 While the period 1959–62 saw the greatest catches of humpbacks, and the greatest catch of whales overall was in 1963–64, the entire age spanning from 1955 to 1973 can be considered the “golden age” of Soviet whaling, due to the lack of enforcement which allowed such massive illegal catches and the relatively high abundance of whales still remaining in the Antarctic, of which few were reported.Catches of humpbacks were much less after 1962 but still continued to contribute to the industry, the last of which were caught in 1972–73.Blue whales, which were already depleted by earlier whaling, suffered miserably at the hands of Soviet whalers; over 900 true blue and 10,000 pygmy blue whales (a smaller subspecies of the true Antarctic blue) were killed illegally by Soviet whaling (in the 1964-65 whaling season over 1,800 blues, most of them pygmy, were taken by the "Ukraina" fleet alone), and by 1973–74 true blues in the Antarctic numbered a mere 350 individuals.