I recently saw the movie "Big Miracle", a story of three gray whales that were trapped in the arctic ice off Point Barrow, Alaska in 1988 with no way to escape without human intervention. It had some entertaining moments and was made fairly well. I remember when this happened and it was nice to get more details of what took place.
I think it also provides an interesting perspective on human nature. Consider the following events. (Spoiler alert and some of my comments could offend some animal lovers.)
The governor of Alaska was initially reluctant to use the National Guard in an attempt to rescue whales. A primary reason seemed to be the danger it would pose to people working in harsh arctic conditions. He later succumbed to public pressure. It turned out that this rescue attempt failed and nearly resulted in human casualties. Imagine having a son in the National Guard and being told that he was killed, not in defending the country, but in a publicity stunt.
A Greenpeace environmental activist was very critical of oil drilling in the arctic. However, she helped arrange rescue attempts involving transporting very heavy equipment over long distances that consumed an enormous amount of fuel. It seems to me that the negative environmental impact from these attempts may have been far worse than the benefits of saving a few whales. At one point, she criticizes others for assisting for publicity reasons. It is then pointed out that she and her organization were receiving the same kinds of benefits from this worldwide attention.
At first the residents in the area wanted to hunt and slaughter the whales. I do like whales and feel that hunting them should be either strictly controlled or eliminated. However, hunting them seemed to me to be a logical and even humane choice in this situation. Also, harvesting this food from the local environment would have saved enormous transportation costs and fuel usage from not having to import the same amount of food by plane. The local residents eventually decided that it was not in their best interests to slaughter these whales with the whole world watching and they assisted the rescue efforts.
Does anybody else view these events as at least a little odd? Were these rescue efforts a wise decision from an environmental viewpoint? What do you think about public officials yielding to public pressure to do things that they feel are unwise? How do you think this situation should have been handled?