Ice Whale (18 page)
Authors: Jean Craighead George
L
ooking out the doorway of the Alaska Airlines jet
planeâ TJâ Captain Tommy Boyd's second grandsonâ stared out at Barrow. No trees graced the landscape. Telephone poles and small gray wooden buildings dominated the land. An occasional yellow or blue house speckled the village like flowers. In the distanceâ a bowhead whale jaw loomed in front of the town hallâ dwarfing the people walking by it. Here and thereâ snow still lingered.
The view the other way was quite different. Snow and an occasional patch of tundra grass stretched on a flat and endless landscape to the horizon.
“Move quicklyâ” said a well-meaning passenger on the steps that led down to the tarmac. “It's cold!”
TJ raced down the steps onto the runway. Gusts of wind nearly blew him off his feet. Flying snow stung him. He ducked his head into his parka hood. Struggling to keep his balanceâ he reached the steel steps of the terminal building and climbed them. The open steel mesh of the steps let the ice and snow fall to the ground underneath. No one had to shovel. TJ liked that.
“And this is the month of May!?” he shouted into the wind.
Insideâ he found himself in a modern terminal. Passengers were wearing furs and heavy boots. This was just another day in the Arctic.
A boy walked up to him.
“Hiâ” he said. “You must be TJ Boyd from Massachusetts. He extended his hand. “I am Agvik Boydâ your cousin.”
TJ blinked and stared. He was really here in Barrow. He had heard about the Arctic from the part of his family and especially Agvikâ his cousinâ who lived here. Now he was meeting one of them for the first time. He was almost speechless.
“Let's get your baggageâ” Agvik said. “The lab truck is waiting outside. You must be tired after traveling for so long.”
“Let's go.” TJ grabbed one big duffel bagâ Agvik the other.
Their boots squeaked in the cold as they crunched down the front steps to the truck. Agvik gestured to TJ to get in the truck and climbed into the driver's seat beside him.
The truck was heatedâ but TJ was still cold by the time they reached the lab beside the still-frozen ocean. It was May 2. The temperature was 12 degrees F. They stomped the snow off their feet and entered the building.
Agvik saidâ “You're going to bunk with me here at the research lab. We're with the college guys. They're counting bowhead whales.”
“That's what we're here forâ right?” TJ asked. Agvik's dad was an ornithologistâ but he worked with scientists who studied whales and recorded whale songs.
“Yeahâ but for now you and I are on our own. Come with me.”
TJ picked up his duffel and followed Agvik down a dark corridor to a room lined with bunks.
“Pick one not being usedâ” Agvik saidâ waving his hand at the beds stacked closely together in the room.
TJ threw his duffel on an empty bunk and took off his parka.
“Let's eatâ” said Agvikâ and led TJ down the hall to a large kitchen with a stoveâ a refrigeratorâ a long tableâ chairsâ and all kinds of groceries.
“Every man for himselfâ” Agvik saidâ and smiled. His black eyes sparkled under ragged bangs. TJ noticed that his face was narrower than the other Eskimos'. It looked like a Boyd face. Agvik's dad and TJ's dad were brothers.
A VHF radio crackled nearby.
“Ice camp callingâ” Agvik said of the noise. “That's where they're counting the whales.” TJ looked curious.
Agvik responded to TJ's expression. “The camp's on the ice near shoreâ where it's grounded to the ocean floor. It's only four feet thick this yearâ but perfectly safe.” He smiled. Eskimos as well as other scientists from the Lower Forty-eight had come to count the whales. They wanted to know if their populations were increasingâ decreasingâ or staying the same.
“What do you want to do now?” Agvik asked.
All of the sudden exhaustion came over TJ. He'd been traveling for nearly twenty-four hours. “Go to bedâ” he said. “It's nearly midnight!”
“Okayâ first lessonâ” Agvik saidâ and smiledâ “Pull this ski hat over your eyes and pretend it's dark.” He tossed it to him. TJ fell into his bed fully clothed.
When he woke upâ Agvik was not around. He wished he were. But his stomach told him what to do. He went to the kitchen and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. He ate it on a big wooden table cluttered with toolsâ data sheetsâ electronic partsâ pencilsâ and equipment.
“You're upâ” called Agvik as he entered the room. “Want to go out to ice campâ TJ?”
“Ohâ boyâ do I.” He was excited to finally be able to see the Arctic!
They pulled old air-force insulated jumpsuits over their clothes and walked out into the wind. A snow machine with a sled attached was waiting for them. TJ was told to ride on the rear of the sled. Hesitatingly he stepped up on it and grabbed the back handle of the sled. Two scientists sat in warm furs on another sled with some valuable equipment packed in coolersânot to keep it cool but to keep it from freezing.
With a lurch they were off. They sped around Quonset hutsâ crossed a roadâ and bumped out onto the land-fast sea ice. Then they crossed onto the frozen Arctic Ocean. Seeing itâ TJ was glad that Agvik had mentioned that the ice was four feet thick and safe.
TJ stared at the white wilderness around him as they thumped around blue blocks of ice. Next they roared down a winding ice trailâ bounced over ridgesâ and rode smoothly on frozen lakes of flat sea ice. Six miles laterâ they arrived at three tents and a small wooden lab shed sitting on its own sled. The tents had been set up behind a pressure ridge.
TJ gladly disembarked. There was an Eskimo whaling camp on the other side of the pressure ridge on a shelf of ice. TJ stared at the huge ridge.
A light wind was blowing across the ice. Suddenlyâ almost before he could walk around the tentsâ the light wind became a westerly gale.
“Break campâ” shouted an Eskimo over the radio. All of a sudden everyone was in motion. Students collapsed the tents and tossed gear on the sleds behind the snowmobiles. One student attached the lab sled to his snowmobile and drove off.
With a muffled boomâ the thicker pack ice hit the thinner land-fast ice and began piling and shattering the iceâ creating another pressure ridge.
One of the scientists grabbed TJ's parka and pulled him up beside him on the back of his sled. They jerked forward. A crack opened up where TJ had stoodâ widenedâ and carried the empty science camp to sea.
“You have to do what the Eskimos do out hereâ” said the scientist as they careened toward the new campsite. “The Eskimos who were camped at the very edge of the ice left minutes before we arrived. They knew the danger in that wind. I sure didn't. We also need to learn to break camp as fast as they do. They can do it in five minutes.“
“It was so nice and calm before it hitâ” TJ said.
An hour laterâ they found a new campsite. Students started pitching tents.
TJ grabbed a tent off their sled and pitched it. It was a sleeping tent for four people. TJ saw what needed to be done and carried the huge sleeping bags inside the tent.
The studentsâ who had left before TJâ already had the food tent set up and were studying this ice to determine where to put the lab sled. TJ figured it must be near open water so the hydrophones could pick up and record the bleepsâ blipsâ shrieksâ growlsâ and moans of the bowheads talking. It also had to be far enough away to be safe from the dangerousâ shifting sea ice. Camping on the ice was a complex and risky business.
Fifteen minutes laterâ the radio crackled as a student scientist said the underwater listening instruments were in the seaâ and ice camp was in business again.
“That was a close callâ” said Rayâ a student from Ohio. “We should have known better than to think we knew as much as the Eskimo whalers about the dangers of the ice.” He thought a minute. “They see more whales than we do tooâand without binoculars.”
“How do they do that?” TJ asked.
“A thousand years of experienceâ” said Ray. “And they pass on this knowledge from generation to generation through stories.”
“Members of my family were whalers long agoâ” said TJ. “Guess this is the new way to watch whalesâwith your ears.”
That night TJ and his cousin returned to the research lab from a long day at whale camp. TJ wearily pulled a ski hat over his eyes and went to sleep.
“
!!!!!!!!!!!!” shrilled
He sent out a danger-enemy warning to all the whales within hearing distance.
Several younger whales heard the warningâ thinking it meant killer whales were near. Confusedâ they swam toward the elder whale.
This was not whathad meant to warn them about. He had no “words” for what was happening. This threat came from dark bullet-shaped ships.
KABOOOOM! KABOOOOM!
The ships were towing seismic air guns. With these instruments they were sounding the deep ocean bottom for oil. The sounds hurt the whales' ears and impaired their direction-finding senses.
â who was also in the areaâ spy hopped so he could see the ships. When he fell backâ the sounds stung and burned him. He could not hear the familiar songs of the Arctic Oceanâcrabs clickingâ fish poppingâ seals warbling. He became confused. Some years back a young female trying to reach the coastal currents swam into a giant ship's propellers and was killed. Large ships were dangerous.
realized that the noises were confusing him too. He was going the wrong way. He turned around. There before him was a seismic gunship. He had tolerated the icebreakers that came every winter. He could adjust to airplanes. But the sounds of the seismic air guns were painful.
His group joined him and swam steadily until they were far beyond the seismic air-gun ships that were sounding for oil. Thenheard the voice of
. The old whale was swimming toward him. He was acting strangely. He lolled from side to sideâ stoppedâ and then sped up. The seismic sounds had injured his tender ears. He could not balance himself well enough to swim. He growled in distress.
took a position before him and led him to the shallower shore currents. The two elders joined the other whales now streaming past Barrowâ going east.
felt a warm river in the current. The thread of warmth was streaming out of the Pacific Ocean through the Bering Strait. He had never felt water from the Pacific that was this warm in the 150 years of his lifetime. His ocean was changing.
