- hot-spots
- poaching
- Russian Federation
- Killing whales in Russia
Problems
Whales are found in coastal waters of the North Pacific. The greatest numbers occur in near-shore waters of eastern Russia. Like most baleen whales, gray whales undertake seasonal migrations between summer and autumn feeding grounds and wintering grounds in southern latitudes. In the eastern Pacific, most gray whales feed in the Bering and Chukchi Seas.
Causes of death of whales in Russia
In the Soviet era, Russia was one of the largest whaling nations in the world, with a fleet that hunted whales in the North Pacific and Southern Oceans. The killing of whales is prohibited in Russia, except for indigenous communities in the Russian Far East who are allowed to hunt a limited number of gray whales and bowhead whales for subsistence purposes. However, there have been reports of illegal whaling by Russian vessels, particularly in the North Pacific. Enforcement challenging due to the vastness of Russia's waters and the difficulty in tracking down illegal vessels. Western gray whale feeding grounds are quarely situated in important oil and gas fields off the coast of Russia, and as such, there is great concern about the potential impacts of oil and gas exploration and production on the Sakhalin population. Increased shipping traffic in the Arctic could threaten the region's whale populations. Overall, the killing of whales in Russia is a complex issue, and efforts are being made to balance the needs of indigenous communities with the protection of whale populations and their ecosystems.
Gallery
2
Timelines
2019
Almost 100 whales were kept in the secretive facility in Srednyaya Bay near the far eastern town of Nakhodka before being released after an intense campaign by animal rights and environmentalist groups. Russia has dismantled a notorious facility dubbed the "whale jail" that kept mammals in cramped conditions, causing international outcry. The animals were captured to perform in aquariums.
2008
Shortly after the publication of former whale biologist Alfred Berzin’s memoir The Truth about Soviet Whaling, was the full, corrected data for both the Antarctic and North Pacific regions revealed (the North Pacific data was almost entirely unknown until the 2000s).
1993
Alexey Yablokov, a former scientist on board the Soviet whaling fleets and at the time an advisor to Russian President Boris Yeltsin on ecology and health, revealed that the USSR had committed mass falsifications of its whaling data during the period 1948–1973 and had killed nearly 180,000 whales that they did not report, mostly because such catches comprised protected species or ignored quotas or regulations with regards to legal size, females with calves, or catching outside legal hunting areas.
1986
As a result of the severe decline in the whale population, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) imposed a moratorium on whaling, which Russia eventually agreed to. True, in the USSR, production was stopped only a year later.
1981
Captain Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society launched an expedition into Loren in Chukotka and found that many of the whales killed in the “subsistence hunt” were actually used for mink food, and were being processed by non-aboriginal Russians.
1945
After the war, with the need for a stronger Soviet economy and rapid industrialization of the country, Soviet whaling took off and became a truly global industry.