Weather Worsens as ‘Beast’ Is Readied to Rescue Whales

POINT BARROW, Alaska — The Archimedean Screw Tractor, a $650,000, 11-ton, one-of-a-kind mechanical beast, came out of six years of hibernation and plowed through ice 18 inches thick Monday as it prepared to join an extraordinary attempt to free two California gray whales trapped in Arctic ice.

But weather was beginning to close in on the scores of rescuers. Snow was falling, reducing visibility to the point that helicopter flights out to the whales had to be curtailed. And the wind was blowing out of the west, threatening to push massive chunks of ice together and shut off avenues that the whales eventually will need for escape.

Meanwhile, two Soviet icebreakers were ahead of schedule as they steamed across the Arctic toward this northernmost tip of the United States. The icebreakers--one of which is 445 feet long--were expected to arrive late Monday night and might be used to smash through a massive wall of ice, called a pressure ridge. That would remove a major barrier separating the two whales from freedom.

But first, the animals must be moved another couple of miles toward the ridge, and dozens of Eskimos with chain saws continued cutting breathing holes in the ice away from the shoreline and closer to the ridge. That is the only method that has succeeded in moving the whales even an inch toward freedom, and by Monday the holes stretched more than two miles across the frozen Arctic.

Of all the high-tech contraptions that have been brought in to assist in the rescue, the Archimedean Screw Tractor has turned out to be the most promising.

“This thing can cut a path through the ice 15 to 16 feet wide,” Bill Allen, chairman of the board of VECO Inc., said as he stood in knee-deep snow before dawn Monday, watching the mechanical beast plow through the ice.

Persuading Eskimos

It took a lot of political muscle to get it here--including the commandeering of one of the world’s largest aircraft, an Air Force C-5A Galaxy--and Allen spent Monday persuading Eskimo elders of the value of the huge machine.

“They were quite impressed,” he said after taking several for a ride in the tractor, which looks something like a cross between a Mack truck and a tank on pontoons.

Each of the aluminum pontoons has ridges like the threads of a screw. As the pontoons turn, the threads thrust the machine forward or backward, and the speed of each pontoon can be altered to turn the vehicle.

In the demonstration early Monday morning, the tractor rumbled about two miles across the ice to a crack. As it churned across the crack, the ice broke and the tractor plunged through to the ocean, floating on the pontoons.

50-Foot Hole Gnawed

The beast gnawed away at the ice, creating a hole at least 50 feet in diameter within a few minutes. Then it gently churned up over the ice, leaving the hole behind.

Allen said that the tractor, plus an icebreaking barge that officials tried unsuccessfully to tow here with a helicopter, have not been used for several years.

The tractor could be used either to punch through the ice near the pressure ridge and move toward the holes cut by the Eskimos or to pick up where the Eskimos are working and continue the path on out toward sea. That was viewed as somewhat of a political decision, because the Eskimos are proud of what they have achieved while all the high-tech efforts have failed.

Rescuers were encouraged about their chances of breaking through the pressure ridge after taking several Eskimo elders out to look at it.

Weakest Spots Sought

“They were amazing,” said Gary Hufford, an ice expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “They saw immediately where the weakest areas were. We’re feeling pretty good about it.”

Rescue organizers have pondered a number of ways to break through the wall of ice, including the use of explosives, but that would only be as a last resort because of the possible danger to other wildlife.

Ron Morris, a biologist with oceanic administration, who is coordinating the project, said that there is also some concern that explosives could damage the hearing of the whales, which are keenly attuned to sounds.

“But, if we make them deaf, the way this thing is going we would probably fit them with hearing aids,” he quipped.

Plans to break through the ridge have temporarily been put on hold.

May Attack Ridge

“That’s why the Russians are coming,” Morris said. The water beneath the whales is believed to be far too shallow for the Soviet icebreakers to enter, so it is not likely they will be any help in clearing the way between the shore and the ridge.

But, if the water there is deep enough, it might be possible for the icebreakers to open a passage through the ridge for the whales.

Hufford planned to return to the ridge late Monday and drill holes through the ice. Then he was to lower a weight on the end of a long rope to measure the depth of the water.

That information will be relayed to the Soviet captain by U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Joseph J. McClelland, skipper of the Polar Sea icebreaker. The Polar Sea is in San Diego being readied for a trip to Antarctica, but McClelland flew up here to help advise the Soviets.

The whales, by the way, were doing fine--a little battered and bruised from their long ordeal but apparently in fairly good shape.