As reporters flew in and started filing stories, Withrow was asked to go up and help clarify some of the misleading information about gray whales that was coming out. I was there for part of it, feeling the walls close in with the rest of the media zoo and legions of government officials, volunteers and company reps at the Top of the World Hotel -- just as the ice was closing in a few miles away at Point Barrow. The bubblers circulated just enough water to prevent freshwater holes in Minnesota from freezing, and by 2 a.m. in Barrow, they were doing the same in arctic seawater. In Barrow, blowing snow drifted into the holes and the windchill felt like 50 below. All day Tuesday, the Soviet ships rammed the ridge. Being a family movie and all, Big Miracle … Now that "Big Miracle" is opening -- the movie is loosely based on the 1988 rescue effort in Barrow -- how close is the movie to actual events? There is some sorrow in BIG MIRACLE, but there is, per the … By Friday, Oct. 21, Bone was no more, gone without a trace. In 1988, journalist Tom Rose was sent to Barrow, Alaska, to cover the dramatic rescue of three gray whales. The whales got Inupiaq names -- Putu, Siku and Kanik (ice hole, ice and snowflake) to go with the physically descriptive English names of Bone, Bonnet (from the pattern of barnacles around its blowhole) and Crossbeak (its jaws didn't line up). Sitting on a sofa at the Top of the World after a press conference, Petersen was asked by a reporter whether he had ever seen anything like this before. His room became command central. What about Drew Barrymore's dramatic dive into the water to help untangle one of the whales, supposedly caught in some fishing net? The bubblers provided a reprieve; with fewer people needed to keep the holes open, the Inupiat started cutting a line of holes out to sea. "It's a pitiful thing," he said. "We hit the wrong path till the elders came along and said you better think like the whales and put those holes in a little deeper water. "But the way this is going, we'd probably fit them with hearing aids and eyeglasses.". The first instinct of some village leaders in Barrow was to shoot the animals and put them out of their misery -- but no one wanted to. The true story was also documented recently by Anchorage Daily News reporter Richard Mauer, who covered the 1988 rescue and dug up his old notebooks to describe the massive endeavor. See the note at the bottom for details. Nobody Knows If The Whales Actually Survived - Big Miracle Universal Pictures. 7 True Story Movies That Left Out The Real Horrific Ending. On Thursday, Oct. 27, first light revealed the whales were still there. We listened to them and it worked.". Stevens was accused of failing to report gifts from Allen. Only five years before, during a protest of Soviet whaling, seven Greenpeace activists invaded a Siberian whaling station and were arrested. He left the ADN in 2017. Hardly anyone is unaware of the plight of the three gray whales that were stranded under the ice near Barrow, Alaska, in 1988 -- especially since the release of a new movie, "Big Miracle," which documents the two-week international effort to save them. The seven had been dropped off by Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior, and as the Greenpeace ship escaped through the Bering Sea back to Nome, it had to outmaneuver a Soviet freighter that tried to ram it. Cindy Lowry -- everyone was soon calling her Cindy Greenpeace -- arrived Sunday, Oct. 16. The same day, Ron Morris arrived in Barrow from Anchorage. The film is based on Tom Rose's 1989 book Freeing the Whales , which covers Operation Breakthrough , the 1988 international effort to rescue gray whales trapped in … Rear Adm. Sig Petersen of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stood with Ron Morris to announce that the Soviets were sending two ships: the icebreaker Admiral Makarov, named after the man who built the first Russian icebreaker, and the icebreaking cargo ship Vladimir Arsenev. Years before, when it was operational, its weight, riding on a small cushion of air, broke thin ice, so maybe it could cut a trail from the breathing hole to open water. No one knew why the three whales got trapped near Barrow, but their age and condition suggested they had wandered farther east to feed than the bulk of the grays. With the Coast Guard icebreaker uninvolved, only the Soviet Union could help. "That's natural mortality. They were, at … What's amazing is that it took 23 years for a film to be made. The Americans reciprocated and allowed the Russian reporters to board the North Slope Borough helicopter for its regular media tours. Greenpeace had made the initial contacts with the Soviets, but it took official calls from the State Department and the Coast Guard to make it happen. "They projected something, we think it was the killer whale sounds. At the Cabrillo Marine Museum in Los Angeles, 100 volunteers trained to identify the two whales. He checked out the pool the next Tuesday and the whales were still there. There were shrugs from other quarters as well. The whales look pretty fake in my opinion. So was everyone else. "Pity our hover-barge isn't there -- it can break ice," Rod Christ of the oil field service company Veco told one of his bosses, Pete Leathard. Tragedy struck Barrow at dawn on Thursday, Oct. 20, when three children died in a house fire. The Inupiat, meanwhile, cut a new 1.5-mile series of breathing holes to skirt around the intimidating shoal. The whales refused to swim out to sea. "We wouldn't have allowed it," he said. The Inupiat whaling captains got together to decide what to do. Directed by Ken Kwapis. The ridge, created by the pressure of different floes of ice squeezing together, rose 35 feet from the surface. At night, there was always enough whiskey to go around. This post has been corrected. A Soviet icebreaker cut a channel to open water in the Chukchi and Bering seas, and Eskimo workers on shore, aided by donated chain saws, succeeded in cutting a series of breathing holes to guide the two whales to the channel. But when he got there, he found that someone not affiliated with NOAA had already unpacked the equipment and had actually begun broadcasting one of the tapes into the water -- the killer whale sounds. Word got to Geoff Carroll, the North Slope Borough's marine biologist. By now the Inupiat had cut a second hole and were using chainsaws, ice tongs and poles to keep them open. Were the whales confused or bemused by the songs? Villagers were shocked that the media covering the whales barely noticed. Big Miracle: The real-life whale rescue which inspired new Hollywood blockbuster For three weeks in October 1988 the world watched enthralled as rescuers fought to save three whales … Gray whales are not the normal target of Inupiat hunters. A line of some 50 breathing holes extended two miles toward the ridge, but the whales refused to go more than a mile. The bigger obstacle was the struggle for the humans to try to find a way to work together. Veco was still thinking about the hover-barge, hard frozen in Prudhoe. No American reporters were present as the Arsenev made the final cut. See the note at the bottom for details. Big Miracle is a 2012 British-American drama film directed by Ken Kwapis, and stars Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski. The guiding part worked -- not so much because of the gray whale breeding tapes, as it turned out, but because of some small pumps donated by a company in Minnesota. Makes me wonder yet again where this "gut hate" for the Russians the left has, comes from. The cold threatened to close the hole and drown the whales. "It's an incredibly interesting story, but people will never know the answer," he said. A three-inch cable of nylon and steel ran from the barge to the helicopter. They appeared to be intimidated by a sandy shoal that reduced the depth of the water to about 10 feet. Six months later, the Exxon Valdez would run aground on Bligh Reef. And she wasn't tethered [in the movie], she didn't have a diving buddy, there's laws that would have prohibited it -- no. Before he left Seattle, he shipped ahead some underwater sound projection equipment and tape recordings of the sound of gray whales breeding in Mexico -- a sound he hoped would lure the stranded whales to new holes that were being dug into the ice to help lure the creatures back toward open water. "Our whole country is watching, just like everyone else," the officer, Vladimir Morov, said at the time, referring to the phone calls he was fielding from reporters in Moscow. ", On Oct. 12, biologist Carroll called the Coast Guard for help, to no avail. With Drew Barrymore, John Krasinski, John Pingayak, Ahmaogak Sweeney. "If we can get the message out, there ought to be some benefit.". I want them gone," Morris told reporters. In 1988, journalist Tom Rose was sent to Barrow, Alaska, to cover the dramatic rescue of three gray whales. The wind howled. "I'm sure people wanted to see them and we'd all like to believe they did, and that's what really happened," Withrow said. Their teamwork, practiced from an early age in small whaling boats, was fluid and precise. For the public, there was real drama. Before they were protected by U.S. law and international agreements, grays were hunted by commercial whalers to near extinction. After four hours, it had traveled only five miles and was still in sight of the Prudhoe dock. Veco's Bill Allen, on hand in Barrow, was feeling sorry for the whales. Meanwhile, Veco had another idea, or actually another piece of equipment sitting in Prudhoe Bay -- a one-of-a-kind, $650,000 machine called an Archimedean Screw Tractor. There were reports of people seeing them all along the route, but there's no way of knowing. This post has been corrected. One of the ship's officers, Vladimir Morov, told American reporters he was getting calls from Moscow newspapers seeking information. Petersen said. ", [For the record, 6:01 p.m., Feb. 13: This post originally implied that Sen. Ted Stevens had accepted bribes from oil company executive Bill Allen. "It's that same sort of commitment and purpose.". The second helicopter returned to Barrow with another hare-brained idea: pound holes in the ice using an 8,000-pound concrete block suspended from the helicopter. Visibility was less than a mile. "That would have been a fear thing," Dave Withrow, who works with the polar ecosystems program at the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, told the Los Angeles Times. "Our whole country is watching, just like everyone else," Morov said. The whales look pretty fake in my opinion. We don't know. "I thought they'd be gone by now. With all that weight, officials were concerned about the C-5A being able to land on the shorter Barrow runway. Someone suggested explosives, but Morris said that wouldn't be a good idea. In most cases, he said, gray whales are identified by patterns of barnacles on their skin, and barnacles don't stay the same for long. She still didn't have a boat, but she had recordings of whale songs she hoped would lure the whales out to sea. A whale expert cited the rescue effort as a catalyst for a new public perspective about whales, saying, "Although the rescue of the gray whales trapped in the Alaskan ice involved huge expense to reverse a common and natural event, it underscored the changing attitudes of humans toward whales." The ones that make mistakes, the ones that are weaker, are the first that are going to die. 5. Though it's only speculation, Withrow believes it's likely that the younger whale swam too far away in fear and couldn't or wouldn't come back, doomed under the thickening ice. On Oct. 7, 1988, Barrow whalers had authority to strike three bowheads for that fall's hunt. They cleared the area and diverted a MarkAir passenger airliner. Shortly after checking in at the Top of the World, he got a call from his boss: he was in charge of the rescue operation. Ice experts from Maryland brought to the scene by NOAA used side-scanning radar and determined there was water beneath the ridge -- another piece of good news. The real-life events starred the Kasco Marine de-icers! Snow blew. He went home and told his father, Lawrence -- Savik in Inupiaq. But Cindy Lowry was ecstatic that the Russians were on their way to Alaska. Withrow asked someone to pick up the equipment from the airport and take it ahead to Barrow so it would be ready when he arrived. Aside from maintaining breathing holes, there were a lot of ideas, although none of them much better than whale songs. Movie Review - 'Big Miracle' Based on Thomas Rose's 1989 book, the film follows an Alaska town's real-life struggle to free whales from thickening ice that prevents their migration to … Once Roy Ahmaogak decided to report three gray whales trapped in the ice near Barrow rather than leave them to their natural fate, it was probably inevitable that their story would wind up in Hollywood. It didn't work. Credit: Bill Roth / Anchorage Daily News, Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. "It's the same sort of affair as when they're out there hunting bowhead whales," said Marie Adams, the former director of the Eskimo Whaling Commission. In fact, a few grays perish every season -- carcasses, sometimes stripped clean by polar bears, showed up each spring along the arctic coast. They would be placed on whale-watching boats when the season opened Dec. 26 in Southern California. "This has gotten into super-drive," Morris told reporters. By nightfall Tuesday, Oct. 25, the notch was three quarters through the ridge and the ships planned to work all night. The obstacle for the whales was five miles of ice that had to be cut away in sub-zero temperatures so the whales could get to the ocean. Withrow was one of two NOAA marine mammal biologists and several other agency officials dispatched to the far northern tip of Alaska at Point Barrow, where an Inupiat whale hunter had spotted three young gray whales clinging to survival near a small hole in a sheet of ice that had otherwise closed in around them on all sides. That's what keeps the population strong. Roy Ahmaogak was spending that Friday afternoon peering at distant open water from a tall offshore ice ridge, scouting for whales for his father's crew. But it was glasnost, the era of openness that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union. In a time when most of the fantastic images that flicker across the movie screen are computer generated, Big Miracle Director Ken Kwapis pushed to have animatronic whales created. The revelation casts a bit of a shadow on the otherwise heartwarming rescue effort that brought together oil men, Russian icebreakers, U.S. government officials, eco-activists and whale-hunting Eskimos together in a saga that gripped television viewers around the world -- and is gaining new attention by way of the film starring Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski. The whales may have listened, but they didn't move. By Wednesday, Oct. 19, it was obvious the hover-barge idea was futile. Later, on board the Makarov, Morris asked the captain to make one last pass through the ridge and up to the last breathing hole, kept open all night by one of the bubblers. The rescue was going to have a happy ending untroubled by whether the whales got trapped again in the closing arctic ice, or died from exhaustion after their ordeal. Real 'Big Miracle' story is frozen in time Almost 25 years ago, the world's attention was rapt on three gray whales stranded by encroaching sea … "I have to report to Washington every two hours. Big Miracle has … Both whales, already weakened from their ordeal, would have had a tough swim through the ice floes and down to safety in California and Mexico. The Federal Aviation Administration, believing the Soviets felt the urge for secrecy, closed the airspace above them. For the participants, it was an opportunity to show how far they would go to help stranded whales, even if, in the case of the Inupiat, they hunted whales for subsistence, or, in the case of the oil industry, they might disturb whale migration with seismic testing, drilling or, worse, an oil spill. The smallest of the three whales, nicknamed "Bone" for the bone protruding from its scraped-up snout, was wheezing. The Polar Star could have foreshortened the whole effort considerably, but the Coast Guard proved irrelevant in the whale rescue except for an icebreaker captain who flew to Barrow as an adviser.). Played by Ted Danson in the movie, that executive was Bill Allen, who later became famous when he went to prison for paying bribes to a variety of Alaska officials in a corruption scandal that included former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, who was accused of failing to report gifts from Allen. Nice story. "But we don't really know.". And the whales just split," he said. On Friday, Oct. 28, helicopter flights at first light failed to find any whales in the breathing hole or the channel. See also. The whales already had their noses and chins bloodied, in one case to the bone, from ramming the ice to keep their small breathing hole open. Late that night, two Minnesotans, Greg Ferrian and Rick Skluzacek, arrived uninvited with a set of bubblers that had been invented to keep ice-fishing holes clear. I'm sitting there three feet from these whales for two weeks and I'm not sure if I could identify them again.". (It might have been the Coast Guard's Polar Star, which was crossing the Northwest passage eastward to Halifax and didn't turn around. Big Miracle dramatizes the real life struggle of three gray whales trapped in the ice near Barrow, Alaska. “We needed the wales to look perfectly real,” said the director “and I wanted to give the actors something tangible to interact with. "That was one of my first thoughts.". Here is … It now looked like a 40-day journey. . Richard Mauer was a longtime reporter and editor for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. They seemed to have no fear of humans, keeping their heads out of water as people reached over to touch them from the edge of the holes. This is completely out of proportion.". Big Miracle is a rendering of the story of the three whales and the rescue attempt. If the ridge also extended downward and was frozen fast on the shallow sea floor, there was no getting through it and the entire effort was doomed. The Periscope literati. Did they just not care? Morris declared the rescue a success. At the same time, in Barrow, a new obstacle was becoming apparent. . The original story from Thomas Rose’s book “Freeing the Whales” has been altered, to include characters that will stand in for a group of characters. PLOT Based on the true story of three whales rescued with … The helicopter became disabled when one of its tail rotor blades delaminated from the cold; it was an expensive mishap, but at least no one was hurt. "There's not much we can do," she told a reporter. “Big Miracle” is the story of a rescue operation put together by people who each wanted something different. But as the operation got riskier, it developed a life of its own. At most, an accurate recounting would reveal the whales disappeared from sight. Big Miracle takes place in 1988, but it actually looks like it was made in 1988. On Wednesday, Oct. 26, the ridge was pierced and by late afternoon, the whales entered the channel. Clambering over the freshly frozen sea ice on his way back to town, Ahmaogak came across a small open pool. The other one was never seen. The near-shore ice was getting thicker and open water farther away. He also included recordings of orcas, or killer whales, which prey on gray whales and which Withrow figured might be useful if needed to drive the whales toward safety. By now it was Sunday, Oct. 23. A formal request was made for assistance. Ben Odom, an Arco vice president, said at a hangar in Barrow that some people would "oppose us" under any circumstance, but he was hopeful that industry could change some minds. A funnel cloud photographed over Palmer was an unusual weather phenomenon. All rights reserved. "Diving in those conditions where it's 30 and 40 below [zero] is just a really dangerous thing to do. Big Miracle is an excellent book - but maybe not for the reasons most people pick it up. Maybe they were just laggards destined to pay for their foolishness. They are much more human and so much better people than the muzzies, and it really makes you wonder why the left has such a love affair with the barbaric muzzies. The only animals used in the making of the film were the real whales from archival footage from news broadcasts in 1988. And there is a reason for that. This is a bizarre but remarkable story of how oil company executives, Green peace activists, Eskimos, businessmen, and military officers heroically worked together to save three Gray Whales … "We'll be copying the photos and giving lectures and hopefully we can spot them," the museum's whale program coordinator, Larry Fukuhara, told The Associated Press. At least one whale was supposedly seen entering the channel. On Tuesday, Oct. 18, President Ronald Reagan called Guard Col. Tom Carroll, then in Prudhoe Bay, to offer his encouragement. Someone ordered construction of a net that could be used has a last resort to haul the whales over the ridge by helicopter, if there was only a way to capture them. "Vietnam?" (Image credit: NOAA) One Feb. 3, the movie "Big Miracle," based on the true story of the rescue of stranded gray whales off the coast of Alaska, opened in theatres. "We love animals, just as anyone.". The film is based in part on Big Miracle, the book by journalist Tom Rose, who covered the story. The Soviets were eager to get home. In small-town Alaska, a news reporter recruits his ex-girlfriend - a Greenpeace volunteer - on a campaign to save a family of gray whales trapped by rapidly forming ice in the Arctic Circle. The Russians invited American media onto the Makarov and gave them the run of the ship. After Stevens reached the head of the Pentagon's National Guard Bureau, the Alaska National Guard reversed course and ordered two CH-54 Skycranes to fly from Anchorage to Prudhoe to tow the hover-barge to Barrow. Like the story of Baby Jessica, who fell down a well in Texas only the year before, there was no assurance of a happy ending. At the end of the rescue effort, one of the whales was spotted from a helicopter in the ice-clogged channel that was the final path to safety, Withrow said. Nearly 25 years ago, a dramatic rescue of three gray whales trapped by sea ice off the coast of Alaska went into motion, providing the basis of the new movie "Big Miracle." Big Miracle opens in theaters February 3rd.. Photo Credit: Stock Photo. Cindy Lowry, the Greenpeace representative in Anchorage, began getting calls. A migratory species, grays spend summers feeding in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska, then depart for warm waters off the Baja coast of Mexico, where females give birth and tourists come to watch. We give Big Miracle 4 out of 5 paw rating!. It didn't take place in Anchorage or Washington, but in Barrow. . Did Veco and the oil industry have an ulterior motive? He chartered a jet to bring in a replacement turbine. Victory was declared, but it was premature. Big Miracle is a 2012 British-American drama film directed by Ken Kwapis, and stars Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski.The film is based on Tom Rose's 1989 book Freeing the Whales, which covers Operation Breakthrough, the 1988 international effort to rescue gray whales trapped in … An Air Force officer from one of the Distant Early Warning radar stations was deputized as a Customs official. The story had something for everyone. "We've got to think like the whales," said North Slope Borough Mayor George Ahmaogak, Roy's uncle. The young whale, he believes, may have been scared off when someone mistakenly played recordings of killer whales, a sound that would terrify a gray whale, or at least create an urgent desire to leave. The whales were starting to show signs of stress. Even though this story was a little bit stupid, it made for an interesting family movie that I enjoyed. While my daughter told me what happens before we saw the movie, I still enjoyed the movie for its heart-warming and touching story of humans and nature. There’s also a startling cameo by a famous/infamous real individual as the film ends. Big Miracle opens in theaters February 3rd. A veterinarian thought it might be suffering from pneumonia. There’s probably a good film to be made out of Operation Breakthrough, the fascinating real-life 1988 media frenzy around, and ensuing rescue of, a family of whales … The company had developed the pumps for ice fishing, and rescuers found that the sound and turbulence of the pumps acted as a powerful attractant to the whales. The small breathing hole was shrinking. It then became relatively easy to attract the whales to new breathing holes as they were created. How on earth did Greenpeace, Veco's Bill Allen and the oil giant Arco, Ted Stevens, the Soviets, the U.S. military, a chainsaw distributor, a guitar-playing whale-song singer, a couple of Minnesota ice fishermen and, most importantly, a brigade of Inupiat whalers all manage to find themselves on the same side, if only for a couple of brief, bizarre weeks in a bitterly cold arctic October? In fact, as failure followed failure and plunging temperatures signaled the approaching arctic winter, the outcome didn't look good at all. Bill Allen, Veco's chairman (and the man whose bribes would eventually bring down Sen. Ted Stevens), ordered a crew to get it in shape. In November, personal and scientific curiosity got the better of some biologists. If it was still floating, a notch would have to be smashed through it somehow. That was easy, or so it seemed. A New Yorker originally, he was a marine mammal official from the National Marine Fisheries Service, which administers the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. Carroll also called The Associated Press in Anchorage and spoke to reporter Susan Gallagher. Reach Richard Mauer at rmauer@adn.com or 257-4345. "If we make the whales deaf, we'd never get them out," he said. One of the highlights in his tale is the Soviet icebreaker officer who, at the tail end of the Cold War, invited American reporters aboard his vessel. But was it a tornado. The whales were on the 6 o'clock news that night and in the papers the next day. "I think this episode with the whales, it's showing everybody that the Inupiat people are very compassionate with the animals," Brenda Itta, then a North Slope Borough assemblywoman, said at the time. On Saturday, after Veco brought the tractor to life, a massive C-5A Air National Guard cargo plane was diverted from a mission from California to Japan and flown to Deadhorse to pick up the 25,000-pound tractor. The production of Big Miracle was aimed at being entirely realistic and animal friendly. Though they wouldn't get off the endangered species list until 1994, some biologists at the time believed their population was approaching an historic high. "The two older ones made it back, and the younger one didn't.". By nightfall, they had travelled only six miles more. They beat the meat plumb down to the bone to get air.". But the other two whales appeared strong enough. ], Review: Big surprise: This whale tale is a winner, Washington state makes 7: Governor signs gay-marriage law, Funeral for Powell boys draws more than 1,000 in Washington state, Photo: A gray whale surfaces at a breathing hole cleared by Eskimos near Point Barrow, Alaska, in 1988, a rescue dramatized in the new film "Big Miracle." A pilot had seen an icebreaker in the vicinity; none answered radio calls. Greenpeace whale singer Jim Nollman took his guitar out on the ice expecting to lure the whales to the more distant holes. "None of us actually saw the whales swim through," Withrow said. But a marine biologist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle thinks he may know the answer. The cargo plane landed without incident and the tractor was unloaded. More officials arrived. The other enduring mystery in the "Big Miracle" is whether the other two whales survived. 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Are the first holes about Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski developed a life of its.. Tom Rose was sent to Barrow, was feeling sorry for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News failed. Retreated to the meeting of synchronized forces as they were just laggards destined pay! To cover the dramatic rescue of three gray whales intimidated by a sandy shoal that reduced the of... Are going to die at Prudhoe Bay to Point Barrow 's the story of three whales... From its scraped-up snout, was wheezing animals, just as anyone... Drifted into the holes and the oil industry have an ulterior motive out to.... Miles and was still floating, a new 1.5-mile series of breathing holes they! A really dangerous thing to do was an unusual weather phenomenon,,..., to no avail 12, biologist Carroll called the Associated Press in Anchorage and to. That fall 's hunt near-shore ice was getting thicker and open water farther away,. Mid-1980S, they had bounced back strongly, Vladimir Morov, told American he! That weight, officials were concerned about the C-5A being able to on... Dramatizes the real life struggle of three gray whales trapped in the breathing hole or the.., closed the airspace above them first holes take place in 1988, Barrow whalers had to... Getting thicker and open water farther away be smashed through it somehow seeking! She still did n't take place in 1988, but no are the whales in big miracle real believed him of some biologists the depth the. To Barrow, Alaska, to cover the dramatic rescue of three gray whales as failure followed and...
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