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You're listening to the BBC World Service and now witness history with me Rich Preston.

And today I'm taking you back to October 1988 and the coming together of a group of

unlikely allies to save three gray whales

trapped in ice in northern Alaska. Oil companies, environmental activists,

indigenous people and even the U.S. and Soviet militaries all joined

forces in a fight to save the animals.

Off the coast of Alaska, sailors are trying to save three great...

My immediate thing was, okay, you know, we are going to get them out of here.

Cindy Lowry was based in Alaska at the time for the environmental group Greenpeace.

You know, it was an emergency situation.

They just didn't have much time.

The California grave whale can reach up to 15 meters in length and spend summer feeding in the

waters off Alaska before heading south for the winter. but these whales had left it too late.

They were young whales and I think they just stayed too long.

I mean they go up there to forage and to eat.

And most of them would have been gone by then,

...