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uses the paralyzing condition to hunt defenseless prey. While aware of the danger, the three men were smart enough to be cautious but calm.
    The whales resumed surfacing after a four-minute dive, right on schedule. First the two larger whales, followed by the smaller one. Craig snapped his way through an entire roll of film in one such respiration cycle. He hurriedly reloaded his camera to shoot more before the whales dove again. He was tempted to get flustered, but remembered he was an expert, not a tourist. Suddenly it dawned on him that he could take all the time he wanted; the whales weren’t going anywhere. He could hang around the edge of the spit for as long as he could stand the cold. The next time the whales reached up for air, he could take even better pictures.
    For nearly an hour the men said barely a word. Then, when the silence was broken, all three spoke at once. Their exhilaration was tempered by their inability to help do much for these magnificent creatures. The whales seemed stuck in what looked to be a hopeless quagmire, yet they were rational and deliberate. They avoided the panic they must have instinctively known would doom them. Their fate was intertwined and they seemed to know it. The whales had to work together to survive, which required both leadership and cooperation. One of the three whales had to be in charge, but Craig and Geoff couldn’t quite figure out which one that was yet.
    It was a mystery that would remain unsolved until the very last hours of what was to be a nearly three-week odyssey. What was it that enabled the whales to prioritizetze, strategize, and improvise their own survival? Was it genetic code, sheer intelligence, or a combination? These were some of the questions that would dog biologists, rescuers, reporters, and millions of people around the world for the weeks to follow.
    The whales’ unusual surfacing was the most obvious unanswered question Geoff and Craig could not answer. By the late 1980s, the gray whales’ migratory and habitat patterns were well known; but only in its warmer, winter waters off the coast of Baja—not in the Arctic. Younger whales, especially grays, rarely wander more than a mile from shore. Shallow waters are safer waters—there was less room for killer whales and great white sharks, the gray whales’ two natural predators.
    In normal times, the gray whale, like all whales, breathes while swimming parallel to the surface. The whale only needs to arch its back just enough to expose its blowhole ever so slightly above the waterline. But these were no ordinary times. The only way these whales could survive was to shoot out of the small hole like a submarine-launched cruise missile.
    â€œWe have to get this on videotape,” Craig shouted. “These would make great pictures.” He wanted to get back to town to see if he could borrow equipment from local TV studio operated by the North Slope Borough’s public access channel. The two biologists tightened their hoods, pulled down face masks, affixed goggles, and throttled up. Craig looked at his watch. Four hours had passed since they first saw the whales. Getting to town and back before it got too dark would require operating on fast forward.
    Living in pre-Internet times, Craig was forced to find the studio’s phone number by actually looking it up in a hard-copy seven-page Barrow phone book. He called Oran Caudle, the director of the borough’s then state-of-the-art television studio and filled him in. He asked if they could take a video camera to get some footage of the stranded whales. Oran was intrigued. Originally from Texarkana, Texas, Caudle didn’t know much about whales—but compared to everyone he left behind in the Lower 48, he was a veritable expert. One thing he did know, however, was that the Arctic could all too easily devastate his expensive equipment. “Sorry,” he told Craig, “no can do.” While disappointed,