Whales Fail to Use New Holes in Ice

Rescue workers carved two new breathing holes in the stubborn Arctic ice pack today, hoping to keep three trapped California gray whales alive until an ice-breaking barge can free them.

The whales, however, ignored the new air holes and the barge remained stalled.

Many feared that the endangered mammals--battered and bloody after being trapped for a week--were already doomed and talked of shooting them to end their suffering and provide food for the 3,100 nearby villagers, mostly Eskimos.

Ice and mechanical problems delayed the start of a rescue journey for the ice-breaking barge and the biggest helicopter in Alaska, and they remained stalled again today.

Keeping Holes Open

Despite the talk of killing the whales, Eskimo whale hunters and others worked in 16-below-zero cold to keep two shrinking breathing holes from completely freezing over, and they carved two more holes in the foot-thick ice.

However, biologists and rescuers were surprised to see that the whales were not using the two new breathing holes but continued to swim back and forth between the same two.

The whales apparently spent too long in the rich summer feeding grounds of the Arctic and were trapped when the shifting pack ice surrounded them before they could begin their yearly migration to the warm waters of Southern California and Mexico.

Equipment Stalls

In Prudhoe Bay, 200 miles away, a giant ice-breaking barge and a National Guard CH-54 Sikorsky Skycrane helicopter bogged down Tuesday afternoon after starting out on a mission to cut a 5-mile-long channel from the open sea to the whales.

The rescue plan was to fire up the 185-ton oil company ice-breaking barge’s powerful diesel engines and have the Skycrane tow it the 200 miles to the whales.

The mission was barely under way when the barge got stuck in the ice, said Pete Leathard, president of VECO, a Prudhoe Bay company that owns the barge. Workers labored in subzero temperatures to free the barge and the journey began just before dusk, only to be halted after less than a mile.