Rescuers Save 142 Whalers Adrift on Arctic Ice Floe
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ANCHORAGE — Rescue crews plucked 142 whale hunters from the Arctic Sea ice off northern Alaska early Sunday after the ice cracked and sent them drifting out to sea.
The whalers used marine radios to notify search-and-rescue teams, which launched two helicopters to ferry the group back to town. The rescue took more than seven hours and was complicated by fog.
The whalers used hand-held global positioning systems to guide rescuers.
“Once the ice breaks you’re moving,” said David Knowles, a rescue team member who was on the ice when it broke.
Natives on Alaska’s North Slope hunt for whales every spring, during the bowhead’s migration from the Bering Sea to the Beaufort Sea.
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