Big Miracle Read Online Free PDF Page B

entity but government could shorten the life spans, deepen the chronic health problems, and increase the rates of social and family dislocations as they increased involvement? Naturally, the worse government assistance made things, the more activists would clamor for more government assistance. By 1988, the federal trusteeship imposed upon native-Americans as supposed to compensation for federal crimes committed against them was proving more calamitous than the crimes themselves. 2
    The greedy talk of slaughtering the gray whales appalled Malik. He knew it would reflect badly on his people. The young whalers sounded like the prospectors who were looking to stake another claim. It pained him to imagine all the careless whaling crews in a mad dash to kill three useless whales. At best, they would be used for dog food.
    Before leaving on their weekend hunting trip, Geoff and Craig reported Roy’s discovery back to their boss, Dr. Tom Albert, 1,200 miles to the south in Anchorage. Albert wanted them to check on the whales before they left, and to report back to him on whether they believed the animals would survive the weekend. In his brief dispatch back to Albert, Geoff offered his prediction that the whales would be gone by Monday—not dead, but en route on their 7,000-mile journey to winter breeding grounds.
    Geoff and Craig were required to investigate each reported stranding of any animal on the government’s endangered species list. Protected from the rusty harpoons of commercial whaling fleets since 1947, while still on the endangered list, gray whales were flourishing. By 1988, biologists estimated there were 22,000 gray whales, an all-time species high. As the old joke goes, the nearest thing to eternal life on this earth for people is work at a government bureau—and for animals, placement on the endangered species list.
    While whale strandings were common, the confluence of events regarding this whale stranding would be a cascading series of “firsts.” Geoff and Craig would be the first biologists to actually observe gray whales naturally trapped in ice. Gray whales may well have been familiar to nature lovers and whale watchers along the Pacific Coast of the Lower 48, but precious little was then known about them in their Arctic environment. The closer the two could get to the whales, the more they could learn about the animals’ behavior under extraordinary stress. Locals long knew whales died under the ice, but until now, scientists could only theorize as to how and why it happened. On Tuesday morning, October 11, 1988, four days after the whales were first discovered, Geoff and Craig would get to see them firsthand.
    The bearded biologists loaded sleeping bags, flares, and emergency survival rations onto wooden dogsleds hitched to the backs of their ski machines and were ready to go. But they didn’t know where exactly they were supposed to go. They needed a guide to help them find the exact spot of the stranding on the featureless and endless horizon of frozen sea. Since Roy was not available, they asked Billy Adams, a skillful hunter who, having seen the whales on Sunday, knew where they were. Besides, Billy would be good company. He had his own ski machine and a great sense of humor. The three men encased themselves in a hybrid mixture of modern and traditional cold-weather gear needed to keep them, if not warm, then at least able to function in the mind-numbing temperatures that would consume them as they sped out across the frozen sea.
    As the sun rose just above the southern horizon, the trio traveled along Barrow’s only road until it abruptly ended along with Alaska’s northernmost coast seven miles north of town. From there, it was still another five miles to the whales. When they got as far as they could on the ski machines, Billy led them on foot the rest of the way toward the very tip of the soft-surfaced sandbar. Craig stopped to marvel at the surroundings. He