The 14 Dumbest Things In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
3. Ahead, Whale Factor One
It’s fairly preposterous that the Scandinavian whale catcher just happens to locate George and Gracie mere hours after they’ve been released into the ocean, not only because what-are-the-odds but because presumably said whales were liberated from a port, as Gillian explains:
GILLIAN: They'll be flown in a special seven four seven to Alaska and released there.
Territorial waters only extend 22.24 km (12 nautical miles) from the baseline of a country’s coast, and Humpbacks normally swim between 4.8–14 k (3–9 mi) per hour, which means they could be out into international waters in a few hours. This assumes there were dropped off at the perimeter coastline, but if they were dropped off say at Anchorage, Alaska, they'd have to swim hundreds of kilometers down the Cook Inlet to even get near international waters.
How fast are these whales, anyway?
But...
Even if the whales are outside the U.S. territorial water that doesn’t make them fair game for foreign nations. The 1982 U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone around Alaska extends 321 km (200 miles). It would’ve taken George and Gracie at least a day and a half to be fair game, even if they'd made a beeline perpendicular to the coast.
Of course, one could pretend that whaler was violating U.S. waters. They’re clearly bad, bad men, but who knew they were that bad?