Re-telling the Soviet harpoon race (BBC EarathWatch)

[eppur_se_muova]

Richard Black | 14:12 UK time, Tuesday, 9 June 2009

After the demise of the Soviet Union, the reason why these protection measures weren't working became startlingly clear. The Soviet fleets, which included the biggest factory ships ever built, had been working to a radically different plan - to kill just about every whale they encountered, irrespective of size, species or rarity, and lie about it.

Since Alexey Yablokov first spilled the beans in 1993, the story has been told and re-told, the real catch records (kept secret and not submitted to the IWC, ironically chaired by a Soviet, MN Sukhoruchenko, during some of the years when the apparent ineffectiveness of protection regimes was being discussed) have been dissected and analysed.

But rarely has it been told as well as it has this week, in an article by Phil Clapham and Yulia Ivashchenko in Marine Fisheries Review, the US journal. If you're not familiar with the story, reading their article will be 15 minutes of your time well spent; if you are familiar with it, well, it's worth a read anyway.

Clapham and Ivashchenko are among the scientists whose work has documented the true scale of the Soviet abuses. Between 1947, when whaling re-started after World War II, and 1973, their fleets killed more than 100,000 whales secretly and - by the terms of their IWC membership - illegally.
***
more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/06/this_is_my_first_entry.html

[excess_3]

1. why believe them now?

why would anybody believe the Russians (or anybody else)
when it comes to their claim for how much
carbon dioxide they didn't emit?

anybody with two or more working
brain cells knows they are going to lie.

[Nihil]

2. K & R for another truly sickening story.

The journal article is a PDF from a link in the OP blog but it
is really worth reading to get a handle on that horrifically
appalling behaviour.

> Within this (IWC commercial whaling) debate, there are still many voices
> in the international community arguing that self-regulation is entirely
> adequate in environmental matters. Of the many images that one could
> summon to counter such assurances, few are as powerful as that of
> Soviet whaling fleets, and 200,000 dead whales.

:cry: