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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 [pdf link] 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.

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 [pdf link] 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.

And some US leftists continue to get their marching orders from the dear departed SU when it comes to animal welfare.