Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: This is Robert Lamb. My co host Joe is on
Speaker 1: leave this week, so I have an interview for you.
Speaker 1: I recently talked with Ryan Jones of the University of Oregon.
Speaker 1: His new book is read Leviathan, The Secret History of
Speaker 1: Soviet Whaling. So this is a fascinating book, and I
Speaker 1: think we had a fascinating chat about the history, specifically
Speaker 1: the twentieth century history of whaling and how that factors
Speaker 1: into Russian history, the history of the Soviet Union, but
Speaker 1: also global history as well. A word of caution that
Speaker 1: this this interview will of course discuss whaling, which is
Speaker 1: going to have some graphic details in it, so be
Speaker 1: advised on that count. But on the other hand, I
Speaker 1: want to stress that this will not just be a
Speaker 1: parade of of horrors. Uh. There's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: historical and cultural information in here as well. So without
Speaker 1: further ado, let's go straight to the interview. Hi, Ryan,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. Rob Thanks for having me. So
Speaker 1: your book concerns whaling, which humans have been engaging in
Speaker 1: for thousands of years and yet twentieth century whaling stands
Speaker 1: out in rather appalling ways. Can you set the scene
Speaker 1: for us regarding twentieth century whaling and what truly sets
Speaker 1: it apart from the sort of nineteenth century whaling that
Speaker 1: many of us are probably familiar with from the likes
Speaker 1: of Moby Dick. Yeah, that's right, Rob. I mean, nineteenth
Speaker 1: century whaling, which was dominated by the Americans, was a
Speaker 1: really low tech enterprise that still managed to manage to
Speaker 1: sweep nearly the entire Earth specific Indian Atlantic Ocean, and
Speaker 1: i had a pretty massive impact on certain whale species
Speaker 1: like sperm way else others it left entirely untouched, especially
Speaker 1: the fast whales, the big whales that many people be
Speaker 1: familiar with, humpback whales, blue whales, fin whales, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: major parts of the ocean that were just off limits
Speaker 1: to people working with sale technology, like the Antarctic, which
Speaker 1: is is the place where the most whales used to
Speaker 1: live at least. And so twenty centure whalen was was
Speaker 1: far I think, far less talked about, far less romanticized about.
Speaker 1: There is no Herman Melville for the twentieth century industrial era,
Speaker 1: and yet it was by an order of magnitude more
Speaker 1: devastating for most whale species. Do you want Do you
Speaker 1: want me to talk a little bit about the technology.
Speaker 1: I'm mindful of not just going on and on with
Speaker 1: my answers your readers. No, No, I think we'd we'd
Speaker 1: all have to to have a little technological background at
Speaker 1: My next question, in fact, was going to be about
Speaker 1: the Stern slipway and what it was and why it
Speaker 1: was so essential to modern whaling. Yeah, I mean the technology.
Speaker 1: There was really a major change in the technological implementations
Speaker 1: of whaling at the end of the nineteenth century, mostly
Speaker 1: brought about by Norwegians who had been whaling in their
Speaker 1: near shore waters, but perfected a few things like the
Speaker 1: exploding harpoon gun, which actually, you know, sentti grenade into
Speaker 1: a whale exploded inside its body, which was far more
Speaker 1: lethal and far less lethal for humans because they could
Speaker 1: kill the whale, often with one or two shots, rather
Speaker 1: than having to tire it out over a long period
Speaker 1: of time being attached to this gigantic, dangerous creatures they
Speaker 1: had in sail whaling. So that was one of the
Speaker 1: major changes that took place. The other was the Stern slipway.
Speaker 1: Rabich you just mentioned, and uh, this was a classical
Speaker 1: industrial piece of technology which allowed whale to be winched
Speaker 1: on board the whale ship, which really fundamentally changed the
Speaker 1: whole industry. It meant that you didn't have to process
Speaker 1: whales either on this in the ocean on the side
Speaker 1: of the ship, as you know, as people did in
Speaker 1: in Moby Dick for example, or that you even had
Speaker 1: to go ashore and process whales at shore factories. What
Speaker 1: this meant was that you could stay out to see
Speaker 1: with your your mother ship, your factory um, your factory ship,
Speaker 1: and just process whales day after day after day. They'd
Speaker 1: be brought to you by a fleet of catcher boats
Speaker 1: taken to the mother ship, winched up at the stern slipway,
Speaker 1: and then a whole team, whole army of industrial workers
Speaker 1: would process that whale carcass into the products that people
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century wanted, which increasingly was was margarine um,
Speaker 1: you know, butter substitute. That was another technological in a
Speaker 1: Asian the process of hydrogenation, which allowed people a scientist
Speaker 1: to inject hydrogen. I better not maybe I would go
Speaker 1: so firmly into the details of hydrogenation, but it allowed
Speaker 1: them to uh to process whale meat in such a
Speaker 1: way that it was basically stripped of any um, fishy flavor.
Speaker 1: People didn't even know they're eating margarine um that come
Speaker 1: from whales oftentimes, and this was the major driver behind
Speaker 1: the twentieth century global industrial whaling. You also mentioned that
Speaker 1: this allowed for the processing of the carcass to take
Speaker 1: place out of sight. Right, this was made a little
Speaker 1: more hidden. Yeah, that's right. I mean, certainly not for
Speaker 1: those involved in it. For those involved in it, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you could you would see just hundreds on
Speaker 1: some days, literally hundreds of of whales being processed. But
Speaker 1: it was it allowed the industry really to take place well,
Speaker 1: first of all, in the Antarctic. The Antarctic started being
Speaker 1: hunted in the nineteen tens based on this new technology UM,
Speaker 1: and then really peaked in the twenties and thirties, so
Speaker 1: far away from where any humans lived that you would,
Speaker 1: you know, you'd get this product, this margarine, with really
Speaker 1: no sense of what kind of labor um, what kind
Speaker 1: of danger, what kind of slaughter had produced it. You know,
Speaker 1: were previously, I mean, whaling had always taken place pretty
Speaker 1: far from shore, but it had always been you know,
Speaker 1: pretty closely connected with shore industry as well, since you know,
Speaker 1: often processed the whales. It's on shore, et cetera. Often
Speaker 1: hunted whales in many cases that were not that far
Speaker 1: away from human population. So yeah, it allowed it really
Speaker 1: changed the industry in a lot of ways, making it
Speaker 1: um you know, some ways far more mysterious for most people.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned to the twentieth century whaling also it
Speaker 1: impacted more species of way old stra as compared to
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century. Yeah, you know, whales, A lot of
Speaker 1: whales are really hard to catch without industrial technology. They're
Speaker 1: they're fast, they can standard water for a long period
Speaker 1: of time. And as with fishing, the twenties century just
Speaker 1: saw a series of innovations that allowed people to overcome uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the whales ability to escape. First of all,
Speaker 1: diesel engines of course, which are so much faster, allowed
Speaker 1: them to to really run down any species they wanted to. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then sonar after the Second World War came into greater
Speaker 1: use airplanes which allowed them to spot you. Often on
Speaker 1: this mother ship would have a helicopter or an airplane,
Speaker 1: but usually a helicopter pad where helicopters would take off
Speaker 1: and search the area for whales, telp people where the
Speaker 1: large agglomerations were. Then they could chase them down with
Speaker 1: these really fast ships and then process them on board.
Speaker 1: I mean for whales, you can only imagine this was
Speaker 1: a obviously devastating suite of technologies. They never faced predators
Speaker 1: like this um on this scale or with this lethality.
Speaker 1: They were really totally unprepared, especially the big ones like
Speaker 1: blue whales and fin whales, you know, the two largest
Speaker 1: species on Earth, which really sustained the whaling industry from
Speaker 1: the nineteen tiens through the sixties. Yeah, in terms of
Speaker 1: what it was like for the whales, you described this
Speaker 1: as the breaking of their their quote, cultures and families.
Speaker 1: Can you uh describe that a little bit for us? Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for rop. This is one of things I wanted
Speaker 1: to do with the book. Was it was to mean
Speaker 1: the statistics can be numbing and it feels like an
Speaker 1: industrial slaughter house, which of course it was in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. But you know, the whalers were catching
Speaker 1: wild animals, wild animals that had as you know, scientists
Speaker 1: are telling us these days they've done incredible research into
Speaker 1: whale cultures and whale emotions, whale behaviors that you know,
Speaker 1: whales are complex creatures. They passed down a lot of
Speaker 1: the information necessary for their lives through cultural transmission. That is,
Speaker 1: they learn it from um, the other whales around them.
Speaker 1: It's not embedded genetically certain behaviors, migration routes, feeding areas,
Speaker 1: feeding strategies, etcetera. And so it allows us to understand
Speaker 1: what was happening with this unprecedented onslaught, which was not
Speaker 1: just the kind of devastation of a population, but but
Speaker 1: also the loss of of knowledge amongst whale communities. That
Speaker 1: we have pretty clear evidence that whales, even as they've
Speaker 1: rebounded since the end of industrial whaling in the eighties,
Speaker 1: have failed to recolonize certain areas, places that they used
Speaker 1: to go to to give birth, to maid, to feed, etcetera,
Speaker 1: in part because there was just such a a loss
Speaker 1: of cultural knowledge that was part of this slaughter. You know,
Speaker 1: you killed so many nursing mothers, for example, right, who
Speaker 1: have then failed to pass on to their offspring certain
Speaker 1: important facets of what it meant to be a humpback whale. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so that that's kind of knowledge reverberate that loss
Speaker 1: reverberates today. Uh. Sperm whale mothers, for examples, seem to
Speaker 1: be far less adapted keeping their calves alive than they
Speaker 1: were before whaling. It surmised that this is one of
Speaker 1: those knowledge losses that that happened as a result of
Speaker 1: industrial whaling. So we still see the impacts even as
Speaker 1: whale numbers are rebounding here in the twenty one century. Now,
Speaker 1: Redd Levithan is the Secret History of Soviet whaling, So
Speaker 1: I'm getting a little bit into the history of Soviet
Speaker 1: whaling and all. So just the Russian history with whaling.
Speaker 1: I'm always fascinated by a particular culture relationship with the sea,
Speaker 1: and you discussed this in the book concerning Russia. So
Speaker 1: how did Russia historically view the ocean and its resources
Speaker 1: and how did this impact their involvement in whaling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, Russia, but it's such an interesting place to
Speaker 1: think about humans relationship to the ocean. You know, you
Speaker 1: think about Russia, it's this huge land empire, which it is,
Speaker 1: of course, but it also has one of the longest
Speaker 1: coastlines in the world. And Russians have been interacting with whales,
Speaker 1: you know, for a couple of thousand years of all
Speaker 1: sorts of different species, and the Pacific in the Arctic,
Speaker 1: and the Baltic in the Ocean, you name it. The
Speaker 1: Russians had had relationships with whales there, and I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the important thing for Russians was that they
Speaker 1: basically missed this period of sail whaling. Well they didn't
Speaker 1: miss it exactly. They saw themselves as victims in this period. Americans,
Speaker 1: British dominated that they had the capital to sustain these
Speaker 1: long distance whaling expeditions. The Russians didn't. They were, you know,
Speaker 1: quite poor compared to Western European and America nations. And
Speaker 1: so what they saw is year after year Americans coming
Speaker 1: to Siberian shores, for example, um and doing whatever they wanted,
Speaker 1: even though this was part of what Russia thought of
Speaker 1: as their own territory. Americans would come in and kill
Speaker 1: as many whales as they wanted, basically laugh at in
Speaker 1: any kind of Russian attempts to stop them. They trade
Speaker 1: with indigenous people, uh Siberians, who in many cases depended
Speaker 1: on whales for their own sustenance. Alaskans as well. You know,
Speaker 1: Russia controlled part of Alaska in the nineteenth century, and
Speaker 1: you know, from the Russian perspective is just outrageous. They
Speaker 1: these capitalist whalers, Yankee whalers as they call them, We're
Speaker 1: destroying indigenous livelihoods. Russians really actually cared about this. They
Speaker 1: were destroying whales that Russians would have liked to have
Speaker 1: made some money off of. And so that really helped
Speaker 1: shape Russia's major entry into the industry. They came with
Speaker 1: a you could say a lot of historical baggage into it.
Speaker 1: And when when Russia finally established its own whaling industry
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties, and you Stalin, Joseph Stalin, uh,
Speaker 1: they thought of it not just as a way to
Speaker 1: industrialize the country that was part of it, but as
Speaker 1: a way to kind of rectify this historical wrong that
Speaker 1: their whaling industry was Russia. Finally Russia getting its share
Speaker 1: and finally able to sort of defend its own oceans
Speaker 1: against Americans, British and increasing the Norwegians as well. Now
Speaker 1: you get into the the mystry of whales as well.
Speaker 1: I was taken by what you shared about the mystery
Speaker 1: of baleen whales, including a tenth century Russian poem that
Speaker 1: concluded that the the these whales fed on quote heavenly fragrances.
Speaker 1: What are we to make of that? Yeah, whales are
Speaker 1: pretty mysterious creatures. They were for humans, well they still
Speaker 1: are in a lot of ways. You know, they spend
Speaker 1: of their life underwater. Humans really only got to know
Speaker 1: them when they were washed up on shore or once
Speaker 1: they've been harpooned, and so that, you know, whales lent
Speaker 1: themselves to a lot of mystery. Um. And one of
Speaker 1: the interesting things that I found research in this book is,
Speaker 1: you know, the really important work that the Soviet Union did,
Speaker 1: especially as scientists, and kind of unraveling some of these mysteries.
Speaker 1: You know, you you read this poem, this was a
Speaker 1: great indication of the really almost total ignorance of whales
Speaker 1: they humans had in the tenth century, but really up
Speaker 1: until the twentieth century in a lot of ways. And
Speaker 1: you know, the Soviets they killed more whales than any
Speaker 1: country did after after the Second World War. They also
Speaker 1: studied whales in greater depth than any other country did
Speaker 1: their way. Their scientists were on the whale ships, you know,
Speaker 1: digging through whale carcases, watching whales as they were being hunted. Uh,
Speaker 1: using captive dolphins for study, you know, the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: as much as any country, really advanced our knowledge of
Speaker 1: what whales. Where no one was talking about them feeding
Speaker 1: on Heavenly miss by the late twentieth century, the Soviets
Speaker 1: were talking about them nearly going extinct, and they were
Speaker 1: some of the first to understand how deep the crisis
Speaker 1: was as well. Yeah. So, and this you're getting into
Speaker 1: into what you refer to in the book, is that
Speaker 1: the challenging contradictions that you encountered sometimes you're encountering in
Speaker 1: interviews with Russian whalers and scientists. Can you can you
Speaker 1: speak to this a little bit? Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: came and I wrote. I wrote this book because I
Speaker 1: it was horrified and shocked by a lot of things.
Speaker 1: I've just been talking about, the numbers of whales killed,
Speaker 1: the you know, the pain that wales felt. But you know,
Speaker 1: to to try to understand this and the role specifically
Speaker 1: that the Russian Soviet Union played, of course, I went
Speaker 1: out and I talked to people who had been on
Speaker 1: board these whales ships. I went to Ukraine and I
Speaker 1: went to I went to Moscow and Colen and Grad
Speaker 1: and other places and talked to people who had been
Speaker 1: part of this and it was. It was hard not
Speaker 1: to like them. Frankly, you know, they're there are people
Speaker 1: who not only didn't think at the time that what
Speaker 1: they were doing was wrong, many of them, um, some
Speaker 1: of them did. I should make that clear that you know,
Speaker 1: some people were really disturbed by the whaling that they
Speaker 1: were doing. Many were not. And you know, frankly, most
Speaker 1: people around the world didn't really care that whales were
Speaker 1: being killed for most of the time period. But you know,
Speaker 1: not not only that, but also that they were you know,
Speaker 1: they were also really deeply interested in whales, you know,
Speaker 1: like myself, really fascinated by these creatures. And uh, you
Speaker 1: know when I talked to them, I talked to whale scientists,
Speaker 1: you know, they they they wanted to talk. They they
Speaker 1: were so um, you know, they wanted to relive their
Speaker 1: experiences with whales. They expressed sympathy for these creatures, fascination
Speaker 1: for them. You know, I met some of really the
Speaker 1: greatest whale scientists, probably the twentieth century, people who are
Speaker 1: still really who still really care about whales, who who
Speaker 1: had tried to blow the whistle uh in the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union about some of the the illegal whaling that was
Speaker 1: taking place, and some of them turned out to be Um,
Speaker 1: you know, as you said, Chaney contradictions. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: one of one of the whale scientists that I really
Speaker 1: relied on for a lot of the information for these
Speaker 1: books living in Odessa in Ukraine now and um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's been emailing me telling me he can't wait for
Speaker 1: Russia to come free Ukraine from the Nazis. You know,
Speaker 1: he's a deep Russian patriot who really regrets the demise
Speaker 1: of the Soviet Union as well. You know, people who're
Speaker 1: not not easy to to pigeonhole them into easy dichotomies
Speaker 1: that we often fall into. And looking at Russia, so
Speaker 1: we touched a little bit already on the like the
Speaker 1: history of of Russian whaling and their relationship with the
Speaker 1: resources of the sea prior to the twentieth century. But
Speaker 1: then what other reasons are pushing the Soviet Union then
Speaker 1: to pursue industrial whaling so strongly during a time when
Speaker 1: other countries are dropping out of the practice. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was the crazy thing about this, and that came really
Speaker 1: came through heartbreaking details. I was reading scientists reports. You know,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union really expanded their whaling presence in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, just at a time,
Speaker 1: as you see, rob, when the Norwegians were starting to
Speaker 1: drop out, the British were starting to drop out, the
Speaker 1: Dutch were starting to drop out. The US wasn't waling anymore.
Speaker 1: Everyone saw the writing on the wall. Look the large
Speaker 1: profitable whales, We've wiped it out. You know, they're gone.
Speaker 1: It's it's not gonna pay. And you know, the Soviet Union,
Speaker 1: they they had a real belief in the power of science.
Speaker 1: You know, this was a society that was had thrown
Speaker 1: off God, thrown off religion. It was going to rely
Speaker 1: on the expertise of people who weren't subject to those
Speaker 1: kinds of uh, those kinds of superstitions. You know. They
Speaker 1: were going to integrate all kinds of economic planning with
Speaker 1: x with experts. So they had a real belief that
Speaker 1: they were actually going to be really more responsible environmentally
Speaker 1: than other countries. So it was it was just bizarre
Speaker 1: to read you that they were the Soviet Union under
Speaker 1: Nikita Khrushchev, I was thinking about building. They thought about
Speaker 1: building nine new factories floating factories in the in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, UM which was you know, was going to
Speaker 1: make them the biggest whaling country on Earth. And they
Speaker 1: asked their scientists and it was just a good idea.
Speaker 1: Every scientist sit now, they said, like the oceans are
Speaker 1: in crisis, and they really were in the in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. It's easy to forget just how we had
Speaker 1: exploited um whale and fish stocks at that time really recklessly.
Speaker 1: And Soviet scientists understood this perfectly. They were they were
Speaker 1: seeing it happened on board to a to a man,
Speaker 1: and they were all men at that time. They they
Speaker 1: advised the Soviet economic planners like, don't do this, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: And what did they do? They said, Okay, instead of nine,
Speaker 1: will build seven. They built seven new factory fleets UM,
Speaker 1: which you know, dwarf everyone except the Japanese at a time,
Speaker 1: as I said, when people were getting out of this
Speaker 1: industry justified logic, uh, and it led to predictable disaster.
Speaker 1: You know. The Soviets, having built these these huge fleets, UH,
Speaker 1: found that there weren't whales to catch, so they started
Speaker 1: catching the last of the whales that were prohibited, you know,
Speaker 1: and they really you know, the special contribution that the
Speaker 1: Soviets made was was catching those last few whales of
Speaker 1: the species that really didn't make any economic sense to
Speaker 1: catch the Soviets. For the Soviets, though, uh, they had
Speaker 1: the capacity, they did it. They wiped out almost the
Speaker 1: last of the humpback whales in the southern hemisphere, the
Speaker 1: last of the southern right whales. So um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's hard to read that stuff, and it
Speaker 1: it really feels like, um, a kind of a tragic
Speaker 1: failure of the Soviet belief that's that science would really
Speaker 1: make them able to to operate more effectively in the world.
Speaker 1: You know, they could have worked now the scientists told
Speaker 1: them the right thing, and they ended up ignoring the advice,
Speaker 1: really to the great tragedy of the whales around the world.
Speaker 1: But they did end up sending scientists out on these
Speaker 1: ships as well. Yeah. Oh, the Soviet Union had the
Speaker 1: largest net of whales scientists really in the world, and said,
Speaker 1: you know, they understood probably better than any country in
Speaker 1: the world, what you know, exactly how deep the crisis
Speaker 1: was with the world's whales. And that's that's the that's
Speaker 1: the difficult contradiction here. So they were they were international
Speaker 1: quotas at the time though, right, Um, how did how
Speaker 1: did this playing into Soviet whaling activity at the time. Yeah, right, So,
Speaker 1: you know, the Soviet Union was one of the original
Speaker 1: signatories to the International Whaling UH Convention that established the
Speaker 1: National Whaling Commission in six and they had agreed to
Speaker 1: abide by quotas quota which at first were kind of
Speaker 1: laughably generous. Um, they wanted to make sure that whalers
Speaker 1: were still profitable, but became increasingly restrictive over the years,
Speaker 1: and especially in the nineteen sixties that they had some
Speaker 1: real teeth in them, and the Soviet Union pretended to
Speaker 1: abide by those quotas. They would come back and every
Speaker 1: year whalen nations would have to report how many whales
Speaker 1: they'd killed that they at the medium of the IBC,
Speaker 1: and so the Union would do this, they'd make their
Speaker 1: reports and they started falsifying them in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: At first overstayed in the number of whales that they'd killed,
Speaker 1: in part because they wanted to uh to look like
Speaker 1: they were bigger whalers than they were, in part because
Speaker 1: they you know, they wanted to establish a precedent for
Speaker 1: having killed this MANI. But then after they built these
Speaker 1: big fleets. They realized, you know, we we can't abide
Speaker 1: by any of the stuff. Um, we're to make any
Speaker 1: money from this at all, we're gonna have to cheat wildly,
Speaker 1: and they did. Uh. And so throughout the late fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties. Uh, they'd come back from the Antarctic and
Speaker 1: say we killed three huntback whales and they'd killed twelve.
Speaker 1: You know that kind of just devastating numbers, which flemmixed
Speaker 1: people around the world. You know, whale scientists in Australia,
Speaker 1: New Zealand who are monitoring local populations that migrated down
Speaker 1: to the Antarctic starting in fifty nine, they they saw
Speaker 1: that suddenly there were no whales coming back and they
Speaker 1: couldn't understand why. They well, maybe there's some cheating going on. Uh,
Speaker 1: but we'd have to you know, there'd have to be
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of missing whales to explain what's happening.
Speaker 1: No one's cheating like that. But actually the Soviets were.
Speaker 1: It was an unbelievable crime. Really was was a tragedy.
Speaker 1: Of course, no for whales, but um, you know for
Speaker 1: those who were studying and cared about them. One that
Speaker 1: wasn't unraveled until the nineteen nineties, you know, about thirty
Speaker 1: forty years later. It was thanks to those same Soviet
Speaker 1: scientists who who were really upset by this, and they
Speaker 1: kept their own figures. They kept the real numbers, in
Speaker 1: part because they hated to see their science messed up
Speaker 1: by the fake numbers, and in part because they really
Speaker 1: cared about the future of whale stocks. And thanks to them,
Speaker 1: we actually know, uh, the extent of what was going on. Now,
Speaker 1: could you take us to a pivotal point in the
Speaker 1: the international reaction to Soviet whaling, the one that you
Speaker 1: touch on several different times in the book, and that's
Speaker 1: the green Peace protest in n Yeah. You know, green
Speaker 1: Peace people are quitty familiar with the with the organizations
Speaker 1: still around, of course, an important environmentalist organization, but they
Speaker 1: really cut their start as an anti whaling group. They
Speaker 1: tried some anti nuclear actions that were only mildly successful
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, but they hit on this, this
Speaker 1: strategy of going out to the open ocean and locating
Speaker 1: whaling fleets and coming between them and their prey, trying
Speaker 1: to stop them from killing whales, and of most importantly
Speaker 1: photographing this all video recording it and letting the world know,
Speaker 1: letting the world see just how brutal industrial whaling was,
Speaker 1: just how how awful it was to see these whales
Speaker 1: being killed. And so what's something Greenpeace called mind bomb
Speaker 1: um crafting an image that would be so powerful that
Speaker 1: it would immediately sway global opinion. And they were pretty
Speaker 1: successful with this. Uh, this was kind of groundbreaking moment
Speaker 1: in the history of global environmentalism. And it was the
Speaker 1: Soviets that they decided to target. It was one Soviet
Speaker 1: ship out of the Russian Siberian port of Lativo stock
Speaker 1: that they located in June, and um was a ship
Speaker 1: that had just been warned by Soviet authorities and especially
Speaker 1: Soviet scientists not to take under sized sperm whales. UM.
Speaker 1: Soviets were really nervous about bad publicity that was caught
Speaker 1: red handed by green Pace in this moment, taking sperm
Speaker 1: whales just off the coast of California that were really small,
Speaker 1: um infants, really young spring whales, maybe not infants, And uh,
Speaker 1: this was, you know, for the Soviets as well, one
Speaker 1: of the turning points, you know. They the negative press
Speaker 1: that they got was was really pretty um, pretty devastating
Speaker 1: for them. They didn't end whaling right away, but one
Speaker 1: could point to the Greenpeace confrontations. It's really the beginning
Speaker 1: of the end for Soviet and industrial whaling um as
Speaker 1: a whole. Now, how much of that came through to
Speaker 1: the Russian people at that time or were they more
Speaker 1: or less cut off from many of this in the media. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, the Soviet Union did its best to hide
Speaker 1: the confrontation from the Soviet people, but they had access
Speaker 1: to Western media, a Western radio reports, television, Um, they
Speaker 1: could get some of that. And Yeah, one of the
Speaker 1: things that was I found really interesting in the book
Speaker 1: was to trace Russian popular opinion around whaling, and it
Speaker 1: was really changing as well by the nineteen seventies. You know,
Speaker 1: I give green piece of ton of credit for for
Speaker 1: saving the loss of the whales, but they're that's it's
Speaker 1: not the it's not the whole story. And the whole
Speaker 1: story really does connect to some of these same Soviet
Speaker 1: scientists who by the nineteen seventies were publishing a lot
Speaker 1: of their research in you know, for domestic consumption. Soviet
Speaker 1: people love to read about the ocean. Um. They were
Speaker 1: totally intrigued by it. Uh, and this they love. They
Speaker 1: love to read these popular scientific accounts, and what they
Speaker 1: were reading was was really changing. By the seventies, Soviet
Speaker 1: scientists were in some ways kind of similarly to the West,
Speaker 1: kind of rethinking what whales were. And a lot of
Speaker 1: the popular publications at the time we're talking about whales
Speaker 1: as humans best friend. You know, they're they're they're gentle creatures. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're useful. Their dolphins are really loyal to humans, like
Speaker 1: like dogs. Like. This is one of the things that
Speaker 1: Soviet scientists were saying and people were reading about. Uh.
Speaker 1: Some of the Soviet Union's indigenous authors, people from Chakota
Speaker 1: Guy by the name of Your Red Hue in particular,
Speaker 1: was was writing novels that really talked about whales from
Speaker 1: an indigenous perspective as sentient, um intelligent creatures. And so
Speaker 1: Soviet people, uh really gaining this this really different view
Speaker 1: of wales, and it led them to question their own industry,
Speaker 1: even aside from what Greenpeace was doing, and it comes
Speaker 1: to quick quite clearly. They wrote letters to um members
Speaker 1: of the Bolshevik Party, the Communist Party, demanding, for example,
Speaker 1: that the dolphin hunt be ended, which the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: did ended in nineteen sixty six, uh will before the
Speaker 1: United States ended marine mammal hunting in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: and then increasingly letters to the newspapers, you know, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look are we really adhering to the IWC conventions? Are
Speaker 1: we going to end whaling? What's going on here? Putting
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on the Soviet Union to end
Speaker 1: this way and that that's a big part of the
Speaker 1: That has to be part of the explanation for why
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union ultimately agreed in to stop industrial whaling.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a combination of Western environmentalists and and
Speaker 1: some pressure from Russian people at home too. And did
Speaker 1: the did the economic aspects of it play into it
Speaker 1: at all? Or was that or was the whaling industry
Speaker 1: kind of into the Soviet Union kind of insulated from
Speaker 1: like market forces. Yeah, they did. It did play a role, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Soviet whale It's unclear if they ever made
Speaker 1: any money off of it. In another the like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, tragedy in some way. Um if if they
Speaker 1: really care about profits, they never would have built those
Speaker 1: huge fleets in the sixties. But the Soviet Union was
Speaker 1: entering into an economic crisis by the seventies, and so
Speaker 1: these industries, like the whaling industry, which were lavishly financed,
Speaker 1: people make great salaries in whaling, they begin to seem
Speaker 1: like more of a problem as the Soviet economy as
Speaker 1: a whole was slowing and then by the early eighties
Speaker 1: really lurching into a crisis. And so it's the economics
Speaker 1: did play a role. Yeah, so it was, you know,
Speaker 1: the Soviets, like the Japanese, by the early eighties were
Speaker 1: catching really small whales in comparison to the earlier catches,
Speaker 1: minky whales mostly and some sperm whales. Uh, minkies are
Speaker 1: you know, twenty thirty ft whale and that's a lot
Speaker 1: less whale product than you got from eighty to h
Speaker 1: foot blue whale back in the nineties fifties. So that
Speaker 1: was a part of and they were trying to economize
Speaker 1: on fuel and definitely played a role in getting rid
Speaker 1: of the Soviet whaling industry. Um, but it hadn't had
Speaker 1: a long history of operating without much attention to profits
Speaker 1: or losses. So yeah, it is, it is part of
Speaker 1: the explanation, but it's definitely not the whole explanation. So
Speaker 1: why are Soviets barely a part of the history of whaling,
Speaker 1: as you discussed in the book, despite playing such a
Speaker 1: you know, obviously significant role in it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean part of it is because Soviets were pretty
Speaker 1: secretive about what they were doing. Uh. Part of it
Speaker 1: is this period of industrial whaling. Um. Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: don't think people really like to think back on it
Speaker 1: that much. It was it was a grizzly history. It
Speaker 1: was a depressing history, there's no question about it. But
Speaker 1: I think, you know, maybe most of all this, you know,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, despite producing this really top notch research,
Speaker 1: despite killing so many whales and their scientists, weren't allowed
Speaker 1: to travel around the world share their research, at least
Speaker 1: not until the nineteen late seventies and early eighties, and
Speaker 1: so a lot of what they were doing just the
Speaker 1: world didn't know about, for better for worse. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's that's part of what I wanted to do with
Speaker 1: this book, was to bring that back into global attention
Speaker 1: and you know, account you know for the destruction that
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union reeked on our oceans. And you know
Speaker 1: I should mentioned there. Look, it's not like just like
Speaker 1: they were doing this in some far away corner of
Speaker 1: the yearth One of the things that struck me was,
Speaker 1: you know, when I went to the Ocean as a kid,
Speaker 1: and in the North Pacific on the coast of California
Speaker 1: and Oregon, you know, the lack of whales there. Well,
Speaker 1: this was part of the Soviet Union's legacy. They were
Speaker 1: killing whales just offshore, as were the Japanese you know,
Speaker 1: as had American whaling stations as well. Um, but the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union was impacted my own history here, so I
Speaker 1: thought it was really important to to understand how and
Speaker 1: why it had done this on you know, for the
Speaker 1: for the globe, not just for those interested in Russia,
Speaker 1: but also to give you know, to give the Soviets
Speaker 1: there do especially in the way that they advanced our
Speaker 1: knowledge of whales. Uh, they made really important contributions. We
Speaker 1: wouldn't understand whales the way we do without the work
Speaker 1: of their scientists, um, who did really incredible stuff, not
Speaker 1: not not just an understanding whale behavior, which was their
Speaker 1: main focus, but also in in keeping the records that
Speaker 1: we have today of of exactly how many whales were
Speaker 1: killed in the twentieth century as well. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to stress to it to our readers that even though
Speaker 1: the subject matter is is grim and in many in
Speaker 1: many cases like the book is not just one endless
Speaker 1: horror show. You know, there's there's so much fascinating content
Speaker 1: about the people involved, the cultures involved in the UH
Speaker 1: and and in the in the science of whales UM.
Speaker 1: So I want to I want to stress that to everyone.
Speaker 1: And and also you you do specifically mention you know
Speaker 1: that there is there is light in an otherwise dark tale, right,
Speaker 1: I appreciate that, Rob. Yeah, so you know the book,
Speaker 1: the book does chronicle a lot of whales being killed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is fundamentally kind of a I mean I turned
Speaker 1: one chapter of the whale genocide. This is the story
Speaker 1: of a number of species of creatures which it really
Speaker 1: flourished on this planet for a long time. UM carved
Speaker 1: out a really successful niche for themselves, really suddenly facing extermination.
Speaker 1: And part of the book is, you know, it's chronicle
Speaker 1: in that and trying to understand how whales did survive
Speaker 1: through this, if barely. But the other part of it,
Speaker 1: Roberts Calculus, you say, you know it's a UM people
Speaker 1: lived rich lives even as they were, you know, destroying
Speaker 1: these creatures and and actually, you know, the Soviet whaling
Speaker 1: industry allows us to kind of look at you know,
Speaker 1: some of the really really um messed up cynical aspects
Speaker 1: of Soviet life, but also some of the great dreams
Speaker 1: that people had and some of the ways that they
Speaker 1: really found meaning uh in the communist project through their
Speaker 1: own work, through adventure UM and the ocean. You know,
Speaker 1: they've through through real scientific accomplishment. You know, there's I
Speaker 1: used this story as a way to to think about
Speaker 1: what life was like in the Soviet Union, all all
Speaker 1: of it's really horrible and wonderful aspects and like like
Speaker 1: any human society, and I had both and it comes
Speaker 1: up pretty clearly in the way that people made um
Speaker 1: you know, some really really meaningful lives for themselves aboard
Speaker 1: whales ships, getting to see the world, getting to know
Speaker 1: these creatures that they were killing, um in really unsurpassed detail. Uh.
Speaker 1: And also you know the real pain that a lot
Speaker 1: of whalers themselves experienced trying to reconcile all the great
Speaker 1: experiences they were having with the with the fact that
Speaker 1: they were destroying these families of whales. Uh. And they
Speaker 1: couldn't they couldn't get they couldn't overlook that fact. All right.
Speaker 1: The book is read Leviathan, The Secret History of Soviet Whaling.
Speaker 1: It's out now in physical and digital formats. Um, we've
Speaker 1: we've been chatting with Ryan Tucker Jones. Ryan, thank you
Speaker 1: for coming on the show. Thanks for having me, all right,
Speaker 1: Thanks once more to Ryan Tucker Jones for chatting with
Speaker 1: me about the new book, Read Leviathan, The Secret History
Speaker 1: of Soviet Whaling. You can get it right now in
Speaker 1: physical or digital formats. Uh. Definitely, if you're if you
Speaker 1: were interested in anything that we discussed in this episode,
Speaker 1: definitely pick up a copy of this book. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful read. In the meantime, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, our
Speaker 1: core episodes published every Tuesday and Thursday, and the Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's you'll find
Speaker 1: our listener mail episodes. On Wednesday's we tend to put
Speaker 1: out a short form artifact or monster fact episode, and
Speaker 1: on Friday's we set aside most serious concerns and just
Speaker 1: talk about the weird film. Uh. Thanks as always to
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson for producing this episode. And if you
Speaker 1: want to Get in touch with us about anything this episode,
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