Word: whaled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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First there was Humphrey, the desultory humpback whale saved from starvation in California's Sacramento River in 1985 by an armada of whale lovers who successfully herded him out to sea. Last summer there was Henry, a young whale who made a wrong turn and ended up in New York's polluted harbor before regaining his bearings. Then last week the sight of three battered and bloodied gray whales gasping for breath at holes in a thickening Arctic ice pack caused Americans to forget, for a moment or two, both the World Series and the Bush-Dukakis race...
...unlikely, uneasy army of scientists, whale-hunting Eskimos, oil company officials and environmental activists mustered in frigid Point Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost point in the United States, to organize a $1 million rescue effort. Biologists nicknamed the trio of young whales Bonnet, Crossbeak and Bone. By week's end the whales had competing Eskimo names -- Putu, Siku and Kanik, or Ice Hole, Ice and Snowflake. They also had the good wishes of President Reagan, who called to tell rescue workers that our "hearts are with you and our prayers are also with you." The media frenzy prompted a bewildered...
...break through the two-foot-thick ice and clear a five-mile path to open water. Ultimately, the mammoth rescue effort involved several helicopters, support vehicles and more than 100 people. While only a heart of stone could fail to be moved by the plight of the three whales, the vast resources consumed by their rescue caused some observers to scratch their heads -- not at the behavior of the whales, but at that of their would-be human saviors. Such entrapment in ice, they know, is commonplace. Less than 30 miles from the rescue effort, polar bears feasted...
...marine biologists worry that the U.S. all too easily squanders its concern and resources on such individual rescue efforts, while programs that might benefit the whole species go begging. Others point out that the money spent on the rescue could substantially increase enforcement to prevent the illegal export of whale products. Still, many animal lovers saw the effort as an unalloyed plus. "Every time we are made more aware that we share this planet with other organisms, it brings us into the web of life," says John Hall, a San Diego-based whale expert...
...three gray whales, they may have to face new, intensified dangers from polar bears and killer whales that might sense their distress, as well as the danger that they might again become lost or trapped by the ice. As naturalist Roger Caras remarked last week on Nightline: "They are exhausted, they are stressed, and they've got a gamut to run." Caras and others did not believe that Putu, Siku and Kanik would ever reach their wintering grounds off the coasts of California and Mexico. Meanwhile, conservationists and whale lovers might reflect on this conundrum: How can the human outpouring...