He was in his home in New Orleans and beside him he could hear his wife Kathy breathing, her exhalations not unlike the shushing of water against the hull of a wooden boat.
Two of the three whales made it to open water after rescuers used chain saws and de-icers from a Wisconsin company to create more breathing holes for the whales and a Soviet icebreaker cleared a path through the thickest ice.
In addition to their show of splashing around the surface of the water, the humpbacks enchant visitors as their cries echo below the water, conducting a beautiful symphony for divers used to listening to just the sound of their own breathing.
Divers raced to the lifeboat, which had hit the water upside down, recovering four bodies and trying without success to revive a fifth crewman who had stopped breathing, the authority said.