The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 6: Governor Cowper gets a new pair of seal-skin boots; hoverbarge fails, ice punch dropped; Iñupiat whalers cut holes with chainsaws

As he never did go out to see the whales, I was going to skip over the visit of Governor Steve Cowper, which took place just as the rescue was beginning to ramp up. Yet, his fictional counterpart had a role in the movie, Big Miracle, so I feel I must include him. Oran Caudle's footage of the whales had already been seen worldwide on TV, the photos that I had sent to the Anchorage Daily News had appeared in just about every daily newspaper in the world, from the New York Times on, but the media had not yet descended en masse into Barrow.

Governor Cowper came to visit officials of the North Slope Borough and the North Slope Borough School District. I had been asked to document the visit and had committed myself to do so before we knew any of this would be happening. So, on the morning of the day that Arnold Brower Jr. would go out to make the observations upon which he would base his report to the Barrow Whaling Captains Association, I had followed the governor through the last of his visits. It was hard for me, because I wanted only to be on the ice, but when you commit yourself to the Governor of Alaska, the Mayor of the North Slope Borough and the Superintendent of the North Slope Borough School District, you must follow through.

The State of Alaska's revenues go up and down both with the price and flow of oil, and this was a time of declining revenues. Hence, declining revenues were chief on the mind of Cowper, as well as those he visited. During a meeting with the mayor and Borough officials, the conversation turned to the trapped gray whales. The Governor's response was essentially,  Isn't that interesting. Now, about those declining oil revenues...

He was offered a helicopter ride to the whale site, but declined, citing his busy schedule. He had no desire to involve the state in the rescue effort. 

At a lunch hosted by the school district in the Barrow High School cafeteria, Rex Okakok presented Governor Cowper with a new pair of seal-skin kammiks, better known to the world as mukluks. Originally of Texas, Governor Cowper removed his cowboy boots, slipped the kammiks onto his feet and then, to applause, shook Rex's hand.

I then dashed off, climbed onto my snowmachine, and raced out to the whale holes. I was fortunate to arrive even before Arnold and the others.

Yet, although under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, all the legal authority and jurisdiction goes to the federal government and not the state, the governor and the State of Alaska would be drawn in militarily. After ARCO volunteered the use of its hoverbarge to break a path from the whales to open water, they needed a big, powerful helicopter to tow it and the only one available was the Sky Crane of the Alaska National Air Guard.

In the movie, Big Miracle, two Sky Cane helicopters towed the hover barge, flying side by side in the most nerve-wracking, horrifying, manner possible. In real life, there were also two helicopters, but only one pulled while the other flew along as backup.

Prior to this time, the barge had never been towed more than 25 miles. As to its potential speed, we kept hearing different reports - from five knots to 30. I could not even begin to believe the 30, given all the pressure ridges and jagged, rough, ice that it would encounter on the ocean.

The sky crane and hoverbarge launched their 210 nautical mile journey from Prudhoe Bay to Plover Point on a Sunday. It encountered so many problems that by the Ron Morris deadline of Tuesday, it had succeed in going no more than a few miles from Prudhoe Bay. None of us in Barrow would ever get to see it. Yet, given the intense interest of the world and President Reagan, there was no way the effort could be scuttled now.

Its initial effort had failed, but the oil industry is proud of its resourcefulness and creativity, and they especially wanted to display their capabilities in the Arctic. Next, ARCO offered up a five-ton ice punch. One Sky Crane returned to base and the other was flown to Barrow in the hope that it might be used in combination with the ice punch to poke a series of holes for the gray whales to follow from their holes to open water and freedom.

Among the whale hunters of Barrow, there had been great skepticism that the hover barge would work. Now they were eqaully skeptical about the ice punch. They did not want to wait any longer, until it had failed, to launch their own operation. Through the NSB Mayor's Office Jobs Program, the Borough hired a crew of mostly Iñupiat whale hunters to chainsaw a series of holes from the whales to the lead.

They would still have to face the problem of the massive pressure ridge that stood at the edge of the ice and was likely anchored on the ocean bottom. Still, they knew they could cut the holes to the pressure ridge and in the meantime hoped to figure out how to deal with it.

Whaling Captain Johnny Leavitt (right) was put in charge of the crew. Malik, left, came on both as a worker and senior advisor. Morris hoped that the hunters would not be needed, save to clean the ice punch holes. He wanted them to hold off until the Sky Crane did its thing, but the hunters were in no mood to wait any longer. They were ready to go. No matter how much a government official and his bosses in Washington, DC, might imagine himself to be in charge of Iñupiat hunters on Arctic ice, he never really will be.

"They should have just let us do this from the start and not even fooled with the hover barge," Leavitt told me as his crew fired up their chain saws. "They get all these professors. We are the PhD's out here."

Even as the Sky Crane - ice punch rig was being readied to begin its work, the whale hunters began theirs. I now had a hard decision to make - to follow the whale hunters or the ice punch - which would start near the pressure ridges and then work backwards toward the whales.

To me, it was more important to capture the whalers at work than the ice punch. If I followed it and it succeeded, then the major work of the whalers would essentially be over. I would have no pictures of them cutting holes. If I stayed with the whalers, I would not be able to photograph the ice punch at work out near the pressure ridges, but I would be able to catch it as it drew near the whalers and the whales.

However, if the ice punch failed, it would never draw near to the whalers and the whales and I would get no pictures of it at all. I hate to sound cynical, but I figured ARCO and the National Guard would take the ice punch out, try to punch out a few holes, would not succeed in creating anything practical and the effort would be called off. The whalers, meanwhile, would keep cutting holes, probably for days.

So, believing that it would be my only chance to photograph the Sky Crane - ice punch at work, but I would have many chances to photograph the whalers, I secured a seat on the NSB Search and Rescue Long Ranger helicopter and followed along as the Sky Crane went to work.

I had imagined that that the Sky Crane would have some kind of cable release that would allow it to drop the punch onto the ice. Then it would reel it back up and drop again, until finally it broke through the ice. I had imagined wrong. Instead, the helicopter would hover its mark and then suddenly the whole contraption - helicopter and sky punch, would plunge downward until the spiked punch struck the ice. Immediately afterward, the pilot would arrest the fall of his aircraft with his rotors.

Even though I felt the effort futile, I felt nothing but respect for the flying skills of the pilot.

This was challenging and dangerous work.

The crane would punch and punch away, often times making only a barely discernable dent. Then, finally, it would punch a hole through - but it was a rubble filled hole, of no use to whales or man. The effort failed. 

The whalers had about four miles of holes to cut to reach the ice. When I returned, I was surprised to find that they had already cut about half-a-mile. Twenty chainsaws had been donated from someone in Oregon and some more from Prudhoe Bay. It was a bit of a challenge to keep the chainsaws going in the cold weather, especially as they were cutting into salt water - the whalers, however, are superbly skilled at keeping machines going no matter the weather, no matter the conditions.

It helps if they have the right tools, but even if they don't, they figure it out.

Whalers fire up a chain saw.

They cut a small test hole.

In the system quickly worked out, the outline of a large hole would be drawn in the snow and within it the slabs that would be cut out to from it. Then whalers wielding chain saws would cut along the lines. Jimmie Ningeok makes a cut.

Jimmie Ningeok progresses along the hole.

When they had first enlarged the whales original holes, the hunters had dragged the chunks of ice out of the water by pulling on ropes. Given the size of the slabs, this was no longer feasible, so they quickly devised a new method. Once a slab was cut, whalers would push one end of the slab down below the bottom level of the ice. As that end went down, the other end would rise. Other whalers would then shove their push-poles into it.

"Kiita!"* they would shout. Then, pushing and laughing, they would shove the slab entirely beneath the ice.

*Let's go!

And so a series of new breathing holes began to reach farther and farther across the ice, towards the pressure ridges... towards the open lead... towards freedom... if freedom were to come...

...but the whales refused to use the new holes. Except for one, quick, brief foray by one into the nearest hole, they stayed put. As trapped as they must have felt, it seemed that they were more frightened to venture away from the security of the breathing hole that had so far kept them alive.

The ice punch, at rest on the beach, near the whales its use had failed to rescue. The helicopter had suffered a damaged rotor and would be down for awhile.

At first, with some limited exceptions, the national media had paid little serious attention to the Iñupiat whalers, but had treated them mostly as a curiosity of the north. It was the oil companies, the National Guard, various of the many biologists, including two NOAA who joined in, and the federal government, as represented by Ron Morris, that they paid serious attention to.

Yet, it was beginning to grow ever more clear that, whatever technological wonders might yet be thrown into this absurd, terrible, horrible yet gallant, wonderful, determined and compassionate mission, if it were to succeed, it would be because of a few Eskimo whale hunters, wielding chainsaws...

...Jimmy Ningeok.

p> 

Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue

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

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.

p> 

Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue

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

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.

p> 

Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue

The movie, Big Miracle, and what I witnessed in real life, part 3: Decision must be made - try to rescue the whales or put an end to their suffering; making them more comfortable

"When you see an animal that is trapped, you want to help it. There are basically two ways to help an animal in trouble. If you can take care of its problem, you do. If you can't, then you kill the animal and end its suffering."

The words above, spoken by biologist Craig George of the North Slope Borough Wildlife Management Department, pretty well summarize what the debate in Barrow was about. In the movie, Big Miracle, once they learned the gray whales were trapped, the Iñupiat hunters immediately wanted to kill them for food. The movie Malik seemed to feel this way, too, until he came to recognize that such a killing would be caught by the news cameras of the world, and the world would grow angry. Whereas if his people set out to rescue the whales, their efforts would generate good will in the world.

As previously noted, the Iñupiat of Barrow and the Arctic Slope had traditionally seldom hunted gray whales, for the reasons explained. If they could, the people, for the most part, wanted to help the whales. While they would not necessarily turn away from accepting a gift from nature, to kill the whales for food could have proved problematic. First, they had a bowhead quota, but no gray whale quota. Second, if they were to put a harpoon and bomb into one of the whales by normal hunting methods, that whale would almost certainly dive under the ice and disappear.

The action would almost certainly panic the other two whales and they would likely not have just stayed put waiting to be harpooned themselves..

The feeling as I ascertained it from talking to a number of different whalers was that if it were possible to rescue the whales that would be the first priority. If it were not, then they would turn their attention to solving the problems involved to carry out euthanasia.

National and international treaty law being what it is, the federal government, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admisitration, would have to approve such action and it might well have to be rationialized through the International Whaling Commission as well.

In the evening, a meeting of the Barrow Whaling Captains would take place under the direction of Arnold Brower Sr., captain of the ABC crew. Whalers would discuss the issue and then decide what they felt the best course of action would be. To help them make their decision, Brower's son, Arnold Jr., was coming out, along with NSB Wildlife biologists Craig George and Geoff Carroll, and Ron Morris of NOAA, who the feds had sent to check out the situation and to wield federal authority in the oversight of whatever would happen.

As of yet, no national media had reached Barrow, but NBC was already on a north-bound jet and the other major news networks would be following quickly behind. By the time the meeting began, NBC would be in Barrow.

I wanted to reach the whales before the group arrived so I could take a few pictures of them with no people around. I snowmachined out as fast as I could. I managed to get in a little bit of solitary time with the whales, but not much. The whales continued to move back and forth between their two holes, doing their best to keep both open by continually disturbing the water before it could freeze over.

Here he is: Arnold Brower, Jr. He had just spent a bit of time examing the whales and then had turned to walk away. Then he heard the blow of a whale behind him and turned to look.

Geoff had brought a small chain saw out. They also had ropes and hooks and a rake and so set out to make the holes a little larger, to give the whales a little more breathing space... literally. That's Arnold Jr. to the left, of course, then Ron Morris, Geoff Carroll, Craig George and Geoff's Iñupiaq wife, Marie Carroll, who worked with the North Slope Borough Public Information Division and would be hosting some locally produced TV broadcasts to inform people about what was happening and then Jens Brower.

I am certain I know the two people to the far right, but from this picture I cannot tell.

They set out to enlarge the holes.

Geoff reaches out to touch a whale, but it jerks its snout down into the water.

He tries again. The whale remains.

NOAA's Ron Morris touches a whale.

Geoff puts his chainsaw into action and begins to make the hole bigger.

As Geoff pries at chunk of ice he has just cut off, Arnold Jr., Craig and Morris pull.

Two children who had come with the group watch the whales. Sharene Ahmaogak and Eben Brower observe the whales..

To some, this may seem incongrous, but it doesn't matter how cold the weather gets - if one is bundled up and is doing hard, physical work, one gets hot and works up a sweat. So Geoff cools down and rehydrates himself with a Coke. In the Arctic, the common way to carry Coke, Pepsi and other drink and food products that one does not want to freeze is in an ice chest.

Geoff had earlier contacted the US Coast Guard to see if they might have some kind of ice-breaking ship nearby that could come in to help set the whales free, but they didn't. The only ice breakers anywhere near Alaska were Soviet. The US and the Soviets were engaged in a cold war - although a slow thaw had begun.

Geoff, by the way, once traveled to the North Pole as a member of a dog team expedition.

Marie will return to Barrow by snowmachine ahead of her husband. Before she leaves, he hands her a slug-loaded shotgun in case she should encounter a hostile polar bear. The end of the barrel is taped to prevent it from becoming plugged by snow.

Tomorrow: the Barrow Whaling Captains meet; rapidly freezing ice overpowers the efforts of whales and humans to keep the holes open - two Minnesotans come with a bubbler.

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Complete series index:

Part 1: Context bowhead hunt

Part 2: Roy finds the whales; Malik

Part 3: Scouting trip

Part 4: NBC on the ice

Part 5: To rescue or euthanize

Part 6: Governor Cowper, ice punch, chainsaw holes

Part 7: Malik provides caribou for dinner

Part 8: CNN learns home is sacred place

Part 9: World's largest jet; Screw Tractor

Part 10: Think like a whale

Part 11: Portrait: Billy Adams and Malik

Part 12: Onboard Soviet icebreakers

Part 13: Malik walks with whales, says goodbye

Part 14: Rescue concludes

Part 15: Epilogue

The full moon: over a gray whale, 23.5 years ago; over Wasilla late this afternoon; when memory fools; tomorrow, the series will continue

One night,  the full moon hung over the rescue site. It was a cold night and almost everybody had left the ice, a fact that I kind of enjoyed. But this is getting ahead of my story. I did get home from Anchorage this afternoon in time to finish my preliminary edit of my gray whale rescue take - or at least all of what I have so far found. Afterward, in my mind I selected certain images from that edit that I thought I would run in tonight's post, as they seemed to be images that would pick up the story from where I left it two nights ago, so that I could begin to move it forward again.

But I changed my mind and decided to hold off one more night to give myself a chance to gather information to refresh my memory a bit before moving on. Here is why: last night, I was googling about and I came to a story in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, one of a number here and there aimed at telling the "real-life" story - kind of like I'm trying to do.

In the diaglogue section, I found two commentors debating about who had been first to photograph the gray whales, the primary candidates being Oran Caudle, who had videotaped the whales, and myself, a still photographer. One of the commentors used this blog to argue that I had been first. To argue that it had been Caudle, the other countered with two sources of information - Tom Rose's book, Freeing the Whales, which was the starting point but thankfully not the finishing point for the movie, Big Miracle. His other source was my book, Gift of the Whale. The commentor pointed to page 112, where he said that I had written that I had gone out shortly after Caudle.

I decided that I must set him straight and point out that he had somehow misinterpeted my words. So I turned to page 112 to find whatever passage he had misinterpreted so that I could point out what it really said. Guess what? He was right.

This is what I wrote, in my own book, published thirteen-and-a-half years ago:

"On October 12, Geoff and Craig took Oran Caudle from the North Slope Borough TV studio out to videotape the whales... I headed out shortly afterward, following hunter Billy Adams..."

Yet, I had written here that I had gone out to the whales before Oran. When I wrote those words here, I wrote from memory, but my own earlier writings contradict me. My earlier writing must be correct, as the memory was fresher then. I don't know why my memory changed, but it did. This worries me a bit, for more reasons than one.

My basic premise was true - I was the only photographer of any kind to cover the rescue from beginning to end. Once the national media arrived, Oran spent most of his time working in the TV studio to support the national TV media.

Still, I do not like to make a mistake like that. If I had taken the time to read my own story first, I wouldn't have - but I didn't want to take the time. I wanted to get the blog post up. My story was in my memory. Why did I need to read it, anyway?

The idea to blog the gray whale rescue came to me as soon as I learned the movie was being made, but I envisioned going at it in a very different manner than I actually am. I had always wanted to tell the full story - in the single chapter that I devoted to the rescue in Gift of the Whale, I only had the space to tell an abbreviated version.

So I thought that if I blogged it over the same number of days that it actually took the rescue to unfold, I could tell a comprehensive story. To really do it right, I figured that I would need to spend some real time at it - two months at least, maybe three. I would need to track down as many of the key people involved, both inside and outside the Iñupiat community and interview them. I knew that the movie's Malik was going to be a very different person than the real life Malik, so I wanted to spend time with those who knew him best so that I could put his life back together and flesh out his character.

I did not have the financial resources to undertake such a project, but there is a certain grant award that I thought would be just perfect. I contacted the point person for that grant and told her what I wanted to do. She thought it was a good project - but not for the blog. She said I should publish it in another vehicle. But I did not want to tell the story in another vehicle. I wanted to build my blog up and I wanted my comprehensive story to appear blog style in my blog before it appeared anywhere else. I did not want to put it in a vehicle that would compete against my own blog.

So I decided I would find another way - but I never did. Then, as I heard about the pending release of the movie, I knew that it had become impossible to do what I wanted to do. I decided it was a lost cause and that I would just let it go. Then I saw the movie with Margie. When we walked out of the theatre, I knew I had to blog something.

I decided I would just pull up negatives and my memory, read a few little things and blast through the process as quickly as possible. But after making the mistake I wrote about in the above section, I know that while it is now impossible for me to carry out my original plan, I must take the time to be certain I get basic things right.

Starting tomorrow night, I am confident I can pick up where I left off and carry it through to the end, which I will make happen by this weekend - so that I can do what must be done before I leave for Arizona/India on February 27.

So please bear with me for 24 more hours and then we roll with those graywhales. 

This moonshot, by the way, is from late afternoon/early evening today, when I was out on my walk.

Think of that - the very same moon that was reflecting down upon the gray whale above twenty-three-and-half years ago near Barrow was reflecting down upon me today as I walked through my neighborhood here in Wasilla.