T hey say music is the language of the soul, which is fitting given a pivotal soundtrack of classical music once saved the souls of roughly 2,000 beluga whales in the Chukchi Peninsula, the easternmost peninsula of Asia. Here, in 1985, an enormous herd of beluga whales was spotted by local residents, which was no doubt a pleasing sight at first given these animals were a rich source of nutrition for the community. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

However, it soon became apparent that all was not well as a turn in the weather had forged a 4-kilometer (2.5 miles) lump of thick ice that stood between the whales' air holes and the open ocean. They couldn’t swim this distance without running out of oxygen, and

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