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  • Holy crap.

  • What did I say about the language?

  • Holy crap.

  • In northern Alaska, winter comes very early.

  • And for three California gray whales, it may have come too early this year, Adam Carlson reports from the most northern point of the United States.

  • I'm standing out on this frozen landscape where we recently discovered a tragedy unfolding here in Barrow.

  • Ice is freezing the Beaufort Sea more quickly than usual for this time of year.

  • And three gray whales, two adults and their baby are now trapped within a wall of ice six inches thick.

  • According to Pat Lafayette of Alaska Wildlife Management, these gray whales were to have already begun their annual migration south.

  • It's a 5000 mile journey that takes them down the coast of North America to a lagoon in Baja Mexico, where they breed.

  • These three whales were certainly not expecting to be imprisoned in an arctic dungeon.

  • A gray whale's head, unlike the stout bowhead whale, is too soft to break through the ice, and it's beginning to take its toll.

  • Cuts and bruises are now visible each time the whales surface, but for these three, there is no choice.

  • It's either continue fighting to keep the hole open or drown.

  • Both experts here give the whales a slim chance of survival.

  • Yeah.

Holy crap.

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