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squinted to view the sandbar. Remarkably, the Arctic Ocean’s frozen glare can be blinding even under heavy overcast skies, which made this tiny sliver of what remained of North America hard to see.
    As it tapered off into the sea, the total and uniform solitude overwhelmed him. Not a trace of life: no vegetation, no variation in scene, no visible image of anything. A void without end. Stark. Disconsolate. White. “Magnificent desolation” were the words first spoken by Apollo 11 astronaut Edwin Buzz Aldrin nineteen years before to describe the surface of the moon. It came to Geoff’s mind, but he knew the desolation that seemed so omnipresent on top of the ice was in fact a bountiful habitat teeming with an extraordinary cacophony of life on the underside of ice. Walrus, seals, polar bears, and of course whales thrived on a copious abundance of sea life almost impossible to quantify.
    The three men stood on the frozen sandspit, gathered their bearings, and waited for spouts. They would know one way or another in a matter of minutes. If the whales were alive and still using these holes to breathe, it wouldn’t be long before they came up for air. If the men saw no sign of the whales within five or six minutes, that would have been the end of this story. The whales would either have made it to open seas or they would be dead by drowning. As much as Geoff and Craig hoped the whales were free, they still wanted to see them. They had already begun to construct the scientific line of inquiry they would try to compile if they could collect enough data.
    As two minutes became three, Geoff and Craig had a sinking feeling. Three minutes became four. The banter trailed off, overtaken by silence. At four minutes, resignation crept into acceptance that the whales were gone. Then, at the moment Geoff started to collect his things for the return trip to Barrow, Billy heard a low rumble gain momentum and traction. Sure enough, the mammoth head of a barnacled and slightly bloodied gray whale poked through the ice. The whales (one at least) had made it through the weekend but were fading fast. Craig, George, and Billy cheered with joy. They punched their fists through the cold air, shaking hands in congratulations for the vicarious achievement they rejoiced in.
    Like a locomotive letting off steam, the whale exhaled. Only a warm-blooded mammal could make that deep gargle. “FFWWWSSSSHHH,” the whale belched. As soon as it filled its giant lungs, the whale slipped its head back into the hole and disappeared into the black sea. The displaced water rippled through the weak ice surrounding the hole, freezing as it moved. Then, a second rumbling. Another huge head, this one bigger than the last, fit into the hole with barely any room to spare. Looking through binoculars, Geoff could distinguish one whale from another by the pattern of barnacles on its snout. This second whale swallowed its portion of air and vanished as quickly as the first.
    From what Geoff and Craig could observe, the whales stayed under as long as they could. They seemed to be protecting, even guiding each other. It sure looked as if the whales had worked together to develop a breathing system designed to allow them to share the hole. They pulled their heads back under and away from the hole to give each other a turn to breath. Remarkable. This behavior was new to Geoff and Craig. Nothing quite like this had ever been seen by anyone before. Neither biologists recalled learning or hearing anything about whales acting so cooperatively in any similar life-threatening predicament.
    After the second whale surfaced there was a long pause. What happened to the third whale? Roy Ahmaogak reported seeing three. They didn’t have to wait long to have that question answered. The third whale emerged; much smaller and much more timidly than the first two. It looked battered and tired. Nearly all the skin on this whale’s snout appeared to have been rubbed