Icy Trap Appears to Doom 3 Whales

Time and breathing room were running out Thursday for three gray whales trapped in Arctic ice, and biologists said they had been unable to contact an icebreaker to give assistance.

The California gray whales apparently were swimming from the Beaufort Sea to their winter grounds off the coast of Mexico when they got caught in the ice east of Point Barrow a week ago, said Geoff Carroll, a biologist for the North Slope Borough.

He said the whales’ movement kept open two holes the size of basketball courts about 450 feet offshore, but those openings shrunk as temperatures plunged.

“They eat a lot and they have to keep moving,” Carroll said. “I’m sure they’re going to eat everything that’s there before very long.” He said the whales eat plankton from the ocean floor.

A bowhead whale, larger and better adapted to ice than its gray cousin, might break through the 6-inch ice, Carroll said. But he held little hope for the three trapped mammals.

“Apparently, they got over into the Beaufort Sea and stayed too long,” he said.

The borough’s Wildlife Management Department tried repeatedly to get in touch with an ice-breaking vessel that a government survey crew reported seeing from the air, but radio messages went unanswered, biologists said.