A Classical Way to Save the Whales

In 1986, a man from Iowa led a team of explorers in a desperate attempt to save the world. He and his crew traveled to San Francisco in a daring attempt to invade a nuclear sea vessel, engage in a first-of-its-kind construction effort, and most importantly, locate and obtain two humpback whales. Well, kind of. That didn’t happen in real life — it is, loosely, the plot of “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.”

In the movie, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise (well, the Klingon Bird of Prey they commandeered) travel from the year 2286 back three centuries to obtain two whales, because an alien probe wants to talk to the creatures. But humpback whales are extinct in 2286, and the probe’s calls, unanswered, are causing earthquakes and tsunamis and the like on Earth. If you didn’t grow up in the 1970s or 1980s, the alien probe is a ridiculous deus ex machina — it needs to talk to whales? really? — but at the time, it was entirely sensible. Whaling (the hunting of whales) was seen as a major ecological crisis of the time, and the high chance of extinction of humpbacks and other species spurred government action around the globe.

Which is why, in late 1984, a real-life whale crisis required another ship — the Moskva (above), not the Enterprise — to save the whales. With an assist from Tchaikovsky, probably.

As the book “Our Fascinating Earth” explains (via here), “In late December [1984] a pod of migrating belugas (white whales) was chasing a shoal of cod near the Bering Sea. Unaware of the falling temperature, they lingered in the narrow Senyavina Strait [here’s a map] for too long. A brisk wind swept a wall of ice eleven miles wide and eighteen miles long into the passage, blocking their exit. There were only a few holes in the ice through which the whales could get to the surface to breathe.” The ice was 12-feet thick, and beluga whales can only punch through ice that is about four-feet thick. They were trapped, and their lives were at risk. By most estimates, the pod consisted of roughly, 2,500 beluga whales — a huge number by any measure.

Locals did what they could to save the whales. According to the New York Times, “Helicopters and experts were dispatched to survey the scene, and inhabitants of the nearby settlement of Yanrakynnot brought frozen fish to feed the teeming belugas.” But that was insufficient to free the whales from their icy prison. To rescue the whales, someone had to break through the ice. And luckily, the Soviet military had a solution: the Moskva.

Russia borders the Arctic Ocean in the north, and theoretically, that means northern Russia has access to an ocean shipping route. But for a good part of the year, that water is covered in ice, and as anyone who has heard of the Titanic knows, ice and ships don’t mix. So in the mid-1950s, the Soviet government ordered the construction if icebreaking ships — ships that traversed through the icy waters to create safe passageways for larger vessels. The Moskva, which launched in 1959, was one of the earlier such icebreakers.

In early 1985, the Moskva was assigned to the Bering Strait, the waterway between Russia and Alaska, clearing ice for freighters, according to the Times. That’s not too far from the Senyavina Strait, so the Soviet Union deployed the Moskva to help. On February 6, the Moskva reached the Senyavina but was unable to cut through the ice, at least at first. After multiple unsuccessful attempts, the Moskva finally plowed through on February 22. The whales now had a 70-foot wide ice-free swim lane, leading to the Bering Sea. All they needed to do was follow the Moskva and swim to safety.

But the whales didn’t move. Scientists were unsure why — some believe that the whales took the loud noises coming from the Moskva as a threat, but again, it’s unclear. For a few days, workers worked tirelessly to figure out a way to get the whales to follow the Moskva. And it was a race against the clock because the strait was freezing over again during this delay. And then, someone came up with a solution. As the Times reported, “At last someone recalled that dolphins react acutely to music. And so music began to pour off the top deck. The belugas seemed to like classical music the most, and the herd began to slowly follow the ship.” About 2,000 of the whales were able to swim away, but 500 of them met another doom — they were captured by local hunters.

The rescue effort was seen as a huge success regardless. It cost the modern-day equivalent of about $200,000, or $100 per whale. For comparison’s sake, Star Trek IV had an inflation-adjusted budget of about $55 million — enough to save 550,000 whales. (But they only needed two.)

Bonus fact: Whaling wasn’t the only thing that put whales at risk in the 1980s — war, also, claimed a few of these majestic creatures. The United Kingdom and Argentina were engaged in the Falklands War for two months in 1982, and just under 1,000 people were killed on both sides. Not listed among the traditional casualty report, though, were three whales. As the Plymouth Herald reported, “two were killed by torpedoes fired from the anti-submarine frigate HMS Brilliant, and the third was attacked by one of the ship’s helicopters.” The crew didn’t think they were attacking whales, though — they, incorrectly, believed that the whales were actually Argentian submarines.

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