Ice Whale (15 page)

A
s
swam out of Smith Bay‚ he
heard
distant
bzzt
‚
bzzzt
sounds that he recognized to be narwhals! Narwhals are small whales‚ up to twenty feet long. The males have one long spear-like tooth growing out of their upper jaw resembling the mythical unicorn horn. Their flippers are shaped like half circles. Although narwhals live in the eastern Arctic waters of Greenland and Canada‚ a rare few had ventured as far west as Smith Bay.
ignored them and followed the whale songs into the deeper Arctic water.

swam past the coastal fringe of ice floes as the sun warmed the polar region. When he surfaced for a breath‚ he glanced at the gulls and seals sitting on the floes. The water was growing warmer‚ the winds stronger‚ and there was ice to tumble in. Purple clouds sailed above green-and-yellow ones. Day and night were becoming one sun-filled day. He was near his summer home.

A storm threatened. A wolf eel darted in front him. A school of cod swirled and dove. The sun flashed gold on their scales. Jellyfish turned the water pink as the wind blew them together. The air temperature dropped to 30 degrees F. It snowed.
swam peacefully on. This was his world.

Miles farther along‚ the snow ended. A slick of zooplankton appeared near the ocean surface and
opened his gigantic mouth to take it in‚ but stopped. It smelled wrong. The slick was not the oil of rich zooplankton but a slick of oil from the motor-driven ships. Pumping his flukes up and down‚ he swam away from it.

When he reached the deeper waters‚ chatter told him that
was up ahead with three of his daughters and a son. The five had found each other by sound and sight despite the vastness of this sea. They ran their bodies along each other to express their whale pleasure at being together again. They pushed small ice floes back and forth and whipped their flukes in pleasure.
joined them‚ carrying an ice chunk on his rostrum.
knocked it off him and pushed it to his daughter.

The Eastern Beaufort Sea‚ the summer home of the bowhead whales‚ was murky with plankton and exploding with life. No other large baleen whales came here. These rich‚ ice-strewn waters were the waters of the ice whales.

Saffron cod summered here also.
could see them eating zooplankton. Below them were castles of stone rising from the darkness like mysterious cities. On their sunlit walls‚ anemones and Arctic coral thrived. In the near darkness grew sponges and gelatinous creatures. Millions of years of evolution had adapted them and the bowhead whales to these impossible conditions. It was a world of variable light‚ cold water‚ and thick sea ice. There was nothing like these creatures anywhere else on the earth.

At home here‚
moved gently among the life on the edge of the ice pack.

Suddenly whale joy within
stirred him and he played with his friends and many of his own relatives. They breached and crashed into the water.