The Inuit are known for hunting and eating raw meat, and at a time when whaling is banned around the world, innuens are still allowed to catch a certain number of whales per year, which is the basis of their survival.
But when three juvenile gray whales are trapped under the ice, will they enjoy the prey at their fingertips? Real events 31 years ago tell us that instead of doing so, they launched a major rescue.
It was a gray whale rescue operation that brought together whalers, guards, government officials and other social forces, and did not hesitate to spend $1 million to mobilize any helpful equipment, and even let the enemy countries in the Cold War at that time, the Soviet Union and the United States, cooperate in the rescue operation.
The Inuit who inhabit the Arctic Circle are authentic yellows, but they are more like an isolated community. Living in the cold polar regions for a long time, their appearance has also been different from the yellow people in Asia.
But because of these changes, the Inuit had an amazing ability to withstand the cold. The thick subcutaneous fat makes them look a little short and stout, and the small eyes are conducive to preventing the polar ice and snow reflecting strong light from irritating the eyes. Another important reason is that their food is high in protein and calories.
The Inuit who are hunting
The Inuit are adapted to local conditions, and their traditional diet is all about local meat, seals, walruses, whales, and reindeer, polar bears and other animals on land. Among them, whales are an important ingredient in their lives.
At present, whaling activities in various countries are strictly restricted by the International Whaling Commission, but the Inuit still receive a certain limit every year because of tradition and survival needs. The Inuit also have a special affection for whales, not only for their food, but also for their gratitude to them.
There is a legend about whales among the Inuit people, god in order to punish human sin and the flood, the Inuit people can not hide in Noah's Ark, but have to ride a kayak on the water. Just as they were about to starve to death, a bowhead whale came to sacrifice himself and volunteered to be their food, so that Inuit could survive the storm and not starve to death.
Under the guidance of traditional culture, whales have become the benevolent "people" of the entire Inuit people. So while the Inuit prey on whales, whalers always hunt only 1/3 of the meat of one whale, leaving the rest on the ice for other land animals such as polar bears to share in the food. They also perform prayer ceremonies for each whale that is hunted.
Grey whales
On October 7, 1988, Inuit whalers were hunting in the fall to stock up on food for the colder winters. In one of the northernmost cities in the United States, Barrow, Alaska, Roy Emaugock and his father went to the open waters in the distance in search of fat whales.
On the way back, Emungek found a small pool. It's not so much a pool of water as it is just a hole in the middle of fresh sea ice that doesn't freeze. But at the mouth of such a small open-air pool, Emaugock was surprised to find that there were three baby whales inside.
Perhaps out of curiosity, Emergock spent about an hour observing the icy sea ice. This is a three-headed gray whale with a barnacles in the skin, and due to the small opening of the cave, the three gray whales can only take turns to surface and breathe. Their bodies had been cut and bleeding from jagged crushed ice.
On either side of the head, covered by barnacles, a pair of large gray whale eyes stared at Emaugock from time to time. They were afraid that Emaugock would reach out at any moment to hunt them down. But they can't leave the only pool of breath, and in a dilemma, they may rather gamble on the kindness of the human being in front of them than flee the pool and face death.
But the three scarred gray whales were indeed engaged in an existential gamble. Because the rescuers had indeed thought of hunting them, though the reasons might have been better.
A small pool of water formed by the rupture of sea ice, where the three gray whales survive
Although the Inuit were natural whalers, grey whales were not their targets. Because at the time, the gray whale was an endangered species protected by U.S. law and international agreements.
During the 19th century, commercial whalers hunted gray whales so much that the number of gray whales plummeted and nearly became extinct. It was not until 1949 that the International Whaling Commission protected grey whales from commercial hunting and banned large-scale hunting.
Subsequently, the number of gray whales recovered to some extent. Currently, there are about 22,000 gray whales in the Pacific Ocean, spending the summer near Alaska, foraging for food at the shallow bottom of its northern sea before returning to warmer waters off the coast of Mexico and California for the winter.
A gray whale found dead
And what kind of fate will these three gray whales accidentally stuck in the ice cave face?
After consulting with his father, Emaugock told the news to one of the town's marine biologists, Jeff Carroll. After 4 days, Carol came to the pool where the gray whale was found to observe the situation, and the three gray whales were still in place.
Carroll estimates that the three gray whales are the oldest only about 6 years old, while the other two are even younger, only 2 years old. They should still have the ability to swim, but it's not easy to get them out of the pool.
The weather was preparing to cool down, and the temperature was as low as minus 20 °C. Even pools of about 4.5 meters in diameter will freeze, and these pools are 11 kilometers away from the mouth of the sea. The daunting task of breaking the heavy sea ice, creating a water circulation channel, and then guiding three weak gray whales back into the warm sea was overwhelming.
In the face of a rescue mission that seemed impossible to complete, it was suggested that the best solution was to shoot the gray whale. Since there was little hope of putting them back into the ocean, it would be better to help them get rid of their misery and provide food for the Inuit by the way.
Moreover, at that time, the three gray whales were exhausted and stayed in place, and even if they built an ice-breaking channel, it was difficult to say whether they could swim on their own strength. Even researchers at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory at the time believed that the rescue was biologically meaningless, and that the three gray whales were destined to be frail individuals who should be eliminated by nature.
A picture from a movie
However, the indifferent biological science could not shake the kindness of human nature, and in the end, people decided to rescue the three trapped gray whales.
Nearly a week after the spotting of the grey whale, Carol called the Coast Guard to seek icebreakers to help break the ice. At the same time, the Associated Press reported the news to seek help from people from all walks of life. For a time, the rescue and support hands extended by all parties were twisted together into the force of breaking the sea ice and releasing whales to the ocean.
Inuit whalings, the National Guard, the oil industry and environmentalists, as well as government officials, were involved in the rescue operation. Even the Soviet Union, which was in the midst of a Cold War with the United States, sent barges to support it. The fate of the three gray whales is tied together by two countries that should be hostile.
An American oil company was willing to provide a barge weighing 185 tons to dig breathing holes in the ice, allowing gray whales to migrate along the chiseled breathing holes to the estuary 11 kilometers away. But to keep the barge in good working order, it takes 8 to 10 workers to work continuously for 48 hours to complete the shift work.
How to transport the 185-ton barge from Anchorage in southern Alaska to Barrow in the north is also a serious problem. The National Guard even launched the CH-54, the most powerful helicopter in the United States at the time, and rented another helicopter for $15,000, using two helicopters to complete the barge transportation.
President Ronald Reagan was also very concerned about the rescue operation, and he demanded that the rescue situation must be reported to Washington every two hours.
By October 23, rescuers had chiseled open a row of about 50 small pools for the grey whales to breathe, stretching for 3.2 kilometres. In this view, the ice-breaking drilling project for breathing holes has been relatively smooth, but new problems have emerged. 50 breathing holes lead to a ridge where gray whales are reluctant to swim more than 1.6 kilometers.
Rescuers speculated they must have been frightened by the sandy sandbars in the ridge. There was a ridge under the water, so much so that the gray whales were so terrified of the shoals that they retreated to the previous breathing hole.
At this time, the Soviet Union unexpectedly reached an agreement with the United States to provide support when it needed help. Just five years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union staged a farce over whaling.
At that time, Greenpeace in the United States was vigorously protesting soviet whaling activities, and 7 militants even broke into a Siberian whaling station and were arrested on the spot. Later, Greenpeace also launched a ship in an attempt to crash into a Soviet freighter.
In the context of direct violent conflict, unexpectedly, the two sides reached a cooperative relationship in this gray whale rescue operation. Soon, the Soviets sent two icebreakers to Alaska.
In the movie, an icebreaker from the Soviet Union
All day on the 25th, the only task of the Soviet icebreaker was to crash into the ridge. By nightfall, the gap had crossed three-quarters of the ridge, and the breathing hole had been smoothly extended by another 2.4 meters.
By the afternoon of October 26, two gray whales had entered the strait at the mouth of the sea, but they still refused to swim. It was not until two days later, when the helicopter patrol did not find the gray whale in the channel channel, that it was announced that the gray whale had swum to the Pacific Ocean, and the rescue was finally a success.
In the end, the entire massive rescue project cost about $1 million, and many rescuers worked tirelessly. The only unfortunate thing is that one of the youngest gray whales has died on the way.
The rescue of the gray whale was adapted into the movie The Great Miracle, which was released in 2012
And under the difficult and expensive rescue of humans, the remaining two gray whales really will not fall into the Arctic ice again? Can they really live up to human expectations and live well? People don't know.
Perhaps they will have gained extraordinary luck in the rest of their lives, thrive and reproduce, and eventually rest in their homeland; perhaps they have a bad fate, and after entering the sea, they encounter unknown accidents, and finally die at a young age.
But even so, human salvation efforts are not in vain. In the rescue process of the three gray whales, human beings show the brilliance of humanity to rescue at any cost, and the awareness of the overall situation that all the immediate national hostilities can be temporarily shelved in the face of species danger.
Who could have predicted that the United States and the Soviet Union, which had inflicted countless casualties on the battlefield, would be able to unite and cooperate in the rescue operation of the three gray whales. The competition of nations cannot override the meaning of the existence of all things in any way.
RichardMauer. Unlikely Allies Rush to Free 3 Whales. The New York Times, 1988.10.18.
AndreaThompson. A Whale of a Tale: The Real 'Big Miracle' Story. Live Science,2012.02.06.
RichardMauer. 'Big Miracle': The real story. Anchorage Daily News, 2016.09.27.
John Vidal.Drew Barrymore saves the whales and melts cold war ice in Big Miracle. TheGuardian, 2012.02.09.