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Wednesday. October 26, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
Race to save 2 whales intensifies
Soviets bring in icebreakers for Operation Breakthrough
The Associated Press
BARROW, Alaska — Rescuers stepped up efforts yesterday to free two whales trapped nearly three weeks in an icy tangle.
The international rescue, called Operation Breakthrough, is scheduled to be begin today with two Soviet icebreakers. Eskimos with chain-links an unusual vehicle called an Archimedes screw tractor acting in concert.
Rescuers, meanwhile, received one bit of good news about the jumbled mass of ice.
They discovered that a pressure ridge, where two opposing ice masses meet, apparently was not within the sea bottom as initially was feared.
"It appears that most of the ridge has a current running through it, making it easier for the icebreakers to work," said Ron Morris, a biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The California gray whales must get through the tangle if they are to reach an open lead, or pathway, through the ice. A lead is four miles away, but the nearest completely frozen is 200 miles away in the Chukchi Sea.
The Admiral Makorow and the icebreaking cargo ship Vladimir Arseniev were 24 miles northeast of
Point Barrow at 8 a.m. yesterday, said Coast Guard spokesman Ken Freeze in Alameda, Calif. "They're preparing a helicopter to take a NOAO (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) captain, a Coast Guard captain and an interpreter." Freeze said.
The Soviet news agency Tass reported yesterday the vessels had been slowed by heavy pack ice and reduced visibility to about 150 yards.
Capt. Joseph McClennell Jr., skripper of the Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea, which is based at Seattle, arrived in Barrow on Monday. He was assigned to act as liaison officer with the Soviets, but would also help Soviet troops through the shallow water and roof-tock pan ice near Barrow.
McClelland and a NOAA official found what they believed was a penetrable area in the ice and said they were confident the Soviet vessels would be able to clear a path in a matter of hours.
"Anything these vessels can do for us is a plus," McClland said. "Vessels, as I see it, it are only chance. If it would be a very easy job for them."
"I've got all the confidence in the
way I know what they're doing very
Whale rescue brings publicity to the subject of environment
The Associated Press
The massive rescue effort to save two California gray wales won't make a difference to the survival of the species, but it's been a public relations dream for investigators trying to rouse the world to save its oceans.
"What's the big deal? I don't know. It all of a sudden exploded," said Howard Braham, director of the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, the chief U.S. research center on whales.
"Only the individual can answer if it's worth it."
Braham said. "We're dealing with the human spirit.
We allow some awfully damning things to go uncheck-
en when we reach out to something with a tear in
our eye."
The rescue has thrown together an unlikely army of would-be saviors: whale-hunting Eskimos, Greenpeace environmentalists, oil companies, the animal behavior specialists and chainaws mechanical.
The two surviving gray whales imprisoned by the ice are part of an endangered species.
But the gray whale population is flourishing. There are about 21,000, which is near the historic peak of 25,000 reached before whale hunters slaughtered all but a few thousand around the turn of the century.
The Soviets kill 169 gray whales each year to feed Eskimos under an exemption granted by the International Whaling Commission, and another 1,000 animals in human causes yearly, according to government estimates.
Despite the losses, the population of gray whales increases by 2.5 percent a year, and the deaths of three wayward whales not yet old enough to breed would be insignificant, scientists said.
"There's no loss from a biological standpoint," said research biologist David Withrow from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory.
But cold facts have no chance against heated emotions when human nature fights Mother Nature.
The whales have names. Biologists call the two survivors Bonnet and Crossbeak. The Inupiat Eskimos who discovered them Oct. 7 call them Putu and Siku for Ice Hole and Ice.
well. I think as far as poking holes in that (ice) ridge, it's certain."
Gary Huffford, with the National Weather Service, said he and another expert were working on the pressure ridge Monday when they had some unwelcome company — a polar bear. A helicopter landed the aircraft between the whales and the bear, forcing the animal to leave.
The whales were stranded about 100 yards offshore nearly three weeks ago by shifting ice about 13 miles northeast of Barrow. A third whale disappeared Friday and is presumed dead.
Biologists reported a setback late Monday when the whales balked near a shoal and retreated about a half mile toward shore.
Craig George, a biologist with the North Slope Borough, said the whales overnight avoided a series of new breathing holes that had been cut toward the ice ridge. They apparently were spooked by the shallow water.
There is about 12 feet of water over the 125-yard-wide shoal, George said.
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Although the damaged nuclear fuel and loose radioactive components would have been removed from the plant, radiation would remain in piping and other areas of the reactor building basement.
The Advisory Panel for the Decontamination of Unit 2 told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a meeting yesterday that nine of its 11 members had sided against the so-called Post Defueling Monitor Storage plan, known as PDMS.
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Under the plan, the reactor building would be locked, unused systems deactivated and the plant would be shut down. When white radiation decays inside.
But a spokesman for the power plant's operator said Three Mile Island managers hoped to go ahead with the plan to place the crippled Unit 2 reactor into "monitored storage" by the end of 1989.
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WASHINGTON — Nearly 10 years after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, a panel of citizens and scientists said yesterday that the contaminated reactor should not be mothballed next year as planned because the cleanup was not finished.
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The Associated Press
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