By early June, the four-ton, 30-ft.-long female minke whale was done with her winter sojourn in temperate waters. It was time to head back to the chilly Arctic for the summer. Traveling north, she and her fellow minkes would periodically dive down to gulp fish, then swim back to the surface to suck air through their blowhole -- for like all whales, minkes are air-breathing mammals. They followed an age-old migratory track, invisible to humans but as well marked as an interstate highway to the whales.
Unfortunately for this particular whale, the track led directly up the coast of Norway --...