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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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Wednesday

Feb152012

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 7: tuttu comes to Malik, Malik provides dinner

Wednesday, February 15, 2012 at 8:47PM

One afternoon, a caribou wandered into the rescue camp. Malik shot the "tuttu" for dinner and then turned it over to younger members of the chainsaw crew for skinning and butchering.

I have many more pictures than this "scanned" and lined up storywise, but I don't want to stop right now to take the time to write a story. I just want to keep "scanning."* I will write more stories tomorrow. Then, since I depart for Arizona (where Margie arrived today) late Saturday night, I will wrap this up, one way or another, by Friday night and will probably schedule the last post to appear Saturday, but possibly Sunday.

That's why I want to keep scanning. I think I can complete this quicker if I get all the pictures scanned now and then write later.

*As explained at the beginning, I no longer have a working film scanner. So I am using my camera as a scanner. I photograph the black and white negatives one at a time, then convert them to positive and work from there.

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Working on it - those who would save the whales

Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 1:14AM

I'm working on it, folks. Trust me, I am. I have all the photos prepared for part 6, the post I had planned for tonight, but to place them and write and review the text would take me another two hours or so, maybe more. I am sleepy... sleepy... sleepy... sleepy.

I don't want to stay up another two to three hours, and then spend another hour or two trying to wind down. So I am stopping for now - but I will start on Part 6 right after I eat breakfast, so it will be up early. Then I will get going on part 7. I might post it Tuesday also, but Tuesday is Margie and my 38th anniversary, and late Tuesday night I drop her off at the airport so she can go to Arizona ahead of me, so don't count on it.

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