WEBVTT - Red Leviathan, with Ryan Tucker Jones 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.920 Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:18.959 This is Robert Lamb. My co host Joe is on 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:22.759 leave this week, so I have an interview for you. 0:00:23.200 --> 0:00:27.840 I recently talked with Ryan Jones of the University of Oregon. 0:00:28.320 --> 0:00:32.320 His new book is read Leviathan, The Secret History of 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.360 Soviet Whaling. So this is a fascinating book, and I 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:40.200 think we had a fascinating chat about the history, specifically 0:00:40.320 --> 0:00:43.960 the twentieth century history of whaling and how that factors 0:00:44.000 --> 0:00:46.960 into Russian history, the history of the Soviet Union, but 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:50.600 also global history as well. A word of caution that 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:55.080 this this interview will of course discuss whaling, which is 0:00:55.120 --> 0:00:57.600 going to have some graphic details in it, so be 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:00.760 advised on that count. But on the other hand, I 0:01:00.760 --> 0:01:02.880 want to stress that this will not just be a 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:06.399 parade of of horrors. Uh. There's a lot of interesting 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:10.119 historical and cultural information in here as well. So without 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:15.720 further ado, let's go straight to the interview. Hi, Ryan, 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:18.280 Welcome to the show. Rob Thanks for having me. So 0:01:18.400 --> 0:01:21.960 your book concerns whaling, which humans have been engaging in 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.440 for thousands of years and yet twentieth century whaling stands 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:28.399 out in rather appalling ways. Can you set the scene 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:31.880 for us regarding twentieth century whaling and what truly sets 0:01:31.880 --> 0:01:35.320 it apart from the sort of nineteenth century whaling that 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:37.440 many of us are probably familiar with from the likes 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.640 of Moby Dick. Yeah, that's right, Rob. I mean, nineteenth 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:44.640 century whaling, which was dominated by the Americans, was a 0:01:44.760 --> 0:01:49.600 really low tech enterprise that still managed to manage to 0:01:49.640 --> 0:01:54.440 sweep nearly the entire Earth specific Indian Atlantic Ocean, and 0:01:54.440 --> 0:01:59.280 i had a pretty massive impact on certain whale species 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:04.600 like sperm way else others it left entirely untouched, especially 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.720 the fast whales, the big whales that many people be 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:13.320 familiar with, humpback whales, blue whales, fin whales, etcetera. And 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:16.200 major parts of the ocean that were just off limits 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:19.919 to people working with sale technology, like the Antarctic, which 0:02:19.960 --> 0:02:24.520 is is the place where the most whales used to 0:02:24.560 --> 0:02:29.400 live at least. And so twenty centure whalen was was 0:02:30.360 --> 0:02:34.880 far I think, far less talked about, far less romanticized about. 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.680 There is no Herman Melville for the twentieth century industrial era, 0:02:39.040 --> 0:02:41.880 and yet it was by an order of magnitude more 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:46.880 devastating for most whale species. Do you want Do you 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.000 want me to talk a little bit about the technology. 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.200 I'm mindful of not just going on and on with 0:02:52.240 --> 0:02:55.560 my answers your readers. No, No, I think we'd we'd 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:58.160 all have to to have a little technological background at 0:02:58.240 --> 0:02:59.920 My next question, in fact, was going to be about 0:02:59.919 --> 0:03:02.680 the Stern slipway and what it was and why it 0:03:02.760 --> 0:03:07.679 was so essential to modern whaling. Yeah, I mean the technology. 0:03:07.919 --> 0:03:12.000 There was really a major change in the technological implementations 0:03:12.040 --> 0:03:14.320 of whaling at the end of the nineteenth century, mostly 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:18.760 brought about by Norwegians who had been whaling in their 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:21.880 near shore waters, but perfected a few things like the 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:26.720 exploding harpoon gun, which actually, you know, sentti grenade into 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:32.160 a whale exploded inside its body, which was far more 0:03:32.240 --> 0:03:36.880 lethal and far less lethal for humans because they could 0:03:36.960 --> 0:03:39.600 kill the whale, often with one or two shots, rather 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.560 than having to tire it out over a long period 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:46.640 of time being attached to this gigantic, dangerous creatures they 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.000 had in sail whaling. So that was one of the 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.800 major changes that took place. The other was the Stern slipway. 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:56.640 Rabich you just mentioned, and uh, this was a classical 0:03:56.680 --> 0:04:01.480 industrial piece of technology which allowed whale to be winched 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:06.640 on board the whale ship, which really fundamentally changed the 0:04:06.680 --> 0:04:09.320 whole industry. It meant that you didn't have to process 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:12.000 whales either on this in the ocean on the side 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:14.760 of the ship, as you know, as people did in 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:17.880 in Moby Dick for example, or that you even had 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.680 to go ashore and process whales at shore factories. What 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:24.440 this meant was that you could stay out to see 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:28.799 with your your mother ship, your factory um, your factory ship, 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.480 and just process whales day after day after day. They'd 0:04:33.480 --> 0:04:36.160 be brought to you by a fleet of catcher boats 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:41.279 taken to the mother ship, winched up at the stern slipway, 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:44.880 and then a whole team, whole army of industrial workers 0:04:44.880 --> 0:04:49.839 would process that whale carcass into the products that people 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:54.840 in the twentieth century wanted, which increasingly was was margarine um, 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:59.800 you know, butter substitute. That was another technological in a 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:04.200 Asian the process of hydrogenation, which allowed people a scientist 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:09.080 to inject hydrogen. I better not maybe I would go 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:12.279 so firmly into the details of hydrogenation, but it allowed 0:05:12.320 --> 0:05:15.919 them to uh to process whale meat in such a 0:05:15.960 --> 0:05:21.520 way that it was basically stripped of any um, fishy flavor. 0:05:21.640 --> 0:05:24.480 People didn't even know they're eating margarine um that come 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.560 from whales oftentimes, and this was the major driver behind 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:33.440 the twentieth century global industrial whaling. You also mentioned that 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.080 this allowed for the processing of the carcass to take 0:05:37.080 --> 0:05:40.040 place out of sight. Right, this was made a little 0:05:40.040 --> 0:05:43.240 more hidden. Yeah, that's right. I mean, certainly not for 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:46.240 those involved in it. For those involved in it, um, 0:05:46.320 --> 0:05:50.360 you know, you could you would see just hundreds on 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:54.800 some days, literally hundreds of of whales being processed. But 0:05:55.240 --> 0:06:00.800 it was it allowed the industry really to take place well, 0:06:00.839 --> 0:06:03.160 first of all, in the Antarctic. The Antarctic started being 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:07.360 hunted in the nineteen tens based on this new technology UM, 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.360 and then really peaked in the twenties and thirties, so 0:06:10.440 --> 0:06:14.159 far away from where any humans lived that you would, 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:17.840 you know, you'd get this product, this margarine, with really 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:22.040 no sense of what kind of labor um, what kind 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:26.240 of danger, what kind of slaughter had produced it. You know, 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:30.440 were previously, I mean, whaling had always taken place pretty 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:32.800 far from shore, but it had always been you know, 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:37.479 pretty closely connected with shore industry as well, since you know, 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:41.120 often processed the whales. It's on shore, et cetera. Often 0:06:41.200 --> 0:06:44.000 hunted whales in many cases that were not that far 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:48.480 away from human population. So yeah, it allowed it really 0:06:48.560 --> 0:06:51.400 changed the industry in a lot of ways, making it 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:54.839 um you know, some ways far more mysterious for most people. 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.040 And you mentioned to the twentieth century whaling also it 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:01.360 impacted more species of way old stra as compared to 0:07:01.400 --> 0:07:04.159 the nineteenth century. Yeah, you know, whales, A lot of 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:08.400 whales are really hard to catch without industrial technology. They're 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.000 they're fast, they can standard water for a long period 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:16.200 of time. And as with fishing, the twenties century just 0:07:16.240 --> 0:07:21.400 saw a series of innovations that allowed people to overcome uh, 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:24.640 you know, the whales ability to escape. First of all, 0:07:24.720 --> 0:07:28.880 diesel engines of course, which are so much faster, allowed 0:07:28.920 --> 0:07:32.800 them to to really run down any species they wanted to. Uh. 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:37.520 Then sonar after the Second World War came into greater 0:07:37.680 --> 0:07:41.480 use airplanes which allowed them to spot you. Often on 0:07:41.600 --> 0:07:45.840 this mother ship would have a helicopter or an airplane, 0:07:45.880 --> 0:07:48.920 but usually a helicopter pad where helicopters would take off 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.360 and search the area for whales, telp people where the 0:07:52.440 --> 0:07:56.520 large agglomerations were. Then they could chase them down with 0:07:56.560 --> 0:07:59.280 these really fast ships and then process them on board. 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.400 I mean for whales, you can only imagine this was 0:08:02.440 --> 0:08:10.160 a obviously devastating suite of technologies. They never faced predators 0:08:10.200 --> 0:08:15.040 like this um on this scale or with this lethality. 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:18.720 They were really totally unprepared, especially the big ones like 0:08:18.760 --> 0:08:20.880 blue whales and fin whales, you know, the two largest 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:25.640 species on Earth, which really sustained the whaling industry from 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:28.840 the nineteen tiens through the sixties. Yeah, in terms of 0:08:28.840 --> 0:08:30.520 what it was like for the whales, you described this 0:08:30.560 --> 0:08:34.120 as the breaking of their their quote, cultures and families. 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:38.280 Can you uh describe that a little bit for us? Yeah, 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:39.880 thanks for rop. This is one of things I wanted 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.600 to do with the book. Was it was to mean 0:08:42.679 --> 0:08:46.320 the statistics can be numbing and it feels like an 0:08:46.679 --> 0:08:49.440 industrial slaughter house, which of course it was in a 0:08:49.480 --> 0:08:52.079 lot of ways. But you know, the whalers were catching 0:08:52.120 --> 0:08:56.719 wild animals, wild animals that had as you know, scientists 0:08:56.720 --> 0:09:00.880 are telling us these days they've done incredible research into 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:05.960 whale cultures and whale emotions, whale behaviors that you know, 0:09:05.960 --> 0:09:10.360 whales are complex creatures. They passed down a lot of 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:14.200 the information necessary for their lives through cultural transmission. That is, 0:09:14.240 --> 0:09:17.679 they learn it from um, the other whales around them. 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:23.439 It's not embedded genetically certain behaviors, migration routes, feeding areas, 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:29.760 feeding strategies, etcetera. And so it allows us to understand 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:34.600 what was happening with this unprecedented onslaught, which was not 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:37.960 just the kind of devastation of a population, but but 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:43.199 also the loss of of knowledge amongst whale communities. That 0:09:44.000 --> 0:09:47.360 we have pretty clear evidence that whales, even as they've 0:09:47.400 --> 0:09:50.199 rebounded since the end of industrial whaling in the eighties, 0:09:50.880 --> 0:09:54.560 have failed to recolonize certain areas, places that they used 0:09:54.559 --> 0:09:57.760 to go to to give birth, to maid, to feed, etcetera, 0:09:58.320 --> 0:10:01.120 in part because there was just such a a loss 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:05.040 of cultural knowledge that was part of this slaughter. You know, 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:09.240 you killed so many nursing mothers, for example, right, who 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:13.520 have then failed to pass on to their offspring certain 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:17.199 important facets of what it meant to be a humpback whale. Uh. 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:20.600 And so that that's kind of knowledge reverberate that loss 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:24.959 reverberates today. Uh. Sperm whale mothers, for examples, seem to 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:28.920 be far less adapted keeping their calves alive than they 0:10:28.920 --> 0:10:33.720 were before whaling. It surmised that this is one of 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:37.440 those knowledge losses that that happened as a result of 0:10:37.480 --> 0:10:40.960 industrial whaling. So we still see the impacts even as 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:51.160 whale numbers are rebounding here in the twenty one century. Now, 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:55.840 Redd Levithan is the Secret History of Soviet whaling, So 0:10:55.880 --> 0:10:59.160 I'm getting a little bit into the history of Soviet 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:03.080 whaling and all. So just the Russian history with whaling. 0:11:03.280 --> 0:11:06.600 I'm always fascinated by a particular culture relationship with the sea, 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:11.319 and you discussed this in the book concerning Russia. So 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.880 how did Russia historically view the ocean and its resources 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:18.240 and how did this impact their involvement in whaling. Yeah, 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.680 you know, Russia, but it's such an interesting place to 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:24.560 think about humans relationship to the ocean. You know, you 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:29.440 think about Russia, it's this huge land empire, which it is, 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:31.120 of course, but it also has one of the longest 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:36.439 coastlines in the world. And Russians have been interacting with whales, 0:11:36.640 --> 0:11:40.000 you know, for a couple of thousand years of all 0:11:40.080 --> 0:11:42.520 sorts of different species, and the Pacific in the Arctic, 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:46.480 and the Baltic in the Ocean, you name it. The 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:50.439 Russians had had relationships with whales there, and I mean, 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:52.719 I think the important thing for Russians was that they 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.880 basically missed this period of sail whaling. Well they didn't 0:11:55.920 --> 0:12:02.439 miss it exactly. They saw themselves as victims in this period. Americans, 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.080 British dominated that they had the capital to sustain these 0:12:06.160 --> 0:12:10.679 long distance whaling expeditions. The Russians didn't. They were, you know, 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:15.200 quite poor compared to Western European and America nations. And 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:18.600 so what they saw is year after year Americans coming 0:12:18.640 --> 0:12:24.280 to Siberian shores, for example, um and doing whatever they wanted, 0:12:24.640 --> 0:12:27.920 even though this was part of what Russia thought of 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.280 as their own territory. Americans would come in and kill 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:33.679 as many whales as they wanted, basically laugh at in 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.560 any kind of Russian attempts to stop them. They trade 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:42.400 with indigenous people, uh Siberians, who in many cases depended 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:47.160 on whales for their own sustenance. Alaskans as well. You know, 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:51.760 Russia controlled part of Alaska in the nineteenth century, and 0:12:52.160 --> 0:12:56.679 you know, from the Russian perspective is just outrageous. They 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.960 these capitalist whalers, Yankee whalers as they call them, We're 0:13:01.040 --> 0:13:06.760 destroying indigenous livelihoods. Russians really actually cared about this. They 0:13:06.760 --> 0:13:09.760 were destroying whales that Russians would have liked to have 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.360 made some money off of. And so that really helped 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.520 shape Russia's major entry into the industry. They came with 0:13:17.600 --> 0:13:20.320 a you could say a lot of historical baggage into it. 0:13:20.400 --> 0:13:24.800 And when when Russia finally established its own whaling industry 0:13:24.800 --> 0:13:29.000 in the nineteen thirties, and you Stalin, Joseph Stalin, uh, 0:13:29.080 --> 0:13:32.160 they thought of it not just as a way to 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.160 industrialize the country that was part of it, but as 0:13:35.160 --> 0:13:39.640 a way to kind of rectify this historical wrong that 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:44.880 their whaling industry was Russia. Finally Russia getting its share 0:13:45.280 --> 0:13:50.000 and finally able to sort of defend its own oceans 0:13:50.040 --> 0:13:55.400 against Americans, British and increasing the Norwegians as well. Now 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:59.679 you get into the the mystry of whales as well. 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:03.640 I was taken by what you shared about the mystery 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:07.200 of baleen whales, including a tenth century Russian poem that 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:11.840 concluded that the the these whales fed on quote heavenly fragrances. 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.080 What are we to make of that? Yeah, whales are 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:20.000 pretty mysterious creatures. They were for humans, well they still 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:21.920 are in a lot of ways. You know, they spend 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:29.680 of their life underwater. Humans really only got to know 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.280 them when they were washed up on shore or once 0:14:32.320 --> 0:14:36.400 they've been harpooned, and so that, you know, whales lent 0:14:36.520 --> 0:14:40.200 themselves to a lot of mystery. Um. And one of 0:14:40.240 --> 0:14:43.520 the interesting things that I found research in this book is, 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:47.640 you know, the really important work that the Soviet Union did, 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:51.840 especially as scientists, and kind of unraveling some of these mysteries. 0:14:51.880 --> 0:14:54.160 You know, you you read this poem, this was a 0:14:54.200 --> 0:14:59.520 great indication of the really almost total ignorance of whales 0:14:59.800 --> 0:15:02.960 they humans had in the tenth century, but really up 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.160 until the twentieth century in a lot of ways. And 0:15:05.640 --> 0:15:09.000 you know, the Soviets they killed more whales than any 0:15:09.360 --> 0:15:12.520 country did after after the Second World War. They also 0:15:12.600 --> 0:15:16.760 studied whales in greater depth than any other country did 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:20.800 their way. Their scientists were on the whale ships, you know, 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:25.680 digging through whale carcases, watching whales as they were being hunted. Uh, 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:30.160 using captive dolphins for study, you know, the Soviet Union 0:15:30.360 --> 0:15:34.160 as much as any country, really advanced our knowledge of 0:15:34.160 --> 0:15:36.280 what whales. Where no one was talking about them feeding 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:40.800 on Heavenly miss by the late twentieth century, the Soviets 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:43.840 were talking about them nearly going extinct, and they were 0:15:43.880 --> 0:15:47.080 some of the first to understand how deep the crisis 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.400 was as well. Yeah. So, and this you're getting into 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:52.280 into what you refer to in the book, is that 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:55.920 the challenging contradictions that you encountered sometimes you're encountering in 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:58.920 interviews with Russian whalers and scientists. Can you can you 0:15:58.920 --> 0:16:01.600 speak to this a little bit? Yeah, you know, I 0:16:01.680 --> 0:16:04.960 came and I wrote. I wrote this book because I 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:08.600 it was horrified and shocked by a lot of things. 0:16:08.640 --> 0:16:11.240 I've just been talking about, the numbers of whales killed, 0:16:11.280 --> 0:16:16.240 the you know, the pain that wales felt. But you know, 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:19.120 to to try to understand this and the role specifically 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.400 that the Russian Soviet Union played, of course, I went 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:23.600 out and I talked to people who had been on 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:26.320 board these whales ships. I went to Ukraine and I 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:29.400 went to I went to Moscow and Colen and Grad 0:16:29.400 --> 0:16:31.520 and other places and talked to people who had been 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:34.400 part of this and it was. It was hard not 0:16:34.520 --> 0:16:37.240 to like them. Frankly, you know, they're there are people 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:41.800 who not only didn't think at the time that what 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:45.480 they were doing was wrong, many of them, um, some 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.280 of them did. I should make that clear that you know, 0:16:48.400 --> 0:16:52.560 some people were really disturbed by the whaling that they 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.280 were doing. Many were not. And you know, frankly, most 0:16:55.280 --> 0:16:57.480 people around the world didn't really care that whales were 0:16:57.480 --> 0:17:00.080 being killed for most of the time period. But you know, 0:17:00.160 --> 0:17:02.520 not not only that, but also that they were you know, 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.159 they were also really deeply interested in whales, you know, 0:17:05.240 --> 0:17:09.520 like myself, really fascinated by these creatures. And uh, you 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:12.359 know when I talked to them, I talked to whale scientists, 0:17:12.840 --> 0:17:15.560 you know, they they they wanted to talk. They they 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.720 were so um, you know, they wanted to relive their 0:17:18.760 --> 0:17:23.280 experiences with whales. They expressed sympathy for these creatures, fascination 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:25.879 for them. You know, I met some of really the 0:17:26.400 --> 0:17:29.680 greatest whale scientists, probably the twentieth century, people who are 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:33.399 still really who still really care about whales, who who 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.720 had tried to blow the whistle uh in the Soviet 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:39.399 Union about some of the the illegal whaling that was 0:17:39.440 --> 0:17:43.960 taking place, and some of them turned out to be Um, 0:17:44.000 --> 0:17:47.119 you know, as you said, Chaney contradictions. Uh, you know, 0:17:47.160 --> 0:17:50.080 one of one of the whale scientists that I really 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:52.960 relied on for a lot of the information for these 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:56.320 books living in Odessa in Ukraine now and um, you know, 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:58.760 it's been emailing me telling me he can't wait for 0:17:58.880 --> 0:18:03.359 Russia to come free Ukraine from the Nazis. You know, 0:18:03.440 --> 0:18:11.560 he's a deep Russian patriot who really regrets the demise 0:18:11.600 --> 0:18:14.560 of the Soviet Union as well. You know, people who're 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:19.800 not not easy to to pigeonhole them into easy dichotomies 0:18:19.920 --> 0:18:23.920 that we often fall into. And looking at Russia, so 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:26.800 we touched a little bit already on the like the 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:31.280 history of of Russian whaling and their relationship with the 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.440 resources of the sea prior to the twentieth century. But 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.840 then what other reasons are pushing the Soviet Union then 0:18:37.880 --> 0:18:41.480 to pursue industrial whaling so strongly during a time when 0:18:41.520 --> 0:18:44.720 other countries are dropping out of the practice. Yeah, that 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.520 was the crazy thing about this, and that came really 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:52.320 came through heartbreaking details. I was reading scientists reports. You know, 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:57.840 the Soviet Union really expanded their whaling presence in the 0:18:57.920 --> 0:19:02.360 late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, just at a time, 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:05.000 as you see, rob, when the Norwegians were starting to 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:08.679 drop out, the British were starting to drop out, the 0:19:08.760 --> 0:19:12.160 Dutch were starting to drop out. The US wasn't waling anymore. 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:15.439 Everyone saw the writing on the wall. Look the large 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:18.200 profitable whales, We've wiped it out. You know, they're gone. 0:19:18.560 --> 0:19:21.840 It's it's not gonna pay. And you know, the Soviet Union, 0:19:22.960 --> 0:19:28.880 they they had a real belief in the power of science. 0:19:28.920 --> 0:19:32.000 You know, this was a society that was had thrown 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.960 off God, thrown off religion. It was going to rely 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:40.480 on the expertise of people who weren't subject to those 0:19:40.600 --> 0:19:44.640 kinds of uh, those kinds of superstitions. You know. They 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:48.360 were going to integrate all kinds of economic planning with 0:19:48.600 --> 0:19:51.359 x with experts. So they had a real belief that 0:19:51.400 --> 0:19:55.720 they were actually going to be really more responsible environmentally 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:59.200 than other countries. So it was it was just bizarre 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:02.640 to read you that they were the Soviet Union under 0:20:02.760 --> 0:20:07.040 Nikita Khrushchev, I was thinking about building. They thought about 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:10.439 building nine new factories floating factories in the in the 0:20:10.520 --> 0:20:15.040 nineteen fifties, UM which was you know, was going to 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.239 make them the biggest whaling country on Earth. And they 0:20:18.280 --> 0:20:20.200 asked their scientists and it was just a good idea. 0:20:20.520 --> 0:20:23.760 Every scientist sit now, they said, like the oceans are 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:25.880 in crisis, and they really were in the in the 0:20:25.960 --> 0:20:31.040 nineteen fifties. It's easy to forget just how we had 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:36.280 exploited um whale and fish stocks at that time really recklessly. 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:39.520 And Soviet scientists understood this perfectly. They were they were 0:20:39.560 --> 0:20:42.520 seeing it happened on board to a to a man, 0:20:43.200 --> 0:20:46.280 and they were all men at that time. They they 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:51.120 advised the Soviet economic planners like, don't do this, it's crazy. 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.240 And what did they do? They said, Okay, instead of nine, 0:20:54.240 --> 0:20:58.000 will build seven. They built seven new factory fleets UM, 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:02.880 which you know, dwarf everyone except the Japanese at a time, 0:21:02.920 --> 0:21:04.800 as I said, when people were getting out of this 0:21:04.920 --> 0:21:12.320 industry justified logic, uh, and it led to predictable disaster. 0:21:12.680 --> 0:21:17.280 You know. The Soviets, having built these these huge fleets, UH, 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:20.080 found that there weren't whales to catch, so they started 0:21:20.119 --> 0:21:23.199 catching the last of the whales that were prohibited, you know, 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:26.520 and they really you know, the special contribution that the 0:21:26.560 --> 0:21:31.879 Soviets made was was catching those last few whales of 0:21:31.880 --> 0:21:34.480 the species that really didn't make any economic sense to 0:21:34.560 --> 0:21:38.840 catch the Soviets. For the Soviets, though, uh, they had 0:21:38.880 --> 0:21:42.080 the capacity, they did it. They wiped out almost the 0:21:42.200 --> 0:21:45.040 last of the humpback whales in the southern hemisphere, the 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:49.480 last of the southern right whales. So um, you know, 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:52.440 it's it's it's hard to read that stuff, and it 0:21:52.720 --> 0:21:56.320 it really feels like, um, a kind of a tragic 0:21:56.359 --> 0:22:01.000 failure of the Soviet belief that's that science would really 0:22:02.000 --> 0:22:06.399 make them able to to operate more effectively in the world. 0:22:06.400 --> 0:22:09.240 You know, they could have worked now the scientists told 0:22:09.280 --> 0:22:13.240 them the right thing, and they ended up ignoring the advice, 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:16.240 really to the great tragedy of the whales around the world. 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:19.359 But they did end up sending scientists out on these 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:22.320 ships as well. Yeah. Oh, the Soviet Union had the 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:26.240 largest net of whales scientists really in the world, and said, 0:22:26.240 --> 0:22:28.960 you know, they understood probably better than any country in 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:31.440 the world, what you know, exactly how deep the crisis 0:22:31.600 --> 0:22:35.280 was with the world's whales. And that's that's the that's 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:39.560 the difficult contradiction here. So they were they were international 0:22:39.640 --> 0:22:42.479 quotas at the time though, right, Um, how did how 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:47.199 did this playing into Soviet whaling activity at the time. Yeah, right, So, 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:49.080 you know, the Soviet Union was one of the original 0:22:49.160 --> 0:22:53.399 signatories to the International Whaling UH Convention that established the 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:57.560 National Whaling Commission in six and they had agreed to 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:01.359 abide by quotas quota which at first were kind of 0:23:01.480 --> 0:23:05.639 laughably generous. Um, they wanted to make sure that whalers 0:23:05.680 --> 0:23:10.879 were still profitable, but became increasingly restrictive over the years, 0:23:11.000 --> 0:23:14.800 and especially in the nineteen sixties that they had some 0:23:14.840 --> 0:23:18.720 real teeth in them, and the Soviet Union pretended to 0:23:18.880 --> 0:23:23.000 abide by those quotas. They would come back and every 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:25.600 year whalen nations would have to report how many whales 0:23:25.640 --> 0:23:29.600 they'd killed that they at the medium of the IBC, 0:23:30.520 --> 0:23:32.680 and so the Union would do this, they'd make their 0:23:32.720 --> 0:23:37.440 reports and they started falsifying them in the nineteen fifties. 0:23:37.480 --> 0:23:40.760 At first overstayed in the number of whales that they'd killed, 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:44.520 in part because they wanted to uh to look like 0:23:44.560 --> 0:23:47.000 they were bigger whalers than they were, in part because 0:23:47.000 --> 0:23:49.399 they you know, they wanted to establish a precedent for 0:23:49.440 --> 0:23:51.880 having killed this MANI. But then after they built these 0:23:51.880 --> 0:23:56.919 big fleets. They realized, you know, we we can't abide 0:23:56.920 --> 0:24:00.320 by any of the stuff. Um, we're to make any 0:24:00.600 --> 0:24:03.320 money from this at all, we're gonna have to cheat wildly, 0:24:03.720 --> 0:24:08.480 and they did. Uh. And so throughout the late fifties 0:24:08.520 --> 0:24:12.679 and sixties. Uh, they'd come back from the Antarctic and 0:24:12.760 --> 0:24:16.040 say we killed three huntback whales and they'd killed twelve. 0:24:16.840 --> 0:24:22.360 You know that kind of just devastating numbers, which flemmixed 0:24:22.440 --> 0:24:26.359 people around the world. You know, whale scientists in Australia, 0:24:26.480 --> 0:24:30.680 New Zealand who are monitoring local populations that migrated down 0:24:30.680 --> 0:24:35.439 to the Antarctic starting in fifty nine, they they saw 0:24:35.520 --> 0:24:38.199 that suddenly there were no whales coming back and they 0:24:38.200 --> 0:24:43.840 couldn't understand why. They well, maybe there's some cheating going on. Uh, 0:24:43.880 --> 0:24:45.520 but we'd have to you know, there'd have to be 0:24:45.600 --> 0:24:49.320 tens of thousands of missing whales to explain what's happening. 0:24:49.400 --> 0:24:52.840 No one's cheating like that. But actually the Soviets were. 0:24:53.480 --> 0:24:58.720 It was an unbelievable crime. Really was was a tragedy. 0:24:58.960 --> 0:25:01.840 Of course, no for whales, but um, you know for 0:25:01.880 --> 0:25:04.960 those who were studying and cared about them. One that 0:25:05.080 --> 0:25:08.800 wasn't unraveled until the nineteen nineties, you know, about thirty 0:25:08.920 --> 0:25:12.000 forty years later. It was thanks to those same Soviet 0:25:12.000 --> 0:25:16.520 scientists who who were really upset by this, and they 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:20.720 kept their own figures. They kept the real numbers, in 0:25:20.800 --> 0:25:23.919 part because they hated to see their science messed up 0:25:23.920 --> 0:25:26.280 by the fake numbers, and in part because they really 0:25:26.640 --> 0:25:29.720