#grey whale

[inatungulates]

Grey whale Eschrichtius robustus

Observed by susannespider, CC BY-NC-ND

[pangeen]

“ Perfect Harmony “ // © Mike Coots

Original Audio

[cosmonautroger]

Piotr Kowalski, Grey Whale

[schleichoftheday]

Today's Schleich is:

16082 Grey Whale [2001 - 2011]

[blondebrainpowered]

Making eye contact with a Grey whale.

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[weergang]

https://www.newsweek.com/whale-missing-200-years-suddenly-spotted-ocean-1876104

Grey whale back in the Atlantic !!

[graveyardrabbit]

grey whale sculpture at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History

bonus mushrooms growing by her:

[inatungulates]

Grey whale Eschrichtius robustus

Observed by redgros, CC BY-NC

[addturnip]

The book I’ve been reading on the Soviet whaling industry has a lot of interesting insights.

And heartbreak. The Soviet Union killed over six hundred thousand whales in the twentieth century, many of them illegally and secretly. The authorities carefully altered documents and fudged numbers to hide the true scale of their operation.

Between 1946 and 1986, they reported killing a total of 2,710 humpback whales. In reality, they slaughtered over 13,000 in 1959 alone. In total, Soviet whalers secretly killed around 180,000 more whales than officially reported.

Whales were killed so quickly that the bodies rotted before they could be processed, many thrown back into the sea.

Why did the Soviets hunt so many whales? No reason in particular. The USSR had no use for whale meat, and precious little for blubber, hydrogenating small amounts as marjoram.

As it turned out, Soviet economic planners had been setting whaling quotas based on historic whaling as a percentage of the fisheries industry, regardless of any actual usefulness.

Soviet scientists petitioned the fisheries minister, saying their grandchildren would live in a world without whales, they were told “your grandchildren aren’t the ones who can remove me from my job.”

The book itself is full of colorful whalers and scientists, and a wonderful blend of commentary on how, as it did in so many things, the heartfelt USSR set out to do things better than the capitalists, and may have done worse.

“Red Leviathan” by Ryan Tucker Jones

[cupcakesaresocool]

Grey Whale, Magdalena Bay, Baja, Mexico

[havingawhaleovatime]

[coyotegirl-toebeans]

February 26, 2023 8:35 AM

[organicmatter]

Recent tattoos ive done :) lotus is a blast over

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