Guard was confident that it had the ability to get in and out of Barrow.

At first, it didn't look all that much bigger than a MarkAir 737, but it seemed to grow as it sank lower, until finally it was huge, dark, mass hanging above the runway. It frightened me a bit, because the giant jet seemed to eat up about half the runway before it even sat its wheels down. NSB-SAR's "Big Bird" helicipter was flying on the south side of the runway so that those inside could observe and be prepared to take action, should the jet overshoot the runway. The big helicopter looked very tiny as it the C-5A roared by and whipped up a great ground-blizzard in its wake.

It didn't come to a stop until it reached the very end of the runway and rolled into the over-run area. The pilots turned around very slowly, and then parked it right on the runway. An approaching Mark Air passenger 737 was forced to fly a holding pattern for two hours as the C-5A was unloaded and then prepared for take off. When the cowling was pulled up for display purposes, I was reminded of a baleen whale, flippers to the side, flukes behind, rising mouth open to the surface to scoop up tiny sea creatures by the ton.

I circled around to the back of the aircraft, where I was again reminded of a whale, flukes lifted above the water into the air. As the screw pontoons were unloaded, it seemed to evoke the image of a whale giving birth. I guess whales were lodged into my brain.

It was here, on the runway of the Will Rogers-Wiley Post Memorial Airport, that the immensity of the spectacle finally overwhelmed me. I felt as though I had been hurled into the Twilight Zone and was never getting out. None of this could be real. A simple, natural event, turned into the worlds biggest sideshow, with no sign of ending. One technological wonder after another followed each other into action, the effort always growing, escalating, bubbling and boiling way beyond the control of anyone involved. We were all helpless, trapped to ride along and struggle along, whether we were whale hunters, big oil, borough, military, Greenpeace, or media, there was no stopping, no backing out - we just had to keep plunging forward.

Whatever it took, regardless of expense, logic or what was best for human or whale, this had to be seen through until the whales had either died or left the immediate area, at which time the odds were good that they might die somewhere else before they could leave the Arctic - they had to be given the chance.

Just as I was frustrated yesterday when I could not find the pictures of Whitlam on the ice pointing the way to the helicopter, I am equally frustrated now, because I took a tour of the plane and I photographed the crew members as they beamed with pride while the rest of us stumbled through their aviation wonder in awe. I cannot find those photos now.

At that moment, it suddenly seemed somehow like the rescue had very little to do with whales anymore. It was a bit of a race, though. A race to see if the best that the cleverest, brightest, and most expensive technology of our society could beat a handful of Eskimo hunters wielding chainsaws. Officially, no one was going to admit that, but it was true.

Yet, all these diverse groups were working together to save the whales. That is all true. People who had often battled each other were now working together, even as they competed, in common cause. The Soviets were coming. Very soon, we would be working with the very people with whom we had spent my entire lifetime mutually readying ourselves to destroy the entire human world. People were getting to know each other. It appeared to me that everyone involved honestly did want to see the whales rescued.

Still, it was a race, a contest. Jeff Berliner overheard a National Guardsman comment to another that if they didn't hurry up and get their act together, "the Eskimos are going to beat us to the rescue of the whales."

I had my favorites in this race - no doubt about it. The hunters. I wanted them to win. Yet, when Bill Allen (above at press conference) started talking about the capabilities of the screw tractor, how it could shoot right through the ice and rip an ice-free path 15 to 16 feet wide, clear of debris and slush - a good path for whales to follow - how it could do in a matter of a couple of hours what would still take the whale hunters days, I wanted it to work. I wanted it to clear the path to where the Soviets would rip open the ridge. I wanted the whales to swim through. I wanted the whales to go follow the path, into the open sea, where we could all photograph them as they waved their flukes goodbye. Then, all the media could leave, Barrow could slip back to being Barrow.

I could slip into bed, to sleep for a week or two. Then, when I awoke, I could go back to documenting the life of one of America's most unique communities - a whale hunting community - bowhead whales. If this ended soon, Nuiqsut's three unused strikes might yet be passed to Barrow. The fall hunt might resume.

That's what I wanted. But, it doesn't work that way in the Twilight Zone. The Twilight Zone is an extremely difficult place to get out of; some say impossible. Even now, on February 17, 2012, 23 years and five months later, it somehow seems that, in some ways, I have never completely got out of the Twilight Zone that I snowmachined into in 1988.

That's my friend, colleague, and housemate through the duration of the rescue, Jeff Berliner of UPI, asking Colonel Tom Carroll a relevant, pertinent and intelligent question regarding the participation of the National Guard and the C-5A.

Although to my eye, this part of the operation looked to be extremely expensive, a member of the C-5A crew told me this mission was not costing the guard anything extra beyond what would have been spent anyway. Had they not flown the jet to Barrow, they would have flown the jet somewhere else. The fuel burn would have been the same, he said, maintenance would have been the same, work hours the same.

In the hope that he could erase all skepticism among the local population, before he put it into action, Bill Allen invited Acting Mayor Warren Matumeak, elder hunters Alred Leavitt, Whitlam Adams and some other community elders and leaders for a ride on the screw tractor.

Warren Matumeak walking away with an ABC reporter after the ride.

Alfred and Whitlam, after the ride.

Once again, I am sad and frustrated. Bill Allen did put the screw tractor into action, but I cannot find the pictures. He drove it into a crack, it broke through and then cut through the ice as slick and swiftly as he had promised - but it did not leave a clear path. The path filled with slush and ice. It was not a path the whales could swim through. It was a path that was of no value to whale nor man.

So, back at Prudhoe, welders began to design and assemble a scoop the tractor could pull behind it to clear the slush and ice out of the path. If this failed, and if the Soviets failed, then somewhere, I can't even remember where, people began to sew together a large net that could be flown to Barrow and then used to net the whales and hoist them out of the water and fly them to safety.

I don't think anyone had any idea how this might be accomplished, but, if need be, the net would be there. People could then try to solve the problem.

The screw tractor, at night. If I recall correctly, a repair was being made, a weld applied. The tractor would get another chance - as Oran Caudle knows so well. I believe I have those negatives - so readers will still get to see it in action.

Meanwhile, the whalers kept cutting their holes, drawing ever closer to the pressure ridges.

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Friday

Feb172012

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 8: Michio Hoshino froze his fingers; I threw away my chance for wealth and fame; Kool-Aid pressure ridge bombs; polar bear; interspecies Pied Piper; tarps over the hole; CNN learns the home is a sacred place

Friday, February 17, 2012 at 1:03AM

This is reknowned wildlife photographer, Michio Hoshino, outside the North Slope Borough Search and Rescue hangar waiting for a helicopter ride. He has blisters on his fingers because they got frostbit while he was out photographing the trapped gray whales. Michio was born in Japan but loved open space and wildlife, and so relocated to Alaska in the 1970's. In 1996, on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, he was mauled to death by a brown bear that attacked him in his sleep and dragged him out of his tent.

This week, a play about him is being performed in Anchorage. If I were not overloaded with tasks between now and when I leave for Arizona/India in two nights, I would go see it.

Except to try to sleep, I did not spend much time at the NARL quonset hut that then served as my Barrow home, but when I was there my phone rang almost non-stop. The calls came from people all over the world who had seen my wire service photos in the planet's newspapers.

One of the first calls came from Newsweek at 6:30 in the morning, after a night in which I had gotten no sleep at all. Newsweek wanted to contract with me on the spot, to commit me to photographing the rest of the rescue for them, in color. Newsweek was prepared to put a few hundred rolls on a jet and send them to me immediately.

My first commitment was to Uiñiq magazine, which then was all black and white and I intended to photograph in black and white. I turned them down.

This was followed almost immediately by a call by lady from SIPA Press out of Paris. She wanted me to swear off any further relationships with the wire services and to commit to shoot exclusively for SIPA - again, in color. She gave me a price. I refused it. She nearly doubled it. I refused it again. She doubled the second figure. I refused it again. "Well, how much do you want?" she pushed. "We can work something out. This one's going to be big." She offered to make black and white dupes from the color slides she wanted me to shoot for her and then send them back, "for your little paper."

She promised me fame and and fortune overnight.

I didn't negotiate. I just told her, "no." She called a couple more times. Same answer. One editor in Sweden proved so persistant that for the next week I received a call from her every time I came within earshot of my phone. There was one magazine that I hoped maybe I could get some photos into - Life. Life was the magazine that had first shown me the magic and wonder of photography. At the beginning of my career, I had given myself two magazine goals - to be published in both National Geographic and Life.

I had made it into National Geographic. I had not made it into Life. Life frequently ran black and white essays. Maybe this was my chance. I called the science editor, Jeff Wheelwright, who loves Alaska and has become a friend. He was on extended vacation, and couldn't be reached. Not long after that, I received a call from Lynn Weinstein at Life's picture desk. She had also seen my wire service pictures. She asked if I would shoot for Life.

Color or black and white? I asked. "Color." She answered. I told her about Uiñiq. I told her I had to shoot black and white. Would she maybe reconsider? She said, no, she would find someone to shoot color, but if I could send her some black and white prints by the following Thursday, she would consider them. That was eight or nine days away - surely, this would end well before then and I would have time to make some high-quality black and white prints and send to her.

Ok, I agreed - but no color.

I promised my UPI reporter friend Jeff Berliner that I would make a print or two for him every day. I did not really want to, because one cannot shoot while one is developing film and printing. I did not want to be distracted from shooting. But I figured I could print after midnight and before first light, when there would likely be no action to shoot.

As I was no one's employee but a free agent, some might not understand how I could put Uiñiq ahead of Life, Newsweek, the wealth and fame promised by SIPA and all the other national and international requests that I received, but - Uiñiq was my creation. It was my magazine. Through it, I was shooting this for the people of the Arctic Slope - most especially, for the Iñupiat people. Of course I would put Uiñiq first.

This is Cindy Lowry of Greenpeace, talking to NOAA's Ron Morris, whom the federal government had put in charge of the rescue effort - a charge he took seriously. In the movie, Big Miracle, Drew Barrymore plays Greenpeace volunteer Rachel Kramer, Lowry's fictional counterpart. From all that I read, Lowry is very pleased with the way Barrymore portrayed her.

I would note, though, that there are some major differences between the two. Kramer begins the movie despising the Iñupiat whalers and the hunt that sustains them. When I first learned that Lowry was coming to Barrow, I was prepared not to like her as I thought she might be just as depicted in the movie - someone opposed to the Iñupiat bowhead hunt, someone who wanted to shut it down, someone who could be rigid and unreasonable about the subject.

But she wasn't. When I first met her at the NSB-SAR hangar, she completely disarmed me. She was charming and personable - rational and reasonable. She told me that she had once looked unfavorably at Iñupiat whaling, but had come to understand that it was also a part of the natural order and that she, and Greenpeace, supported the hunt and would continue to as long as it did not threaten the bowhead population.

She was not shrill. She was not extreme. She was passionate. Devoted to her cause. She struck me as a good human being. She found it easy to get along with whalers, to get along with everybody. Well, maybe not quite everybody. She does look a little stressed in this conversation with Ron Morris.

Ron Morris, by the way, had no direct counterpart in Big Miracle - nor did anyone in the NSB Wildlife Management Department, Public Information Office or Mayor's Office. NSB-SAR did have its helicopter counterpart.

At the beginning of the rescue, conversations with Ron were pleasant and amiable, but as the rescue wore on, he grew ever more stressed and conversations with him became ever more stressful.

I guess because I was shooting film and had to conserve in a way I do not have to do now with digital, I only shot two frames of Cindy in this hangar shoot and this is the next - and it immediately followed the frame in which she conversed with Morris.

One day early in the rescue, I stepped into Pepe's (Amigos in Big Miracle) for lunch, found her sharing a table with a man I had not yet seen. Cindy invited me to join them. She introduced me to Jim Nollman, - an "expert on interspecies Communications" from Friday Harbor, Washington. Nollman had his own company - Interspecies Communications and had come to communicate with the trapped whales, lead them to open water and send them on their way to Baja. He had brought tapes of whale sounds, including gray but also orcas, which like to eat grays and of music. He must have also brought a guitar, because he had plans to use one.

If I recall correctly, Greenpeace had paid for his plane ticket in the hope that his gray whale recordings could be used to lead the whales to open water. Yet, after I visited with them for awhile, it became clear that Nollman believed music would be the best lure. He had brought different musical tapes, but what he really wanted to do was to take his guitar out onto the ice, sit at the edge of one of the chainsaw holes that the whales had so far refused to use, strum his guitar and sing to them through a microphone attached to an underwater speaker.

He believed the whales would then leave the security of the breathing hole that had thus far kept them alive and would swim to the one where he sat playing. He would then move a hole away and would strum and sing all over again. In this way, he would lead them all the way to freedom - just like the Pied Piper.

"I need three days and I can lead them to freedom," he told me.

I can't remember for certain if it was at this lunch or another, but I remember that I was eating lunch with Cindy when she first told me that Greenpeace had contacted Soviet officials and were trying to persuade them to send a nearby icebreaker to Barrow, and US officials to get the permission. This was a few days after Ron Morris had first spoke confidentially in the car of Ronald Reagan and how high US and Soviet officials were discussing the possibility of such an icebreaker.

Once the whales did begin to move through the chainsaw holes, it was a fact that their seaward progress would be stopped short by the pressure ridges, if no way was found to clear a way through them. A couple of different possibilities had been discussed - dynamite could be used to blast a way through - this would almost certainly kill and injure other marine life - and might even cause the whales to panic, swim off under the ice and drown.

The other possibility involved sending the Sky Crane and ice punch back out to hammer at the ridge and weaken it so a gap could be cleared through it. The oil industry and the National Guard remained eager not only to help but to prove they could get the job done, so this was chosen over dynamite. Two local Iñupiat ice experts were sent by helicopter out to the pressure ridges to search for structural weaknesses in the ridges - senior whale hunters Whitlam Adams and Alfed Leavitt.

They would seek out structural weaknesses. NSB senior scientist Tom Albert would then mark those spots with red cherry Kool-Aid bombs.

Alfred Leavitt. When he was a young man, Alfred had once taken his dog team onto the ice to hunt and had taken a polar bear. All by himself, he pulled and tugged and hoisted the bear onto his sled, then began the return trip to Barrow - only to discover the ice he was on had broken off from the shorefast and was drifting seaward. A lead, about 100 feet wide, separated him from safety. He ordered his dogs into the water and they obeyed. As they swam, he rode the sled with the bouyant polar bear, but still went in up to his waist. When he reached the other side, he jumped onto the ice just as the last couple of dogs in the team went under. He shoved his hands into the water and pulled them out.

When he was an old man, he again went hunting on the sea ice, this time by snowmachine instead of dogs. He again got a bear. Again, he strapped it to his sled. Again, he found himself cut off from land by a break in the ice and a growing lead of about the same breadth.

This time, he took as good a run at the water as he could, then went skipping across the lead on his snowmachine. The snowmachine sank just before he reached the other edge. Alfred took out his knife and shoved it into the ice as a grip to hang onot. Another nearby hunter spotted him, came and helped pull him out.

Alfred, by the way, was the father of chainsaw crew boss Johnny Leavitt.

Whitlam signals to Tom in the chopper. Now, I am sad and frustrated. I took some pictures of this scenario that had both Whitlam and the chopper in it and they are much better than this one - in fact, I am certain one of them would have made the dozen or so I plan to put in my store and offer up as prints.

I found the contact sheet. I found a packet of negatives with the same number as the contact sheet - but it had different negatives in it. I opened nearby negative packets - none of them contained it. I found the contact sheet that had the same images as the negatives I found in the packet. They weren't there. At random, I pulled up other negative packets and, in the process of "scanning" images for this series, have opened up almost all the packets.

I cannot find the picture. So I had to substitute this one for it. I am so disappointed. I hope I find it someday.

Here is Tom Albert, dropping a Cherry Kool-Aid bomb from the helicopter at one of the places where Whitlam had signaled. The Sky Crane - ice punch would come back and batter those places, but with little if any effect.

And here is a polar bear as seen from the helicopter. ADN outdoor reporter Craig Medred was in the helicopter with me when I took this picture. He then went back and wrote an article speculating as to the ethics of saving trapped whales, which, left to the natural order of things, could have wound up feeding a bunch of polar bears. What if the polar bears starved because they did not get to eat the whales? The story appeared nationwide.

This caused such an outrage among readers that the Daily News had to pull Medred out of Barrow. They replaced him with their top investigative reporter, Richard Mauer, who then also became the New York Times reporter for the duration.

Polar bears were once hunted in Alaska for sport, but no longer are. Only Natives of the Arctic Coast can hunt them, for "subsistence" purposes. Medred is a skilled and enthusiastic hunter and has taken about every kind of game that can be taken in Alaska, except for polar bears and other sea mammals.

"What a beautiful animal!" he exclaimed as we flew over this one. "I sure would like to shoot one."

Jim and Cindy went to the gray whales while I was out with Alfred and Whitlam and Jim conducted his Pied Piper musical experiment - not with a guitar, but with recorded sounds, piped into the water of one of the newly cut chainsaw holes with his underwater speaker. I missed it.

The whales did not budge from the original hole. There had been talk of covering the old hole with ice to force the whales out, or to remove the bubbler and let it freeze over, but this was rejected out of the fear of the damage the whales might suffer if they refused to leave and just kept trying to swim in the refilled hole.

Instead, a decision was made to cover the hole with tarps. Perhaps this would make it so unpleasant for the whales they would leave and go to the chainsaw holes.

Crossbeak beneath the tarps.

The whales not only appeared comfortable beneath the tarps, they seemed to like them. As always, there were those who could not resist the urge to reach out and pat a whale on the snout.

Please note the bubbler - bubblers were also being kept in the newly cut holes to keep them open until the whales decided to use them.

The experiement failed. A whaler pointed toward the open ocean. "Go that way!" he shouted.

Sometime afterward, I was talking to crew boss Johnny Leavitt when we suddenly heard Mark Fraker, an oil industry biologist who got deeply into the rescue, shout. "they're moving!"

We turned. A whale rose in the hole immediately behind us.

A bit later, someone observed that the small whale, Bone, was missing. Someone else then said that he didn't think he had seen Bone since Nollman had conducted his experiment. I thought he might be making a joke, but I was told that a TV reporter also heard the comment and broadcast it as fact.

I talked to Nollman later and he was vehement that this was not the case. He said all three whales were there when he left. He believed his experiment had convinced all the whales to use the chainsaw holes.

Bone was never seen again.

At 2:30 AM the next morning I preparing to develop and print when the CNN reporter and a cameraman burst into my office and demanded Geoff Carroll's phone number. He wanted Geoff to confirm that Bone was dead. I figured Geoff needed his sleep and so conveniently forgot his number. The reporter then ordered me to take him to Geoff's house. He knew he lived in one of the nearby quonset huts. I told him I wouldn't do that. "Then I will go knock on every door over there until I find him," he threatened.

He meant it. I reluctantly agreed. He wanted to ride in his truck, but I walked and made him and his cameraman walk, too. Geoff was not pleased to be woken up, but for all his physical and mental toughness, he is a gentle, mild-mannered person and did not protest too strongly. The reporter grilled him about Bone - was Bone dead? Geoff noted that Bone had not been seen and so had undoubtedly perished. Next, the reporter wanted to do a live interview over the phone, right then.

"Well, okay, I guess," Geoff responded. Marie then came out from the bedroom. She scolded the reporter for being "very rude," pointing out they had been getting hardly any sleep and had a new baby to care for. "There will be a press conference in the morning," she said. The reporter was already setting up the phone interview. He called Geoff to come over.

"No," Marie stopped him. "There isn't going to be a phone interview. I am the Borough Public Information Officer, my husband is a Borough employee and even though he is my husband, I can order him not to talk about this until the press conference tomorrow morning. In fact, that's what I'm doing. I'm ordering him not to talk to you about it."

The reporter did not give up, but presented this argument and that, about how the world needed to know, right now. "No! The home is a sacred place. We are not to be disturbed like this in the middle of the night again!" The reporter tried to argue further, to no avail.

I had taken the picture above just days before: Geoff, Marie, baby Quinn and some mostly young members of Geoff's dog team outside the quonset hut - their home, a sacred place. The dog house is sacred, too - but not the one the CNN reporter found himself in.

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Thursday

Feb092012

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 5: to rescue or euthanize; the struggle to take a breath; Minnesotans

Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 8:53PM

With a significant amount of hard work by a small band of Iñupiat whale hunters, a couple of NSB wildlife biologists and a NOAA official, the three trapped gray whales ended the day with bigger pools, cleared of slush and debris, to breathe in. This would prove to be a very temporary situation. They were set at least for the night - and this would be the night that whaling captains, biologists and a NOAA official would meet to discuss the options - rescue or euthanize.

In the evening, Arnold Brower Sr. called the Barrow Whaling Captains together and the meeting to order. Don Oliver and his NBC crew waited in the hall, to see if they might be granted permission to enter. Some of the whalers wanted to keep them out, but Arnold Sr. disagreed. He had been a whale hunter all his life and had also spent much of his youth herding and following reindeer across the tundra.

He had served as an Army Paratrooper in the Pacific in World War II and had then been recruited by the Navy who needed his expertise on the land as they set out to establish the National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska. Arnold Sr. had been active in the lands claim movement that preceded the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 and afterward had become chairman of the Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corporation - the ANCSA village corporation of Barrow.

Through all this, he had captained one of the most consistently successful whaling crews in Barrow and had been active in the fight to keep the traditional bowhead hunt alive after the International Whaling Commission and the US government had misguidedly tried to shut it down, based on faulty information, in 1977.

Arnold Brower Sr. knew the value of good PR. He knew media snubbed was dangerous media. Plus, he did not feel the whalers had anything to hide. He was proud of his way of life. It had sustained his Iñupiat ancestors for thousands of years. He wanted it to sustain his descendants for at least thousands more. His argument to let NBC cover the meeting prevailed. The captains invited them in.

Arnold led the discussion and there was was no talk of mercy killing - but only on what might be done to help the whales. Arnold spoke of the habits of different whales, how in conditions such as those that had trapped the gray whales, belugas would follow bowheads to safety, but gray whales would not.

He speculated about what might happen if the whalers were to cut a path to open water for the whales. Would the whales use it? Would they save themselves or just get themselves into trouble all over again? There was only one way to find out - for the hunters to give the whales a chance.

Ben Nageak, then director of the North Slope Borough Wildlife Management Department, sits to Brower's side.

Arnold Brower Jr. gave his report to the meeting. Although the efforts of Geoff Carroll and Craig George to have the Coast Guard send in a ship with icebreaking capabilities had failed - due to the lack of any ice breaker in Alaska Arctic waters, to the east, the Alaska oil industry had also taken an interest in the whales.

VECO, then the major provider of oil field services at Prudhoe Bay, volunteered to send a giant hoverbarge to break open a path for the whales. Towed by a Sikorski Skycrane - a giant, elongated, helicopter designed to hoist huge loads - the hoverbarge rides on a cushion of forced air, breaking the ice beneath it. The Alaska National Guard had agreed to provide a Skyscrane.

Arnold Jr. was in favor of giving the barge a chance. Should it fail, he believed the whalers themselves could make a path to open water. Since the time he was a small boy, Arnold had been an active member of his father's crew, often times assuming charge when his father could not be out.

Arnold Jr. had helped when, using ropes, hooks, and holes cut into ice, hunters had dragged a whale caught by Luther Leavitt Sr. beneath a broad stretch of slush ice, new ice and old glacial ice until they reached stable, anchored ice strong enough to haul the whale up onto. He had once seen a whale pulled out from under ice 20 feet thick. "So the answer was already there in my mind, how we could do this," he later told me.

In the afternoon, after the group led by Arnold Jr. had finished enlarging and cleaning the two whale holes, one had commented that it was now time to get ready to go to the meeting and present their observations and thoughts to the whaling captains so that they could decide what to do.

Morris emphatically interrupted to stress it was not the decision of the Barrow Whaling Captains to make, but of the federal goverment. He was the arm of the federal government - the final decision would be his.

To me, the idea of putting a bureaucrat from the city in authority over Iñupiats on the ice in a matter that involved whales did not seem like a good one. Why couldn't the federal government have handled this similar to the way it handles the bowhead hunt? There, it claims ultimate authority but through a cooperative agreement with the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission, recognizes the knowledge, right and ability of Alaska Eskimo hunters to manage their hunt under guidelines reached in a cooperative agreement between the United States government, the International Whaling Commission and AEWC itself.

To me, it seemed a similar arrangement here would have made sense. The hunters had a depth of knowledge of the ocean, the ice, and the ways of whales that Morris never could have - and they had a close working relationship with and mutual respect for the biologists from NSB Wildlife Management. They were the only ones who would ever really know what was going on out on the ice.

Yet, in its wisdom, the federal government had asserted control and had made Morris the authority in charge. He had so far proven amiable, friendly and willing to listen, so perhaps it would work out all right.

At the end of the discussion, the Barrow Whaling Captains agreed - the whalers and the biologists would keep the breathing holes open long enough to give the hoverbarge time to clear a path to them.

Ron Morris also agreed - but set a deadline of Tuesday, three days hence, to complete that task. He did not state what he would do if that deadline were not met.

The next day dawned cold and kept growing colder - before the day ended, the temperature would settle in at -17 F. (-22 C). "You wouldn't believe the conversations I have with my superiors in Washington, DC." Morris told several of us as we shared a car ride to the North Slope Borough Search and Rescue Hangar, where we would catch a helicopter ride to the whale holes.

Ronald Reagan was serving his final months in office. The presidential election between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis would take place in less than a month - yet interest in the presidential race was being eclipsed by the media attention being given to the whales.

"The President wants these whales saved," Morris told us. "Whatever it takes, he wants them out of the ice holes and set free. Ronald Reagan wants to go out of office as an environmentalist." Morris stressed that he was speaking confidentially for now and then told us a Soviet icebreaker was operatng about 350 miles to the north. High US officials had contacted high Soviet Union officals to see if the Soviets might send the icebreaker to help free the whales.

Above: Ron Morris and Alaska National Guard Colonel Tom Carroll walk toward the whale holes. I do not recall who the person behind them is.

Morris, Colonel Carroll and NBC's Don Oliver observe the whales. The holes were rapidly shrinking and freezing over - but the whalers would soon clear them.

A couple of other TV crews had arrived and I had observed that before going on air, their correspondents would remove their hats. The instant they would go off air, they would hurriedly pull their hats over their heads again, muttering and complaining, worried that they might be about to lose an ear to frostbite.

NBC's Don Oliver now did the same. Here he is - camera rolling.

Here he is, moments after going off-camera.

Through the NSB TV studio, the North Slope Borough also aired its own informational program, under the direction of Marie Carroll, center. North Slope Borough Planning Director Warren Matumeak was serving as Acting Mayor and so explained what was happening and spoke about the Borough's role in supporting the rescue effort. Biologists Carroll and George also took their turn in front of the camera.

This is Crossbeak, the largest of the three, so named for the odd way the top and bottom of its mouth come together. The next largest was Bonnet. In my last post, I mentioned how the small whale that had inches of nose bone exposed had been given the nickname, "Bone."

Their Iñupiaq names were Siku, Poutu and Kannick.

This is Bonnet. Bonnet's name came from the formation of barnacles seen between the blow holes, at the back.

Bonnet, ready to take a breath.

Please note the litte chunks of ice immediately freeze in Bonnet's exhalation.

Bonnet - breathing. Every sentient individual in the world can relate to the need to breathe, and to the horror at the prospect of having breath cut off. Perhaps this helps to explain why, when the people of the world saw these whales struggling to keep their access to breath open, there was such an outpouring of concern, sympathy - and most of all:

Empathy.

Among those moved by the struggle of the whales to breathe were two men in Minnesota. Rick Skluzacek's father had invented a deicer and had formed a company called Kasco Marine to market it. The deicer was used primarily to keep boats docked in Minnesota Lakes ice free. Skluzacek got a call from his brother-in-law, Greg Ferrian, who suggested they volunteer to take their deicers to Barrow so the rescuers could use them to keep the whale holes open.

They first contacted Ron Morris, but he dismissed them as kooks and would have nothing to do with them. So they headed to Barrow at their own expense. Once they arrived, Morris dismissed them again. He did not want to be bothered by them.

Fortunately, Ferrian and Skluzacek soon met these two - Craig George and Geoff Carroll, who kept detailed field notes on all that they observed with the whales. Among the knowledge they gathered - the whales took 1.6 breaths per minute on average. When Skluzacek and Ferrian told them about their deicers, they were interested.

If there was a chance the deicers would give the whales the opportunity to keep breathing, they wanted to give them a try.

The biogists made arrangements to have Skluzacek and Ferrian helicoptered to the site that night. It had been a tough day at the whale holes. Cold - with a wind that kept a steady drift of snow flying at the surface of the ice. The holes would catch snow from that drift. Once in the water, it would instantly turn to slush, then ice.

Before the Minnesotans could come to the one remaining hole, they had to make some preparations at the SAR hangar. With my friend, UPI reporter Jeff Berliner on the back, I snowmachined ahead of them to the site. Berliner had come to Barrow from Anchorage to cover the rescue and had bunked down with me in the half-quonset hut I rented at NARL - the former Naval Arctic Research Laboratory - three miles north of Barrow.

Above us, the northern lights danced across the sky in green curtains, tinged red and blue. When we arrived at the site ahead of the others, we saw something very curious - a tent, pitched maybe 200 yards away on land, glowing red from the lamp burning inside it.

Curious as to who might be in that tent, we headed towards it, but as we traveled the distance did not close. Puzzled, we stopped. The tent began to change shape, then to rise above the horizon. It was not a tent at all, but the waxing, three-quarter moon.

Such are the optical illusions of the Arctic.

We returned to the whales. It looked exceedingly bad for them. One hole had completely closed. The other had shrunk dramatically and was closing fast. The whales were taking faster, shorter, breaths than before. Bone would sometimes roll onto his side, the way a fish does when it is dying.

The biologists soon arrived, this time accompanied by NSB Senior Scientist Dr. Tom Albert, Ferrian and Skluzacek. Working in the cold, it took a short while to get the generators going, but not long. Soon, electricity flowed into a deicer, attached to a four-foot long styrofoam platform. The deicer propeller began to churn warmer water from below up to the surface.

We watched in amazement as chunks of ice and slush that only moments before had been ready to rob the whales of their breath melted rapidly away. Bonnet then slid through the newly cleared water, right up to the small group of biologists and Minnesotans. To me, it looked the whale understood what had just happened. To me, it looked like the whale had just said, "thank you."

Maybe I am anthropomorphizing and the whale had said no such thing - but that's what it looked liked to me... what it felt like.

One of the more dramatic and fun scenes in the movie Big Miracle is based on this incident. The scene is an exaggeration of what really happened. The real temperature this night was probably close to - 20 F. It was much colder in the movie. For me, it was both oddly fun and strangely funny to see the John Krasinski character get a visual exclusive of the dramatic event as his colleagues feasted back in Barrow in the warmth of Amigos Mexican restaurant. In truth, there was a visual exclusive, captured while I suspect most of my colleagues were feasting at Pepe's North of the Border Mexican Restaurant. Given what the Iñupiat have taught me about not boasting, I feel a little guilty to point this out, but, the picture above is the real visual exclusive of the Minnesotans, the biolgists, and a gray whale at the moment the bubbler went into action.

From this point on, the deicers would be known as "bubblers."

Had the Minnesotans not believed in themselves and their product enough to not be daunted by Morris's rejection but had instead come at their own expense, and had Carroll and Craig not been open to giving the bubblers a try, the rescue may well have ended, right here.

Big problems remained.

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Wednesday

Feb082012

NBC on the ice with the gray whales; Don Oliver interviews Van Edwardsen as son Vernon prepares himself for his political career; Billy Adams and Johnny Aiken help out

Wednesday, February 8, 2012 at 11:50PM

I hate like heck to do this, but I can tell - I have hit the wall for tonight. As far as this day is concerned, I am done for. So I am not going to put up the more extensive post that I had planned for tonight, but I am just going to keep it very simple. If I had a hard print deadline, I would just guzzle a bunch of caffeine and push myself through it even if it meant I had stay up all night, but I don't. I would describe the process that I went through today that ended up with me hitting this wall, but having hit the wall, I don't have the energy to explain it.

I right a little mistake that I made in yesterday's post. I wrote that, as Arnold Brower Jr., Geoff Carrol, Craig George, Ron Morris and the others set out to ascertain the condition of the whales and to enlarge their holes, no one from the national media had yet arrived, but NBC was on its way.

In fact, as I was able to figure out this morning, NBC had arrived that morning - they just did not make it out to the ice at the time the scouting - hole enlargement mission was happening.

Here is the NBC crew with correspondent Don Oliver, on the ice with the whales.

Don Oliver interviews Van Edwardsen, who, along with his young son Vernon, had come out to see how the whales were doing. Vernon is not only all grown up now, but is an elected member of the North Slope Borough Assembly, a fact that his mother, Dorothy "Doe-Doe" Edwardsen is very proud of.

Among those who came out that same day after Arnold and crew to help out was Billy Adams and Johnny Lee Aiken. It was Billy, readers will recall, who first led me by snowmachine to the gray whale site, when it was still slush. And if you go back to my first post of this series, you will see Johnny embracing Claybo in celebration of the bowhead his father, Kunuk, had just harpooned.

What really strikes me when I look at this picture is... how young these guys look!

Really? Were you that young back then, Billy and Johnny? How young was I, then?

Billy feels the scraped-bare nose bone of the smallest whale - nicknamed "Bone."

I now have all the pictures "scanned" for my next post, the more extensive one I had planned for tonight, plus a bunch of extras. So I plan to put the post I had planned to put tonight by fairly early tomorrow.

Does this make any sense?

Perhaps I can get two posts up tomorrow and make up for lost time.

Perhaps not. Perhaps I should not even suggest such a possibility.

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