by Tom Rose
People were spending their own money and time to track her down at the top of the world to offer their advice on how to save the three trapped whales. Cindy always knew whales were special, and now Middle America did, too.
Cindy didn’t know until she read the paper the next day that even more calls were coming into Tom Carroll’s command center in Prudhoe Bay. Hundreds of them came from the same kinds of people with similar ideas. The suggestions ranged from the impractical to the downright ludicrous. Nonetheless, Cindy could not help but be touched by the concerns of people so far away.
One person who called was a young businessman from Minneapolis named Greg Ferrian. On Monday, October 17, he heard Peter Jennings on ABC’s World News Tonight describe the Eskimos’ losing battle to keep open the lone breathing hole. ABC correspondent Gary Shepard reported that, despite the Eskimos who worked around the clock, the falling temperatures made it almost impossible for them to keep sections of the hole from freezing over.
Greg Ferrian was familiar with the problem. His father-in-law owned a company called Kasco Marine that manufactured small water circulating pumps designed to keep ice from forming around boats in the winter. Kasco sold most of their five-hundred-dollar “deicers” to marinas and duck-pond owners throughout the Great Lakes region. Alaska was a vast new sales territory. Greg figured the deicers would work just as well for whales as they did for ducks. The deicers worked just fine in the dead of a Minnesota winter when temperatures regularly dropped below the readings presently being recording in Barrow of minus thirty degrees.
True, Greg thought, the machines might not work well in the coldest Arctic weather, but this was only October. Barrow was still several months from becoming that cold. Ferrian convinced himself the deicers could do the job. They could help the three whales buy the time they needed to survive until the hoverbarge arrived from Prudhoe Bay. And the deicers could do so better and cheaper than anything else.
Greg wanted to help but he wasn’t sure where to start. Finally, he decided to call a local television station, KSTP-TV, ABC’s Minneapolis affiliate. The KSTP newsroom told him to call ABC News in New York. After speaking with seemingly everyone else in the 212 area code, Ferrian finally reached someone nice enough to help him. She was a desk producer who was helping the ABC crew in Barrow cover the story. Although she had taken dozens of other calls from like-minded people trying to help, the woman was good enough to pass on Colonel Carroll’s National Guard phone number.
Ferrian was surprised that the connection to a place three hundred miles above the Arctic Circle sounded so clear. Greg tried to describe the deicers to Colonel Carroll’s press aide, Mike Haller, who told Ferrian that the colonel would have to approve the plan, but, of course, he was out on the ice. Haller suggested if Greg really was serious, he should call back after dark, around 4:30 P.M., Alaska time. By then, the colonel might be back at the ARCO/VECO command center.
When Greg Ferrian finally reached Colonel Carroll, his warm and personable manner seemed a welcome relief from much of the rude treatment he encountered en route to the top. The colonel listened patiently as Greg repeated his confident claims about the deicers. Carroll told Greg the deicers sounded like a great idea. They might be just the thing to keep the holes open and the whales alive, Carroll said. If it were up to him, he’d use them in a minute. But it wasn’t. Ron Morris had to approve.
Ferrian cleared the line for a new dial tone to call Ron Morris. Remarkably, he got through on his first try. But Morris abruptly cut him off before he could explain his device.
“I’ve got to go,” Morris barked. “I’ve got a helicopter waiting to take me to a press conference.”
Ferrian plaintively appealed one more time. “All I need is one word, a yes or a no. Can’t we at least try?” he begged.
“One word?” Morris teasingly asked. “No,” he snapped. Ferrian heard the click as Morris hung up.
But Greg didn’t give up. Morris’s response only further emboldened him. He called his brother-in-law, Rick Skluzacek, who ran Kasco Marine in his father’s absence. Greg felt Rick should know something about his scheme to drag his company’s deicers all the way to the Arctic. Turning truth on its head, Greg told him that Operation Breakout wanted to use deicers to help save the three stranded whales. Rick knew Greg had a penchant for crazy ideas, but this was definitely the craziest he ever heard. Experience taught him to beware. But Rick’s initial suspicion gave way to the opportunity and challenge of demonstrating the deicing machines to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
Now Greg had a real problem. Rick was actually interested. What would happen if Rick really did want to go to Barrow? How could Greg tell him the truth? That he lied to his own brother-in-law? Instead, Greg opted against panic and decided to worry about minor technicalities later. Greg Ferrian called Carroll back and lied again. This time he told him that he and Rick had already decided to help. They were booked on the next flight to Barrow with six deicers.
Undaunted by the colonel’s repeated reminder that their machines’ use was not his decision to make, Greg asked the colonel if there were gas-powered electric generators they could use in Barrow. The colonel said he thought there were, but he wasn’t sure. Before he could say that only Ron Morris could authorize their use, Greg had hung up.
“Damn,” Carroll said, impressed at the Minnesotan’s tenacity. “This guy doesn’t fool around.”
Ferrian called his brother-in-law and lied again. It got easier each time. He told him that everything in Barrow was set. All they had to do was pack their deicers and go. After a sleepless Sunday night, Rick called 3M, Control Data Corporation, and other Minneapolis Fortune 500 companies. He tried to convince them to donate their private jets to fly the equipment to Barrow. The whales were such a great story and Ferrian such a great salesman, that three of the companies actually said yes. Each one had to back down, however, when they learned that none of their planes were available.
When Greg priced commercial flights to Barrow, he had a new reason to worry. There was no way he could lie about that. He knew Rick wasn’t 100 percent sold on leaving merely chilly Minnesota for the already bitter cold Arctic. The $2,600 round-trip airfare to Barrow might end the charade once and for all. Even Greg wondered whether the whole plan was too farfetched.
Greg knew the more time Rick was given to think about going to Barrow, the chances increased he would have to rule against it. Greg decided to give his brother-in-law no choice. He not only booked the seats, but he called KSTP-TV in Minneapolis and told them that he and Rick were going to Barrow to help the whales. Now, there was nothing Greg’s brother-in-law could do. It was on the record. Jews called it chutzpah. Minnesotans called it guts. Whatever it was, Greg Ferrian displayed it in abundance. He and Rick Skluzacek were on their way to Barrow.
Greg Ferrian hoped that KSTP-TV might mention the duo’s trip to Barrow on the six o’clock news. The second KSTP news director Mendes Napoli heard about the call, he threw down his red pencil and dashed out the door to find his reporters. Napoli instantly knew he was onto the hottest story in the Twin Cities. The trapped whales, now leading all the network newscasts, had a local angle and KSTP was the only station that knew about it. Coming right before a critical ratings period, the news was almost too good to be true.
Napoli ran to the other side of the newsroom to use the radio phone. He desperately tried to reach Jason Davis, one of his top reporters who had left with a crew to prepare to do a live report for the upcoming six o’clock news. When Napoli found him in the microwave truck, he informed Davis there would be no live shot. He told him to go home and pack lots of warm clothing. Davis had a new story that would take him to Barrow, Alaska, with two local men who thought they could help free the three trapped whales.
Napoli read Greg Ferrian’s home number to Davis over the cluttered radio. Davis pulled a portable cellular phone out of his nylon day pack and called Ferrian to introduce himself. “I’m Jason Davis, from Eyewitness News,” th
e reporter said in his unmistakable Australian accent. Ferrian didn’t need any introductions, he was a local-news junkie and instantly recognized the voice of Jason Davis. Ferrian’s gamble paid off more than he hoped let alone expected.
He thought getting a mention on the news was a long shot. A crew was assigned to go with them to Alaska? He was ecstatic. Now there was finally something he could tell his brother-in-law that was true. There was no way Rick could back out. Hours later, Rick and Greg were standing in line at the Delta Airlines ticket counter for their flight to Fairbanks. The agents checking them in were so excited to hear they were going to help the whales, they shipped the six compact deicers at no extra charge.
KSTP called the contractors remodeling their recently purchased corporate jet and told them the plane would be needed the next day to fly an Eyewitness News crew to Alaska. The contractors worked all night to get the Gulfstream ready for its new owners. They removed a gaudy double brass bed and ceiling mirrors from the plane and replaced it with a modest bar. The plane’s previous owner, bankrupt television evangelist Jimmy Swaggart, thought drinking a sin.
Colonel Carroll didn’t know what to make of the calls from Minnesota. He called Cindy in Barrow to ask her what she thought, but she had just left the hotel. Cindy was finally on her way to see the whales.
* * *
Geoff and Craig tried to prepare Cindy for the whales’ worsening condition. Temperatures in Barrow were dropping by the day. The chain-saw crews could barely keep up with the new ice. The holes were freezing fast, and the barge was still at least three days away. As they drove their Chevy Suburban across the glassy smooth ice of Elson Lagoon, Cindy couldn’t believe how isolated the three of them were. With all the reporters, whirling helicopters, and Eskimos with chain saws, she expected a hubbub of activity.
Instead, she encountered an overwhelming, almost deafening solitude. From the time they crossed onto the frozen lagoon for the seven-mile drive along the Point Barrow sandspit to the whales, she saw nothing but a barely discernible ski machine whining past far off in the distance. Even with the unblinking gaze of the world fixed upon it, the North Slope appeared no less hostile, no less alien, and no less inimical to life than at any other moment in its timeless existence.
They crossed over the sandbar that separated past from present. Their isolated world vanished in a sea of attention. The closer they got to the holes, the more people and activity they saw: ski “taxis” ferrying reporters to and from the whales, reporters conducting interviews at the water’s edge. The contrast with the barren scenery on the ride out was surreal.
Eskimos could instantly tell who belonged on the ice and who did not. Cindy did not. Those who did belong wore blood-stained walrus and sealskin parkas and carried high-powered rifles slung over their shoulders to guard against polar bears. Those who didn’t, like Cindy, stood shivering in brightly colored ski clothes, fashions better suited to alpine resorts than Arctic expeditions.
Geoff took Cindy to meet Arnold Brower Jr., who had been out all night with his team of Eskimos cutting open several new holes in the ice. She was amazed that he showed no signs of fatigue. An Inuit hunter often spent days on end exposed to the harsh elements searching for game to feed and clothe his family. Millennia in the Arctic enabled the Eskimo to withstand conditions that the hardiest white man could not. No one doubted the ruggedness of the VECO crews who broke the hoverbarge free of ice. But by watching them work, the white man soon learned that the Eskimos could have freed the barge faster with half the men and none of the suffering. They were a different kind of men. The Eskimos were built for the Arctic. It was their home.
The Eskimos cut ice at a feverish pace, oblivious to the temperature of minus thirty-five degrees. With no gloves or hats, and their coats unbuttoned, the Eskimos joked, laughed, and even performed traditional dances on floating slabs of ice. Cindy and her bundled but shivering fellow whites stood nearby, prime candidates for frostbite.
“Why would you come out to work in such cold?” this reporter naïvely asked a busy Eskimo.
“Cold?” the Eskimo responded with equal naïveté. “We’re just out here enjoying the weather.”
Arnold knew of Cindy and Greenpeace long before she set foot in Barrow. For years, her organization fought against subsistence whaling. Under any other circumstance, these two people were enemies. To Arnold, Cindy was bent on the ruination of his people and their ancient way of life. To Cindy, Arnold and his people continued to senselessly slaughter an endangered and magnificent creature with increasingly modern tools. Brower realized this was a rare chance in the history of the Inupiat Eskimos. If he could win Cindy’s friendship, maybe some way could be found to lessen the tensions dividing subsistence whaling villages and their environmentalist opponents. He eagerly extended a gloveless hand in a genuine desire to get things off to a good start.
Standing between them, Geoff could feel the tension and the opportunity. If Cindy accepted his hand warmly, great strides could be made. If she did so grudgingly, the damage might never heal. Cindy’s pretty face instantly broke into a warm, radiant smile as she eagerly reached to grab Brower’s hand for an emotional shake of friendship.
Brower looked at the woman and told her what she already knew. She needed warmer clothing. When Barrow saw a stranger freezing, they didn’t ask whether they want to borrow clothing, they just put it on them. Seeing that she was on the verge of frostbite, he grabbed the fur ruff dangling unused around his neck and leaned over to wrap it around her brightly reddened cheeks. When she saw the fur, Cindy instinctively backed away.
Brower did not understand. Did she want to be his friend or not? He didn’t know why Cindy declined his hospitality. Was she recoiling under the touch of a blood-stained whale killer or was there another, less offensive reason? Realizing her actions were being viewed as an affront, she profusely thanked Brower for his concern but told him she couldn’t wear fur.
“Why not?” Arnold asked. “Are you allergic?”
“No, no,” Cindy said, laughing. “I just don’t wear animal fur.”
Brower never would understand these crazy whites from the Outside. He told her the ruff was hers when and if she changed her mind. Cindy waited anxiously for one of the whales to surface. She still had not seen them. Two television cameramen jostled for position to get “good video” of the environmentalist’s first day on the ice. The strong-willed Lowry was still a bit too unsure of her surroundings to tell the cameramen to back off. As Cindy walked toward the empty holes with Arnold, the cameramen were too busy arguing with each other about who stepped into whose shot to notice Cindy’s discomfort. They probably wouldn’t have listened to her anyway. Their job was to get the best video, not to win popularity contests. If that meant hurt or angry feelings, so be it. After the story ended and they were reprieved from this Arctic hell, they would never again see any of the people they were offending anyway.
Cindy could tell the whales apart before she even saw them. She absorbed every bit of information about the whales Geoff, Craig, or Arnold could give her. The pictures in the paper and on the news gave Cindy as much perspective as anyone. Now, it was her turn to wait those first long minutes until the whales finally surfaced. When Geoff and Craig initially observed them five days earlier, the whales held their breath for six minutes at a time. But in the last few days, the two biologists noticed a change. With the dropping temperatures, increased human activity, and ice closing in overhead, the whales started surfacing more frequently. Instead of every six minutes, the whales popped up every three or four minutes. Geoff and Craig guessed that this was a sign of increased stress. The more strain the whales felt, the less time they would spend below the surface. The baby whale surfaced much more frequently than the other two, a further sign of its frailty.
Malik noticed the new behavior first, but he kept it to himself. He didn’t want to upset the people working hard to save the three whales. Perhaps the whales would resume a more normal diving pattern before anyone not
iced anything was wrong. But after another day without improvement, Malik was no longer the only one who knew the whales were in trouble. On Monday morning, the baby whale could barely lift its head out of the water to breathe. It was bloodied and battered from repeatedly banging against the razor sharp edges of the hole. Cindy leaned over to gently comfort the sickly whale with the touch of her hand. She murmured encouragement as it heaved ragged breaths. Her heart ached for the little whale she called Bone because all the skin had rubbed away from the whale’s snout. The name immediately caught on.
The Eskimos used their own Inupiat language to name the baby Kannick, or Snowflake. The two other whales would have their choice of several names, but none would stick. The Eskimos called the largest whale Siku, one of the hundreds of words in the Inupiat language for ice. The rescuers from the Outside called it Crossbeak, for its crooked jaw that never allowed the whale to properly close its mouth. The smaller of the two adolescent whales was given the Eskimo name Poutu, a uniquely Inupiat word referring to a specific type of ice hole. Those English speakers who called it anything at all, called it Bonnet.
Late Monday afternoon, word got to Arnold Brower that Colonel Carroll was making little progress with the hoverbarge in Prudhoe Bay. Brower and Malik urged Morris to start thinking of alternatives in the event the barge did not work. Up to that point, there were no other options. It was the hoverbarge or bust. Morris said waiting was the only thing they could do. Morris’s lack of Arctic experience limited his ability to think of new ways to help the whales. Instead, he continued to insist that Colonel Carroll would soon free the barge.
“But what if it doesn’t come?” Arnold Brower asked impatiently. “Then what do we do?”
“You guys are the experts,” Morris said defensively. “You tell me.”
Malik suggested cutting new holes. Maybe the extra room at the surface would ease the whales’ distress. Brower thought it was worth a try. He gathered three men with chain saws and instructed them to cut open a new hole twenty-five feet by twenty-five feet, about a hundred feet west of the existing hole.
