 When a factory fleet visited a foreign port, all seamen who left the ship had to be accompanied by a KGB agent or other high-ranking Communist Party member to ensure they could not defect or leak the illegal whaling information to people in the foreign country.The role of scientists on factory fleets was largely to study whales and their lifestyles through dissection of killed animals, examination of stomach contents, or studying of pregnant females and their nearly-developed fetuses.The role of scientists with regards to sustainability was tolerated superficially
only because “everyone else had science, so we should too.”

Despite the constant attempts to market whale products for human food, this never really took off and the main uses of whales in the Soviet economy was largely relegated to using sperm oil for heat-resistant lubricants and whale meat for animal food.