Il y a 50 ans, 180 000 baleines disparaissaient de l’océan sans aucune trace et dans la plus grande discrétion. Un article sur le crime écologique le plus impensable du siècle.
Une des plus rapides extinctions d’animaux s’est passée récemment et dans le plus grand secret.
In the fall of 1946, a 508-foot ship steamed out of the port of Odessa, Ukraine. In a previous life she was called theWikinger (“Viking”) and sailed under the German flag, but she had been appropriated by the Soviet Union after the war and renamed the Slava (“Glory”). The Slava was a factory ship, crewed and equipped to separate one whale every 30 minutes into its useful elements, destined for oil, canned meat and liver, and bone meal. Sailing with her was a retinue of smaller, nimbler catcher vessels, their purpose betrayed by the harpoon guns mounted atop each clipper bow. They were bound for the whaling grounds off the coast of Antarctica. It was the first time Soviet whalers had ventured so far south.