'Big Miracle': True story behind film about 3 ice-stranded whales

[Omaha Steve]

I'm 1/2 hour into watching the film on HBO. I can't wait to see the ending.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2012/02/big-miracle-barrow-whales-rescue-true-story.html

February 13, 2012 | 3:47 pm

Photo: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef016301553232970d-600wi

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.

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.

Less known is the precise fate of the whale that didn't make it; it disappeared under the ice as rescuers battled to rescue the remaining two.

But a marine biologist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Seattle thinks he may know the answer. 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.

"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.

FULL story at link.

[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. Stevens was accused of failing to report gifts from Allen.]

[Arctic Dave]

1. The orange hovercraft is about a half mile down the road from me.

And the restaurant isn't Amigos, it's Pepe's. The owner Fran is quite the character.