2 Soviet Ships Cutting Path in Ice for Whales

Two Soviet ships attacked the task of freeing two California gray whales within hours after arriving here Tuesday, and officials held high hopes that, by the end of today, the whales will be freed from the ice that has been their prison for nearly three weeks.

“The Russians have landed, and they are hitting the ice right now,” biologist Ron Morris told reporters shortly after visiting the ships. The main obstacle, an ice ridge, was offering little resistance to the heavy Soviet ships.

Morris, who is coordinating the rescue, said that the Soviets began their chore even before his helicopter took him off the ship.

“They were steaming toward the ridge as I was getting off,” he said. The ridge is a wall of ice, and it is the most intimidating barrier standing between the whales and open water.

Morris had flown out with several other officials to confer with Sergei Reshetov, the captain of the Soviet icebreaker. The 440-foot vessel, named the Admiral Makarov, is accompanied by a cargo ship, the Vladimir Arseniev, that is equipped with an icebreaking hull.

“The first thing the captain asked was: ‘How are the whales?’ ” Morris said.

The American team flew the captain and a Soviet reporter and photographer who were aboard the ship out to the site where the whales have been stranded since Oct. 7.

After returning to the ship, the captain “was all work. He said: ‘Let’s go break ice,’ ” Morris said.

With that, the ships turned and headed for the pressure ridge--which towers as much as 35 feet over the ice field in which the whales are trapped. The Arseniev was flying an American flag alongside the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union as a sign of international cooperation.

Morris said that the first mate of the Admiral Makarov had told the Americans, “It’s the whales and the two countries coming together. It’s glasnost. “

Glasnost is Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s policy of openness.

The Soviets attacked the ridge almost too quickly for Gary Hufford, an ice expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Hufford was on the ridge, checking for weak spots in the ice, when he saw the Soviet ships heading his way.

“He thought it prudent to get away when he saw this big ship looming down on him,” Morris said.

It was the second hasty retreat for Hufford in as many days. Monday, he leaped back aboard his helicopter when a large polar bear just 200 feet away began lumbering toward him.

The Soviet ships were the latest pieces of equipment to join this extraordinary rescue effort, which has also involved helicopters, an ice-crunching tractor and teams of Eskimos more accustomed to hunting whales than saving them.

Soviet assistance had been requested by the environmental group Greenpeace and the U.S. government. No U.S. icebreaker was in the region.

Even the weather was cooperating Tuesday, after threatening to turn bad; the skies cleared slightly and winds out of the east pushed offshore ice floes farther apart. That has created a wide escape route for the whales if they can get to the other side of the pressure ridge.

Robert Lewellen, an ice expert who works with oil and mining industries in Alaska, said the Soviet ships should be able to open a wide hole in the ridge.

“We’re going to kick out the side of the barn rather than open a personal door” for the whales, he said.

That should suit the whales fine, because they have shown some reluctance to advance along the narrow chain of about 60 holes cut through the ice by Eskimos.

For a time Tuesday, the whales refused to move more than half way along the chain, halting before a spot where the water is only about 12 feet deep. The whales were apparently afraid of becoming grounded if they tried to pass between the ice and the floor of the sea, scientists said.

So Eskimos with chain saws cut a bypass around the shallow area, allowing the whales to move out toward the end of the chain of holes, which extends to within about three miles of the ridge of ice.

The Archimedean Screw Tractor, an 11-ton contraption that rides on two turning pontoons, is to cut a passage from the holes out to the ridge. It was flown in from the Prudhoe Bay oil fields aboard the world’s largest aircraft, a U.S. Air Force C-5A Galaxy. It is owned by VECO Inc., an oil pipeline service company.

The screw tractor is to meet the Soviet ships at the ridge. The water closer to the whales is too shallow to allow the icebreakers to operate.

However, even after the ships and the tractor and the Eskimos complete their work, the whales will have a long journey ahead of them to reach their winter breeding grounds off Baja California.

Bruised, weary and spooked by their long ordeal, the whales could still have some surprises ahead.

“I can just see these turkeys coming out and turning right instead of left,” Lewellen said jokingly.