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Historicalperiodgeopolitics

Soviet fleets take protected whales and file false returns

From 1948 the USSR conducts illegal whaling worldwide, with fleets maintaining a falsified catch return for the International Whaling Commission and a true record internally. Blue whales are taken after they are protected. The reconstructed totals are large - about 330,000 whales killed in the Southern Ocean against roughly 185,000 reported - and the blue whale component is given differently across accounts, from one or two thousand up to more than three thousand. The consequence for science is that the twentieth-century catch series, the basis for every population reconstruction, was wrong while it was being used.

Uncertain — sources disagree, or the dating is contested. Stated here, not resolved.

Subjects

Evidence

Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.

Recorded on International Whaling Commission

  1. Whaling begins at Grytviken, South Georgia
  2. The Antarctic blue whale catch reaches its all-time peak
  3. The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling is signed
  4. The heaviest blue whale on record is weighed
  5. Soviet fleets take protected whales and file false returns
  6. Whaling ends at South Georgia
  7. The IWC protects blue whales from commercial hunting
  8. The IWC adopts the commercial whaling moratorium
  9. The commercial whaling moratorium takes effect
  10. The Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary is adopted
  11. The true scale of Soviet whaling is published
  12. Dedicated Antarctic Blue Whale Project voyages
  13. Blue whales are found back at South Georgia
  14. The only published Antarctic blue whale satellite tracks are released as data
  15. A capture-recapture abundance estimate for Antarctic blue whales is published
  16. An individual Antarctic blue whale is re-sighted at South Georgia

Related

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