Se você aceitar a novela de Vonda McIntyre como uma fonte, ela entra em alguns detalhes sobre isso.
Aparentemente, eles têm na mão um tecido jubarte congelado que eles poderiam clonar. No entanto, 1) não vai ajudar com o problema imediato, porque uma baleia clonada não vai conhecer nenhuma das músicas que a sonda está procurando, e 2) as jubartes têm cérebro grande o suficiente para aprender muita coisa de seus pais ou eles não vão sobreviver, razão pela qual ninguém tentou reintroduzi-los antes.
"If the probe wants a humpback, we'll give it a humpback," McCoy said.
"We've reintroduced other extinct species by cloning frozen tissue
samples-"
"The same difficulty remains, Dr. McCoy," Spock said. "The reason great whales have not been reintroduced to earth's seas is that
no great whales still exist to teach them survival, much less
communication. You could clone a whale, of course-but you would create
a lonely creature with no language and no memory of its own culture.
Imagine a human child, raised in complete isolation. Imagine. . . my
own existence, had you refused to undergo fal-tar-pan. No. A cloned
whale, crying its despair, could bring only further destruction.
Besides," he said, considering practicality, "I doubt earth could
survive for the years it would take to grow a cetacean to maturity."
No final do livro, a combinação de clones com baleias genuínas, culturalmente letradas e do século 20 é sufi ciente para repovoar as espécies, embora nenhuma seja suficiente por conta própria.
Samples of whale cells, preserved in the twentieth century, would add
to the species' genetic diversity through cloning. Legends and myths
to the contrary, two individuals-even three, when Gracie's calf was
born-were not sufficient to reestablish any species. The whales would
never again be hunted, and their freedom would never again be
curtailed.