The Soviet union had an outsized role in this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_and_Russia# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_t

The Soviet union had an outsized role in this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_and_Russia# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whaling_in_the_Soviet_Union_an... To meet lucrative production quotas, the Soviet Union lied to international agencies about how many whales they were catching. While they didn't harvest the most amount of whales in the 20th century, they disregarded treaties that protected endangered whales and breeding populations. https://www.i-deel.org/blog/mass-killing-for-no-reason-the-paradox-of-soviet-whaling https://www.i-deel.org/blog/mass-killing-for-no-reason-the-p... The worst part is there was little to no actual demand for whaling products in the Soviet Union, so most of they collected was treated as a waste product or simply dumped.