5 ms·

Whaling in the Soviet Union

115 points by telotortium 7y ago

hosteur 7y ago
Erhm... nuclear bombs?
- votepaunchy 7y ago
  Nuke the whales?
  - code_duck 7y ago
    It seems likely one of the countless bombs detonated in the Pacific blew up a whale.
    - kurthr 7y ago
      Or more likely deafened them leading to a mass beaching event.
    - wecanonlyassume 7y ago
      But which test, and how many whales?
  - smcl 7y ago
    Gotta nuke something
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  What about them? Serious question. Has the sum total of nuclear testing had any measurable environmental impact at all?
  - zokier 7y ago
    Locally? Definitely. The testing grounds are heavily contaminated with all sorts of radioactive (and possibly otherwise hazardous) material Globally? More difficult to estimate. But one example where the environmental impact of nuclear testing can be seen is the contamination of worlds steel supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
  - nisa 7y ago
    It's measurable against natural background radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#/media/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#/media/Fi... I presume a different background radiation level has some impact?
  - mikeash 7y ago
    The fallout has killed a fair number of people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders#Health_effects_of_nuclear_testing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders#Health_effects_o...
tomohawk 7y ago
Not hardly the worst. Here's just a sampling: https://www.robedwards.com/2010/12/the-soviet-environmental-disasters-that-could-come-to-haunt-us.html https://www.robedwards.com/2010/12/the-soviet-environmental-...
- jngreenlee 7y ago
  Ownership of land by those without Skin in the Game can easily lead to this sort of thing. Times 1000 when by a politically hellbent bureaucracy.
  - tomjakubowski 7y ago
    Indeed. See also: nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, the Salton Sea disaster, United States Navy training in Puerto Rico, and the Hanford nuclear site. But even when landowners have "skin in the game", man-made environmental disaster can still strike, like when bad farming practice led to the Dust Bowl. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atol... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_Vieques,_Puerto_Rico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_Vieques,... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
fludlight 7y ago
The Truth About Soviet Whaling: A Memoir / Alfred Berzin https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdeptcommercepub/12/ https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdeptcommercepub/12/
- georgecmu 7y ago
  The following page links to the actual memoir (57 page PDF): https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/spo/SPO/mfr702/mfr702.html https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/spo/SPO/mfr702/mfr702.html
anti-submarines 7y ago
I wonder if some of this had to do with anti-submarine warfare? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile_submarine That the soviets were falsifying documents, killing whales indiscriminately, not even using the carcasses very efficiently, and operating in ways that seemed to clear the sea of cetaceans, seems to point to some other deeper motivation to continue apace. So much so, that Russian marine biologists and whaling scientists themselves took note of the attitude, and secretly retained records of the activity. The article chalks this up to a simple antiquated quota established as a simple matter of the Soviet version of pre-environmentalist dust bowl ambition, and that the stubborn, bureaucratic single-mindedness of Soviet communists saw a number printed on a piece of paper and capriciously, if not robotically declared it must be so, and the machinations of a fear of failure to deliver unto Stalinist masters perpetuated an artificial demand to perform, in the face of GULAG style negative reinforcement, even though there was no such authentic demand that the supply was feeding into. So, boss sees number, insists number must go up, stooges deliver number for fear of punishment. All of this willfully flouts international oversight of conservation efforts in secret, at the behest of the Soviet ministry of fisheries to save face before the high court of the communist party. But is that really it? Or was it a paranoia of mobilized nuclear tipped missiles slipping past defenses onboard underwater launch platforms? Did they think that maybe all the environmentalism was really a cover to hamstring anti-submarine warfare, at a time when this represented a key means of delivering nuclear deterence? That saving the whales was an effort to provide cover for submarines that might threaten Soviet cities with submarine launched ballistic missiles? Maybe all the noisy whales were getting in the way of other cold war related human activity? I guess if that were true, the whaling ships might have followed a different pattern, but maybe submarine warfare followed a pattern of using the animals as cover, and where a pod of animals could be found, so too a sneaking submarine?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bizarro-ahab 7y ago
  The captain, Alexei Solyanik, that seems to be most responsible for the lions share of total eradication, particularly of the humpback whale populations in the southern pacific, comes across as something of a total sociopath. A social climber of the worst sort, and yet his abrupt downfall and ruin also seems oddly misplaced. Like firing a matador for slaughtering cattle. The origin of the whaling industry starts during the inter-war period, before atomic weapons, before any sort of cold war power struggle. The ratchet of the marching quota treadmill starts in earnest, before concepts of poaching and overfishing meet with regulation and conservation efforts. So it is true that economic planning created this monster, and that its inertia unleashes a destructive force that exhausts natural supply to the point of extinction. The downfall of A. Solyanik, by way of a summertime 1965 Pravda hit piece smearing his public image must have been the product of some political anomaly, since the trend in whale extermination operates unbroken by his summary excommunication in the court of public opinion, from 1965 until strict international regulation is more directly enforced in 1972. You get the impression that captain Solyanik carries roughly the intellectual prowess of a used car salesman. So he's good enough to stay ahead of the curve within his microcosm of ripping some whales a new asshole, but apart from that, he's a dude with a cushy job, business as usual, even if patently unscrupulous. No different from operating a cattle feedlot, but without the animal husbandry. To read that the Soviets reinvented themselves as whalers, just as U-boat warfare ramped up is an intriguing coincidence. It contrasts against the detail highlighted by Alfred Berzin, that other countries, namely Japan, really did whale for food and efficiently used the whole carcass, while the Soviets seems to whale for the hunt and haphazardly butchered for the shelf-stable commodities as proof of meeting the KPI metrics. So the quotas were real, and only halted their ascent due to international pressure, and literally at the brink of extinction which was already forcing its own reality upon the numbers charted each year. If there was a submarine strategy attached to the behavior, you'd think the number of whales slaughtered would be attached to naval excursions somehow. Or that maybe you could link something like the sinking of K-129 to the crucifixion of Solyanik, but it seems he was busily depleting an Australian gulf of its shrimp stock with sea vacuums during the 1968 the summer following the spring sinking of K-129, that March... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960... https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583100 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583100 Maybe they destroyed his political career simply for being Ukranian?
adolph 7y ago
Excerpts and light commentary by Marginal Revolution: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/one-of-the-greatest-environmental-crimes-of-the-20th-century.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/on...

115 points by telotortium 7y ago

hosteur 7y ago

Erhm... nuclear bombs?

votepaunchy 7y ago
Nuke the whales?
- code_duck 7y ago
  It seems likely one of the countless bombs detonated in the Pacific blew up a whale.
  - kurthr 7y ago
    Or more likely deafened them leading to a mass beaching event.
  - wecanonlyassume 7y ago
    But which test, and how many whales?
- smcl 7y ago
  Gotta nuke something
0xffff2 7y ago
What about them? Serious question. Has the sum total of nuclear testing had any measurable environmental impact at all?
- zokier 7y ago
  Locally? Definitely. The testing grounds are heavily contaminated with all sorts of radioactive (and possibly otherwise hazardous) material Globally? More difficult to estimate. But one example where the environmental impact of nuclear testing can be seen is the contamination of worlds steel supply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel
- nisa 7y ago
  It's measurable against natural background radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#/media/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_radiation#/media/Fi... I presume a different background radiation level has some impact?
- mikeash 7y ago
  The fallout has killed a fair number of people. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders#Health_effects_of_nuclear_testing https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downwinders#Health_effects_o...

tomohawk 7y ago

Not hardly the worst. Here's just a sampling: https://www.robedwards.com/2010/12/the-soviet-environmental-disasters-that-could-come-to-haunt-us.html https://www.robedwards.com/2010/12/the-soviet-environmental-...

jngreenlee 7y ago
Ownership of land by those without Skin in the Game can easily lead to this sort of thing. Times 1000 when by a politically hellbent bureaucracy.
- tomjakubowski 7y ago
  Indeed. See also: nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll, the Salton Sea disaster, United States Navy training in Puerto Rico, and the Hanford nuclear site. But even when landowners have "skin in the game", man-made environmental disaster can still strike, like when bad farming practice led to the Dust Bowl. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atoll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_testing_at_Bikini_Atol... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_Vieques,_Puerto_Rico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy_in_Vieques,... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl

fludlight 7y ago

The Truth About Soviet Whaling: A Memoir / Alfred Berzin https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdeptcommercepub/12/ https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usdeptcommercepub/12/

georgecmu 7y ago
The following page links to the actual memoir (57 page PDF): https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/spo/SPO/mfr702/mfr702.html https://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/spo/SPO/mfr702/mfr702.html

anti-submarines 7y ago

I wonder if some of this had to do with anti-submarine warfare? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile_submarine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile_submarine That the soviets were falsifying documents, killing whales indiscriminately, not even using the carcasses very efficiently, and operating in ways that seemed to clear the sea of cetaceans, seems to point to some other deeper motivation to continue apace. So much so, that Russian marine biologists and whaling scientists themselves took note of the attitude, and secretly retained records of the activity. The article chalks this up to a simple antiquated quota established as a simple matter of the Soviet version of pre-environmentalist dust bowl ambition, and that the stubborn, bureaucratic single-mindedness of Soviet communists saw a number printed on a piece of paper and capriciously, if not robotically declared it must be so, and the machinations of a fear of failure to deliver unto Stalinist masters perpetuated an artificial demand to perform, in the face of GULAG style negative reinforcement, even though there was no such authentic demand that the supply was feeding into. So, boss sees number, insists number must go up, stooges deliver number for fear of punishment. All of this willfully flouts international oversight of conservation efforts in secret, at the behest of the Soviet ministry of fisheries to save face before the high court of the communist party. But is that really it? Or was it a paranoia of mobilized nuclear tipped missiles slipping past defenses onboard underwater launch platforms? Did they think that maybe all the environmentalism was really a cover to hamstring anti-submarine warfare, at a time when this represented a key means of delivering nuclear deterence? That saving the whales was an effort to provide cover for submarines that might threaten Soviet cities with submarine launched ballistic missiles? Maybe all the noisy whales were getting in the way of other cold war related human activity? I guess if that were true, the whaling ships might have followed a different pattern, but maybe submarine warfare followed a pattern of using the animals as cover, and where a pod of animals could be found, so too a sneaking submarine?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bizarro-ahab 7y ago
The captain, Alexei Solyanik, that seems to be most responsible for the lions share of total eradication, particularly of the humpback whale populations in the southern pacific, comes across as something of a total sociopath. A social climber of the worst sort, and yet his abrupt downfall and ruin also seems oddly misplaced. Like firing a matador for slaughtering cattle. The origin of the whaling industry starts during the inter-war period, before atomic weapons, before any sort of cold war power struggle. The ratchet of the marching quota treadmill starts in earnest, before concepts of poaching and overfishing meet with regulation and conservation efforts. So it is true that economic planning created this monster, and that its inertia unleashes a destructive force that exhausts natural supply to the point of extinction. The downfall of A. Solyanik, by way of a summertime 1965 Pravda hit piece smearing his public image must have been the product of some political anomaly, since the trend in whale extermination operates unbroken by his summary excommunication in the court of public opinion, from 1965 until strict international regulation is more directly enforced in 1972. You get the impression that captain Solyanik carries roughly the intellectual prowess of a used car salesman. So he's good enough to stay ahead of the curve within his microcosm of ripping some whales a new asshole, but apart from that, he's a dude with a cushy job, business as usual, even if patently unscrupulous. No different from operating a cattle feedlot, but without the animal husbandry. To read that the Soviets reinvented themselves as whalers, just as U-boat warfare ramped up is an intriguing coincidence. It contrasts against the detail highlighted by Alfred Berzin, that other countries, namely Japan, really did whale for food and efficiently used the whole carcass, while the Soviets seems to whale for the hunt and haphazardly butchered for the shelf-stable commodities as proof of meeting the KPI metrics. So the quotas were real, and only halted their ascent due to international pressure, and literally at the brink of extinction which was already forcing its own reality upon the numbers charted each year. If there was a submarine strategy attached to the behavior, you'd think the number of whales slaughtered would be attached to naval excursions somehow. Or that maybe you could link something like the sinking of K-129 to the crucifixion of Solyanik, but it seems he was busily depleting an Australian gulf of its shrimp stock with sea vacuums during the 1968 the summer following the spring sinking of K-129, that March... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-129_(1960... https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583100 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24583100 Maybe they destroyed his political career simply for being Ukranian?

adolph 7y ago

Excerpts and light commentary by Marginal Revolution: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/one-of-the-greatest-environmental-crimes-of-the-20th-century.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/on...