Soviets Delayed in Effort to Free Ice-Trapped Whales

A Soviet icebreaker struggling to free over 1,000 white whales trapped by ice near the Bering Strait had to withdraw when it ran low on fuel, but it could set the animals loose by Wednesday, a Soviet reporter said Monday.

Rafail Bikmukhametov told Reuters news agency by telephone from the far eastern city of Magadan that naturalists who flew over Senyavina Sound, where the whales have been stuck for nearly a month, saw no signs of dead animals. Senyavina is near the strait separating Siberia and Alaska.

“There is plenty of fish for them,” he said, recalling that it was large numbers of fish that attracted the whales into the shallow sound. The whales, up to 20 feet long and weighing some 1.5 tons, then found their exit barred by ice floes.

Bikmukhametov, a Siberian correspondent for the government daily Izvestia, said the powerful icebreaker Moskva, diverted from its usual duties keeping shipping lanes open last week, ran low on diesel and pulled out to refuel.

It returned to Senyavina on Monday and could form an escape route by Wednesday, he said. The ice was so thick that only an icebreaker could get through to the whales.